ROGERS PARK — For the eighth year in a row, Rogers Park is preparing for its annual Death to Winter March — an unusual North Side tradition meant to symbolically "kill" the fickle winter season that marks Chicago each year.
For true winter-haters the event has it all: a bagpipe-led march down the lakefront and plunge into the water, followed by a "Seinfeld"-style airing of winter weather grievances, bonfire and cookout.
Participants can begin to gather around 11:30 a.m. Saturday outside Howard Street Beach at 7522 N. Eastlake Terrace where the march into the water will begin at noon.
"Then we lay death to winter," creator Andrew Smerczak-Zorza said.
The "death march" consists of running and jumping into the lake around the official time the season changes to spring, similar to the Polar Plunge done annually to benefit the Special Olympics.
The song "Scotland The Brave" is played while marchers head into the lake, followed by a more upbeat tune as they leave the frigid waters.
For the first time the event is also raising money for the Daniel Murphy Scholarship Fund.
Anyone is welcome to the neighborhood event, and no one is required to plunge (though it is highly encouraged).
Smerczak-Zorza said last year he experienced his highest number of plungers yet at 28, and hopes to boost that number this year.
After the lake, Smerczak-Zorza will begin the "Wall of Winter Grievances" tradition, an angle he added in 2011 — the year of a "Snowpocolypse" snow storm that shut down Lake Shore Drive.
Smerczak-Zorza said he was inspired by the famous Seinfeld holiday spoof "Festivus," in which people "air grievances" to family members about all the ways they'd been peeved by them throughout the year.
At Saturday's "Wall of Winter Grievances" burning, Smerczak-Zorza said participants are encouraged to write "screw you"-type letters to winter and put them in a cardboard box, which they then symbolically set on fire as a way to make space for Spring.
The rest of the night will include chili, more music and a bonfire by the lake.
