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COVER Steve Carson
EDITORIAL Tammy Annarella: Publisher Mike Macharello: Editor
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Bigger and Better
CELEBRATE NEW YEAR’S EVE CHICAGO style Following its debut last year as the largest New Year’s Eve celebration in Chicago’s history, Chi-Town Rising is returning again to ring in 2017. After attracting an outdoor crowd of 90,000 attendees last year, with host Mario Lopez and musical guests American Authors and Chicago, the outdoor mega event is back for a second time.
Hyatt Regency Chicago’s West Tower, a fireworks display synchronized to music along the Chicago River and on Lake Michigan, and more. Ticketed options for this year’s Chi-Town Rising celebration will include indoor parties featuring Corona Extra and musical entertainment, gala celebrations within Hyatt Regency Chicago, and Official Partner celebrations at select venues across the City. Returning from last year, the popular family countdown celebration, hosted by the Chicago Cultural Mile Association, will once again entertain and educate kids of all ages on New Year’s traditions around the world, provide warm refreshments, live entertainment, and a special “Halfway to Midnight” countdown for those too young to stay up all night.
“Major cultural events like this one are a key reason Chicago is breaking tourism records and attracted more than 52 million visitors in 2015,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said. “I look forward to an even bigger and better event this year.” This year’s celebration will feature a larger public footprint, incorporating outdoor and indoor elements. A large outdoor viewing area, on both the north and south sides of the Chicago River, will offer secure viewing for locals and visitors to enjoy, free of charge. In addition to video screens providing entertainment, attendees will witness an outdoor countdown to Midnight, culminating in the ascension of the Rising Star (the largest New Year’s Eve icon in the world) 360-feet into the air on
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This year they've added the Chi-Town Rise & Shine 5K, a timed race and fun run on New Year’s Eve morning. Participants are encouraged to get up early and “earn their right to party tonight” by getting some exercise in to start the day. The 5K will be staged in collaboration with Chicago Sport & Social Club, and take place around Millennium and Grant Park David Whitaker, president and CEO, Choose Chicago said. “Chicago is an incredible year-round destination and mega events like this are an excellent way to showcase the city during the winter season and to help kick-start a new year.” NBC 5 Chicago and Telemundo Chicago will showcase this mega-event live with highlights from the crowds, musical stages, celebrities, fireworks display, and the countdown.
Illumination
TREE LIGHTS AT THE MORTON ARBORETUM Tree Lights, the one-of-a-kind holiday event that ushers visitors through a magical wintertime walk in the woods, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of vivid, colored lights and surprising interactive effects will take place at the Morton Arboretum through January 2, 2017.
In Illumination’s new dramatic grand finale, Fantasy Forest, the Arboretum’s hedge garden will provide a backdrop for pencil-thin pillars of light which will extend skyward and appear to chase one another while synchronized to music. Many fan favorites are back for the upcoming season, with exciting enhancements for an even brighter Illumination experience. Tinsel Harmony: Sing to strands of lit “tinsel,” then watch the lights respond in three different ways, an enhancement from last year’s experience. See lights change color, grow brighter and alter in intensity.
50 acres of the Arboretum’s majestic trees will undergo a transformation as their bare branches shine in hypnotic shades of blue, purple, green and hot pink. As visitors traverse the one-mile path, they will encounter a series of “experiences” woven throughout their journey, encouraging them to see trees in a different light. Visitors can watch a dazzling light show play in time to classic wintertime music, hug a tree and watch as it reacts or follow beams of light as they dance across the night sky. This year’s event features two brandnew experiences to dazzle and wow. Projections of abstract designs will splash across the Arboretum’s hemlock trees in Treemagination. One effect will make it seem as though the trees are gently breathing. This experience not only showcases the conifers’ elegance, but reinforces to visitors that the trees surrounding them are living things. 18 boiMAG
Ornament Hill: Encounter an expanded and breathtaking vista of hundreds of giant glowing orbs nestled in the grass and surrounded by thousands of LED points of light. Other popular highlights include Symphony Woods, where lights dance in sync with “The Nutcracker” as recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the 24 ethereal chandeliers that softly illuminate the trees in Crystal Promenade. Tuesdays are festive sweater night and Wednesdays are champion gear night, Thursdays are glow wear night. Illumination opens each night at 5pm and runs until 9:30pm, with the last entry at 8:30pm. Tickets range from $18 to $22 for adults and $12 to $14 for children. There's more information on their website at www.mortonarb.org or you can call them at 630-725-2066.
