Why I Stay Outside

My father has had Bears season tickets for over 50 years.

By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-01-21

My father has had Bears season tickets for over 50 years.

I think about that number sometimes. Fifty years. Through the Super Bowl run. Through the decades of disappointment, the regime changes and rebuilds, the false hope, the occasional Sunday where everything clicked.

Fifty years. The same seats. The same walk from the lot. The same view of the Chicago skyline rising behind the end zone while your breath freezes in front of your face.

That's what they're asking us to give up.

What I Remember

I remember Urlacher hoisting the Halas Trophy above his head after the 2006 NFC Championship. Snow was falling on Soldier Field. Virginia McCaskey stood there, tiny and ancient and beaming. My father had tears in his eyes. I did too.

That moment couldn't happen in a dome.

It couldn't happen because the snow was part of it. The cold was part of it. We'd been standing there for three hours, frozen, losing feeling in our toes, screaming ourselves hoarse — that was part of it.

When Urlacher lifted that trophy, the snow fell on him. Fell on us. Fell on everyone. We were all in it together — the elements, the team, the city. We earned that moment the way Chicago earns everything: by staying when it got hard.

A dome would have been warmer. It also would have been less.

The Digital Disease

I watch the world becoming something I don't recognize.

More screens. More optimization. More comfortable, controlled, curated experiences that look perfect on Instagram and feel like nothing when you're actually there.

We're living through an era of insulation. VR headsets. Remote work. Algorithmic feeds showing us only what we already want to see. Climate-controlled everything.

And now they want to put a roof on football.

Something about experiencing reality — real weather, real discomfort, real stakes — matters. It grounds you. Reminds you that not everything can be optimized. Not everything should be.

A December game at Soldier Field is miserable in ways that matter. Your hands hurt. Your face goes numb. The wind off the lake cuts through whatever you're wearing. And then a defensive stand happens, and 60,000 people scream, and the roar feels like it could knock down buildings.

That's not entertainment. That's something older, reaching back to the way humans have gathered since we learned to gather. A communal experience that costs something.

Architecture and Humanity

I love architecture. Walkable cities. The old bones of Chicago — brick two-flats, tree-lined boulevards, the way the Loop rises from the lakefront like something that grew there naturally.

Soldier Field is part of that. Imperfect, controversial after the 2003 renovation, but still there. Still on the lake. Still connected to the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium and the fabric of Chicago's front yard.

The proposals to move to Arlington Heights or some cornfield in Indiana aren't about football. They're about real estate development. They're about building a stadium surrounded by parking lots and chain restaurants and apartments that look like every other suburb in America.

I've been to other NFL stadiums. Some had character — Lambeau, despite the bench seating and small-town scrappiness, felt like what it was. The Superdome in New Orleans felt right for that city. Party atmosphere walking up, great postgame energy in the streets.

But the newer suburban stadiums? Soulless. Designed to extract money, not create community. Surrounded by highways instead of neighborhoods. Accessible by car and only by car. Everything that went wrong with American cities in the second half of the 20th century — the idea that "cities are dangerous" and everyone should retreat to auto-fueled sprawl instead of investing in real places.

What Could Be

I'm not blind to Soldier Field's problems. The 2003 renovation wasn't what anyone wanted. The spaceship in the colonnades looks like what happens when architects compromise too much.

But the lakefront location matters. It could be better than it is.

Imagine real pedestrian access across Lake Shore Drive — overpasses that make the walk feel seamless instead of dangerous. Better transit connections. A dedicated bus route straight to Roosevelt and the L. Development that keeps the lakefront open instead of walling it off.

This isn't fantasy. It's investment that would benefit Cook County year-round, not just on game days. A better lakefront is a better Chicago. A stadium in Arlington Heights is just... a stadium in Arlington Heights.

What I'm Fighting For

I'm raising my family here. In Chicago. In the city, not the suburbs.

I plan to bring my kids to Bears games the way my father brought me. I want them to feel the cold. To learn that sometimes you stay when it's uncomfortable. To understand the world isn't supposed to be climate-controlled.

I want them to walk through Grant Park before games. See the skyline. Eat at places that have been in the same spot for 50 years. Feel like they're part of something stretching back generations, something that will keep going after they're gone.

A dome in a suburb doesn't offer that. It offers convenience. Parking. Climate control.

We have enough convenience. Enough screens and optimization and comfortable experiences that never quite feel real.

What we need is reality. Weather. Discomfort. Community.

What we need is to keep the roof off.

The Real Question

When Kevin Warren talks about a "world-class stadium for world-class fans," what he means is: a box that generates maximum revenue.

When I think about what Bears fans deserve, I think about something different. I think about my father's 50 years. About Urlacher in the snow. About a lakefront stadium that belongs to a city instead of a parking lot that belongs to a team.

The real question isn't whether we can build a bigger, newer, shinier stadium. We obviously can.

The real question is: what do we lose when we do?

The answer is the wind. The cold. The lake. The walk. The skyline. The history.

The answer is something that can't be replicated because it was real.

Keep the roof off. Keep the city in it. Let the wind heckle. Let the cold judge. Let the game be honest enough to break your heart and endearing enough to keep you coming back anyway.

That's not just football. That's Chicago.