Photo: Juyhun Baik

Pro ballers vs. blue balls
According to Stuart Shea’s Wrigley Field: The Unauthorized Biography, the statue of Civil War Gen. Philip Sheridan (located, appropriately enough, at the corner of Sheridan and Belmont Avenues) is way more famous in the baseball community than the general himself. Sculpted by Gutzon Borglum—the guy who finished carving the stoic faces of Mount Rushmore in 1927—the statue has a long history of receiving scrotal makeovers from rookie players. Though it’s unclear when exactly the ritual began, Shea reports major-league rookies passing through Chicago are frequently required to paint the testicles of General Sheridan’s horse bright blue as an initiation rite. Finally, someone outside the porn industry will be able to tell us what it feels like to give a horse blue balls.

Photographers vs. the fee
Tired of rich, internationally renowned artists not getting their due, the city of Chicago began standing up for Cloud Gate sculptor Anish Kapoor by copyrighting his work in late 2005. Despite the fact that the sculpture is located in a public park (paid for by $270 million of Chicagoans’ hard-earned money), the city began charging a hefty $350 fee for professional photographers shooting the Bean. Meeting harsh criticism from, well, everyone, the city repealed the fee five months later, ensuring once and for all that it’s totally cool to photograph giant sculptures strategically placed in a park for which you paid.

Photo: Devyn Caldwell

Big Brother vs. the blogs
Ever feel as if the faces in Millennium Park’s Crown Fountain are doing more than just spitting? For a while they were. In late 2006, the city placed two Homeland Security cameras high on the park’s beloved makeshift waterpark. Two bloggers - Looper and Chicago Carless - were the first to notice; they took pictures of the cameras and put them on the Web. Heavily criticized by bloggers as well as Art Institute professor Alan Labb (who called the cameras an “Orwellian nightmare” in an interview with The New York Times), the city quietly removed the cameras within one day of the public outcry. According to the Times, the cameras were placed to keep watch over heavily trafficked public areas.

Photo: Art Shay/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Protesters vs. police
To show their disdain for the Vietnam War, the 1968 Democratic National Convention and everything else that was wrong with the ’60s, thousands of politically charged protesters stormed the Gen. John Logan statue—a bronze monument in Grant Park—when police refused to let them march on the convention (at the International Amphitheatre at 43rd and Halsted Streets). In addition to showing that bronzed equestrian statue who was boss, protesters pelted police with rocks, kicking off a series of protests that would spark the infamous Chicago Seven conspiracy trials.

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