Chicago’s seen a lot of street protests lately, but on Saturday we didn’t see any protesters, even though we passed by City Hall and parts of Michigan Ave., which have been hubs of protest. Except for this guy.

He stood on State St. near its intersection with Washington St., just outside of the Store Formerly Known as Marshall Field’s, as you’d expect. Is the sign advocating that the British retailer Selfridge’s buy the famed old store in Chicago and return it to its original name? Maybe. I didn’t ask him. But after all, Harry Selfridge was an early part owner of Marshall Field’s, and essentially took its techniques to the UK to establish his store.

The streets might not have been thronging with protesters, but they were thronging all the same, probably boosted by the fact that it was a Saturday before Christmas, along with the warm temps. Extra helpings of people were in front of the former Marshall Field’s on State St. to see the seasonal windows.
Eventually we got a look at the seasonal windows. As usually, they were elaborately creative. Or creatively elaborate, with a Christmas theme. This year it was about a space-flight-enthusiast young boy hitching a ride with Santa to various fantastic versions of the planets (except Pluto), including a return to Earth that seemed to feature a bizarro hybrid of New York and Chicago. Guess that counted as a fantastic version of Earth.

The madding crowd made it hard to look at the windows for very long, or take many pictures, but I did get one of the window I especially liked.
It’s a snowball fight between giant ice creatures inhabiting Uranus and Neptune. Methane snowballs, probably.