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Setting Goals for 2017
OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW Before setting any goals for the year, take a step back and review your current commitments. What ongoing commitments do you have right now in your life? Sit down and write down every single commitment you can think of. Think about your personal commitments, family commitments, professional, community, etc. Think about the different areas of your life that require your attention. Write out each of them and then take some time to reflect on the following questions. Are there any that aren’t aligned with my values? Are there any that are taking up too much time and energy? Are there any that I need to cut and get rid of? If you start your upcoming year over committed, then you don’t leave yourself any room to take new opportunities. This means that when new opportunities present themselves, you are forced to either turn them down or fall short on your existing commitments to take them on. It is better to do a few select things right this year, than to do a lot of things half-ass. Cut some commitments and you will be happy that you did. Once you have analyzed and cut any commitments, it is time to set your goals. Try grabbing a notebook and doing this over the course of a week or two. It is often that more goals and ambitions will pop into your head the longer you take to think about it. Don’t judge your goals to much at this point, just write down any ambitions that you have and you can come back to them later and decide which ones to pursue. Write down each of your goals in categories such as: Professional, Family, Friends Health, Spirituality, Creating, Financial, Learning. Each person may have slightly different categories. Choose the categories that are important to you and arrange your goals accordingly. Just write them down and collect them over the coming week or two. We often fail at goals for a handful of reasons. Our goals are unrealistic, we have no consequences if we fail and we have no plan of attack, just to name a few.
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The first mistake people make when setting goals is setting vague goals. A goal like “Be healthier this year” or “Draw more” does little to invoke change. Instead, get quantifiable with your goals. What does 'be healthier this year' look like? Does that mean exercising 3 times per week? Does that mean losing 10 pounds? What does ‘draw more’ look like this year? Does that mean 5 drawings this year or 100 drawings? Get specific. When you set quantifiable metrics, it holds you more accountable. Your goals need to sit somewhere in the middle of ambition and reality. Losing 60 pounds in the year is possible but it may be a bit overly ambitious. Losing 20 pounds in a year may be more realistic. Think about writing a paper back when you were in school. In many ways, writing that paper was a goal and you had to do a good job along the way. Why did you do a good job on the paper? There were consequences if you failed. Your grades acted as consequences which kept you motivated to get the work done. So how do we set consequences when we have no external institutions holding us accountable? It’s simple, create a way to keep yourself accountable. One way is use the site Stickk. www.Stickk.com is a goal setting website that holds you accountable. A goal of lose ten pounds is useless unless there is a plan of attack associated with it. A goal of writing a book is useless unless you have a route to get there. Setting goals is just part of the battle. The next step is building a plan of action to achieve them Get out a blank piece of paper. At the bottom, write down your goal. At the top, write the current situation pertaining to your goal. A goal without of a plan of action is just wishful thinking. One of the most common problems with annual goal setting and “new years resolutions” is that they fade out after the first few weeks and they are forgotten about. If you want to achieve your goals, then you need to build a plan of attack.
