January 10
Grammy Award winner Jennifer Hudson performs at Marina City’s House of Blues, headlining a fundraiser for Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel. At the sold-out event, former White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers looked around the room and said, “What do I see? I see Chicago. I see young. I see a little bit old. I see professionals. I see people that maybe don’t have a job. I see all of Chicago and this is really what the city is about. Having everyone here, everyone together, everyone pulling together to keep this city moving.”

January 14 The Dilemma, a Ron Howard film starring Jennifer Connelly, Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, and Winona Ryder, is released and we see that Marina City’s Smith & Wollensky not only made the cut but is the setting for the very first scene. Despite this, reviews are mostly negative and the film is released on DVD less than four months later. (Photo by Chuck Hodes.)

February 2
20 inches of snow falls on Chicago. This image was captured on the Dearborn Street Bridge, looking toward Marina City’s west tower.

February 22
Voters in the 42nd Ward’s tiny 27th precinct, consisting solely of Marina City, picked winners on Election Day, including mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel. Here, voting booths overlook State Street from the 20th floor of Marina City’s east tower.

March 12 In an annual tradition going all the way back to 1962, the Chicago River is turned green between Wabash Avenue and Columbus Drive. With Marina City looking on as well, thousands of people lined both sides of the river to watch the spectacle.

April 5
Seven contestants in the 2011 Miss Bikini USA Model Search strike poses at Hotel Sax. At the hotel’s Crimson Lounge, the women competed in both swimwear and club wear for a shot at a TV show, calendar, and “model of the year” honors. (Photo by Francis Son.)

April 11 – A race official hands out encouragement to runners as they pass Marina City. More than 32,000 people ran in the Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle, a nearly five-mile race that turned south onto State Street for ten blocks.	April 28 – We start to get our first glimpses of how Marina City will look in Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon. A trailer released by Paramount Pictures shows an alien craft flying past a heavily damaged Marina City and a riverfront that is in the middle of an interstellar war. The film opened on June 29.

June 1 (Above) Ryan Shafer of Horseheads, New York, starts to breath again after bowling a perfect game at the GEICO PBA Team Shootout at Marina City’s 10pin Bowling Lounge. It happened in the first game of the day, a singles match between players representing bowling equipment manufacturers Storm Products and Brunswick. ESPN videotaped the entire event for broadcast starting on June 25. On June 23, the Professional Bowlers Association fined 28-year-old Chicago resident Sean Rash an undisclosed amount for an outburst it called “conduct unbecoming a professional.” June 29 (Left) The fireboat Christopher Wheatley wins its battle against the State Street Bridge. For about an hour, it would not raise to allow sailboats below to pass. Chicago Department of Transportation and Chicago Fire Department officials on the scene said this was due to the bridge being too hot. The south side of the bridge was doused with water. The bridge finally opened at about 2:19 p.m.

August 8
As a heavy rain fell in downtown Chicago on a Monday afternoon, a 29-year-old man was shot in the middle of the State Street Bridge. He survived, the suspect got away, and the west side of the bridge was shut down for about two hours. We soon learned that the victim, Todd L. Brown, was a dishwasher at Smith & Wollensky and had a “rap” sheet of criminal history 64 pages long.

August 17 – Two BMW “concept cars,” the i8 hybrid (left) and the i3 all-electric (right), hit their marks in preparation for a promotional video shot on Wacker Drive. (Photo by Stephen Serio.)

August 31 – Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel speaks to about 400 entrepreneurs and venture capitalists gathered at House of Blues for the second annual “demo day” organized by Chicago-based Excelerate Labs. Said Emanuel, “In the past, municipalities have been a roadblock to young, entrepreneurial companies. We will not be a roadblock. We’ll be a partner in making sure they have what they need from the municipal level.” (Photo supplied by Excelerate Labs.)

September 7 66-year-old Deborah Harry performs with Blondie at House of Blues. Reviews of the concert note the band performed 16 songs, many of them new. Jim Ryan at Chicago Now called Harry “the very epitome of a timeless cool.” (Photo by Theresa Heinz-Ratekin.)

September 14
Next door to a major exhibition of the work of architect Bertrand Goldberg, a collection of photographs of Marina City residents offers glimpses of what it is like to live at Goldberg’s arguably most famous work. Photographer Andreas Larsson and Iker Gil, an architect who lives at Marina City, have been working on Inside Marina City since 2009. Their first image released showed a resident gazing at the city from a balcony on the 35th floor of the west tower. (Photo by Andreas Larsson.)

September 30 – Ryan Shea, punched out from his day job as general manager of House of Blues Chicago, performs with The Blue Olives, an eight-member blues/rock/funk band, on HOB’s Back Porch Stage. The band started in Wisconsin in 1994 and is working on their fourth album.	October 10 – 35,628 athletes take in the city’s running tour of Chicago. The course for the 34th annual Bank of America Chicago Marathon again took runners through the Loop and River North, crossing five bridges over the Chicago River.

October 25 (Left) Two of 32 mannequins that appeared on Wacker Drive between Michigan Avenue and Wells Street, part of a safety campaign by Chicago police and the Chicago Department of Transportation. Each mannequin represented one of 32 pedestrians that were struck and killed last year in Chicago. November 8 (Below) As fans wait below at left, cast members of the new “Twilight Saga” film are photographed and interviewed at House of Blues. At right are Charlie Bewley, Jackson Rathbone, and Nikki Reed. The cast was promoting a new two-part Twilight film, Breaking Dawn, the first part of which opened on November 18.

November 12
Two new commercial tenants signed leases at Marina City in November. On November 12, we learned that a 10,000 square foot commercial space vacant since March 2010 is getting a Bar Louie. Meanwhile, on the other side of Hotel Sax, former Flat Top Grill CEO Keene Addington announces his upscale Tortoise Club will move into a street-level space that has been vacant for more than three years.

Late last December…

December 10
Victoria’s Secret lingerie model Katsia Zingarevich poses on the LaSalle Street Bridge in August for a television spot unveiled in December 2010 that was directed by Michael Bay, who was in town to also direct Transformers 3. The bridge was closed on August 7 and 8 so that Zingarevich and fellow supermodels Erin Heatherton and Candice Swanepoel could shoot the Victoria’s Secret “Holiday 2010 TV Commercial.” Marina City shows up in a special extended version of the spot.

December 17 Chicago Fire Department divers jumping from a helicopter hovering over the frigid Chicago River on a Friday afternoon rescued an elderly man who had fallen from the Dearborn Street Bridge. He was pulled to the south shore, carried to Lower Wacker Drive, and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition. The rescue took about 11 minutes. (Video by Thomas Grether.)