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It’s election season in Chicago once again, and as voters get ready to head to the polls, we’re focused on a different kind of democratic process. No, we’re not talking about the race for County Sheriff or Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner. We’re talking about the naming of O’Hare Airport’s new 50-ton pet rock.
While working on the airport’s extensive expansion project in June, construction crews uncovered a massive, prehistoric boulder 30 feet below the airfield’s surface. The enormous rock measures 11 and a half feet wide, 8 feet deep, and 7 and a half feet tall, and weighs about as much as an adult whale.
The Chicago Department of Aviation decided it was too special to discard, so it moved the rock to a permanent location outside the Multi-Modal Facility at 10255 W. Zemke Road and launched a naming contest that received more than 3,000 submissions.
RECOMMENDED: This proposed shuttle will get you from downtown Chicago to O’Hare Airport in 15 minutes flat—so what’s the hold-up?
"The world already knows that O’Hare rocks—it’s why we’ve been named Best Airport in North America for 22 years straight and why we've reclaimed the title of the world’s busiest airfield," says CDA Commissioner Mike McMurray. "But a rock of this magnitude deserves a name of its own. Internally, we’ve been calling it the O’Hare bean, but now it’s time to make it official."
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The department narrowed the thousands of clever submissions down to six finalists, which are:
- Sweet Stone Chicago
- No ORDinary Rock
- Chicago Rocks
- O'Rock
- Orchard Rock (a reference to the airport’s former name, Orchard Field Airport)
- Da Rock
You can cast your vote here. Voting closes at 5pm on Monday, November 2. The winning name will be displayed prominently at O’Hare as part of an exhibit celebrating the boulder, naturally.
If there’s one thing Chicago’s good at, it’s committing to the bit—and it might be the best campaign we’ve seen this election season.