The Winter Party
March 2017, South Beach Miami As winter moves onward toward its snowy, slushy, freezing conclusion, those who do not live in South Florida consider a break to South Florida. But if anyone needed an additional reason to head down to the tropics in early March, there’s the Winter Party. Winter Party is a week-long festival of dance and social events, produced as fundraisers for the LGBTQ community from March 1st-7th, 2017. The Festival climaxes with The Beach Party, a dance event on the beach of South Beach. Founded in 1994, the original Winter Party featured just one event, Miami’s first mega-dance party ever held in on the beach. Since then, the Winter Party Festival has evolved into a weeklong festival benefiting the LGBTQ community on the national and local levels. The festival has grown to include a week-long celebration with dozens of events, from shopping expeditions to museum crawls and parties that take place in Miami, Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale. The National LGBTQ Task Force, the event’s producer, donates a significant portion of the proceeds to local LGBTQ groups. In 2016, the Task Force donated a record-breaking $275,000 and over the years, the total has been $2.4 million. There are five major events. It starts with the Ignite Party on Thursday March 2, 2017, from 10pm-5am at Score nightclub, the first of many to take over one of Miami’s megaclubs.
Friday gets even hotter with the Heat Party at Space nightclub starting at 11pm going on late into the night. One of the major weekend highlights is the Saturday pool party, which takes place at the Deauville beach hotel in the pool area with turntables, wet-and-wild fun and amazing eye candy on March 4th from 12pm-6pm. Later that night, there’s the appropriately named Energy Party from 10pm-7am. As of this writing, the venue information has not been released yet.
The next day on March 5th comes the weekend highlight, the all-day starting at noon going into-evening Beach Party, it’s the largest and most popular event of Winter Party. A dance floor, pavilions, DJ booth, tents for relaxing, drinking and chatting are stretched along South Beach’s Lummus Park. Providing the music are Chicago’s based DJ Ralphi Rosario and one of SoBe’s favorite DJs, Abel, known together as Rosabel. If you still are in the party mood, you can continue on to the WE Party which starts at 10pm on the same day and on to the Verve party on Monday. For more details go to www.winterparty.com. boiMAG 29
It’s the most wonderful time of the year TIPS TO HELP BEAT THE HOLIDAY BLUES
While images of love and joy fill storefronts, TV screens and magazine pages, for many people, the reality of the holidays isn’t so cheerful. Between stressful end-of-year deadlines, family dysfunction and loss, poor eating and drinking habits, and increasingly cold and dark winter days, it’s easy for the holiday season to feel notso-merry and bright. Constant reminders of others’ happy seasons can additionally serve as a painful reminder of the happiness and love that’s lacking in our own lives. For this reason, the month of December can be a particularly difficult time of year for those dealing with family conflict, loss, breakups, divorce, loneliness and mental health issues. Feelings of depression and negative mood affect many people at the holidays, and not just those who have been diagnosed with clinical depression. While there hasn’t been data to suggest an actual rise in depression rates and suicides in December — research has found that depression and suicide actually peak in the Spring — some experts say that the holiday blues are a very real phenomenon. And of course, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that this is the case. Here are some of the risk factors of holiday depression, and how you can avoid them. Hoping for a picture-perfect White Christmas holiday is setting yourself up for not only disappointment, but potentially depression. People have this anticipation or fantasy of the holiday that you would see on TV,. Actually, it’s never exactly as people anticipate and it’s often disappointing. There’s often strife within families that comes out at holiday times. Especially when it comes to family, it’s important to manage expectations during the holidays and not hope for things to be perfect. If holidays tend to be a time of conflict in your family, or you’ve recently experienced the loss of a loved one, putting pressure on your family to all get along or to be cheerful could lead to disappointment and additional anxiety. Realize that the holidays do end, and take stock of what you can be grateful for. Having gratitude is probably the best antidote against depression.
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At the holidays, the pressure of trying to do everything, plan the perfect holiday, make it home to see your family, say yes to every event, meet those year-end deadlines can be enough to send anyone into a tail spin. And if you’re prone to anxiety and depression, stress (and a lack of sleep) can take a significant toll on your mood. Take care of yourself , don’t overeat and overdrink. Do your regular routines of exercise and whatever keeps you together during the year. Alcohol is everywhere during the holidays, and if you’re struggling with feeling down, it may be wise to avoid drinking as much as possible, alcohol is known to worsen symptoms of anxiety and depression. If you tend to start feeling down when winter approaches each year, and those negative feelings don’t go away after the holidays are over, you may have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). People who think they are suffering from a case of holiday blues may actually be suffering from SAD, a form of depression that’s brought on by the change of seasons. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is most commonly associated with winter blues, and it afflicts about 5 percent of Americans. . Both in real life and on social media, it can be difficult to avoid comparing yourself with others around Christmas time. If you have a less-thanperfect family, a past trauma from this time of year, or just a less-than-full holiday dance card, comparing your holiday experience with other peoples’ is a recipe for increased sadness and isolation. Spending too much time in chat rooms and on social-networking sites? A number of studies now suggest that this can be associated with depression, particularly in teens and preteens. Internet addicts may struggle with real-life human interaction and a lack of companionship, and they may have an unrealistic view of the world. Some experts even call it “Facebook depression.” In a 2010 study, researchers found that about 1.2 percent of people ages 16 to 51 spent an inordinate amount of time online, and that they had a higher rate of moderate to severe depression. However, the researchers noted that it is not clear if Internet overuse leads to depression or if depressed people are more likely to use the Internet.
in the know
If you are looking for some stocking stuffers or something nice for yourself, Egoist at 3526 N. Halsted St., is having a 20% Christmas Sale on C-IN2, Aussiebum, Pump! and Diesel underwear and 25% off on all T-Shirts. So hurry over and get a free Andrew Christian Calendar if your purchase is $50 or over. Not to worry if you are in a hurry, the sale goes on through Dec. 24th.
For those who like to curl up on the couch with a nice bottle of wine this time of year or are looking for a gift to bring to the party, why not kill two birds with with one stone? Take your friend or someone special to Paired Wine at 3325 N. Halsted St. on Tuesday or Thursday between 6-9pm for some delightful wine tasting samples. Not only will you find a gift for the party and for yourself, but you’ll have fun in the process too. Stop in at Drew’s the corner of Halsted and Belmont on Saturday or Sunday brunch for their festive “build your own bloody mary bar.” Now you can create your very own bloody mary monstrosity, and please don’t leave out the celery sticks and olives! While you’re there, you can reserve your table for New Years Eve. Speaking of NYeve, at Touché 6414 N. Clark St., you can ring in the new year at the ripe Black & Blue party. There will be a free buffet (food and men), party favors along with ripe go-go dudes and a champaign toast with lights out at midnight. If you miss that party, perhaps the day after on Jan. 1st you can go to the Hungover & Horny beer bust with $1 Bud and Bud Light drafts all day long. Have you been naughty or nice this year? Well head over to Cram fashions for their Naughty or Nice Party on December 15th between 8-10pm. You’ll 38 boiMAG
On The Go! see some fierce bartenders and some hot models. The in-store party will have a live DJ along with cocktails and a raffle or two. The Christmas Queens are coming to town! Who are the Christmas Queens you ask? They are a group of former contestants from various seasons of the RuPaul’s Drag Race, a reality television series. Presented by AEG Live and Jam Productions, the queens will be performing at the Vic Theater Friday Dec. 16th. Tickets are available online at TicketMaster and at the Vic Theater Box Office. If you are looking to be around people of substance and that give back to the community, the Equality of Illinois is having their 25th Anniversary Gala on Sat. Feb. 4th 2017 at the Hilton, 720 S. Michigan Ave. There will be a silent auction, cocktail reception, program and dinner. Black tie is optional but you can wear a pink one too. Do you like to travel? Then the Travel & Adventure Show might be right for you. It’s a two day event that’s being held from January 21st-22nd, 2017 at the Donald Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. You will find thousands of vacation options to explore and have the opportunity to meet face-toface with travel experts from around the world. Included in the price of the admission is access to dozens of inspirational, educational and culturally focused sessions on five stages located right on the show floor. One of the highlights of the Travel & Adventure Show is the opportunity to meet and gain inspiration from the world’s top travel experts and celebrities as they present seminars and answer questions over the two-day event. For tickets, go to www.TravelShows.com and use promo code BOI for a discount.