Erin Allen: Good morning. I'm Erin Allen and this is The Rundown. 

It's December 1, welcome to the first day of the last month of the year and welcome to day one of overnight parking bans in Chicago. Drivers are not allowed to park on 107 miles of city streets from 3am to 7am. Cole Stallard is the head of the city's Department of streets and sanitation. He told WBEZ's talk show Reset the ban helps keep Chicagoans safe.

Cole Stallard: Weather here in Chicago can change in a minute. And we just got to keep those streets safe and passable. We got to keep the emergency vehicles going. We got to keep, you know, CTA moving, you know, three quarters of a million rides a day. We got to keep people moving. We got to keep this city moving.

Erin Allen: The parking ban will remain in place through April 1, 2023 and violators might just get towed. 

This week, I've been talking a lot about some of the storefronts and businesses struggling to stay open and River North and on the Magnificent Mile. Many of them are still recovering from drops in both workers and customers because of the pandemic. And this definitely extended to the hospitality and tourism industry to support their efforts to rebound lawmakers in Springfield are pushing to make Illinois one of the 19 states have tourism improvement districts. These districts are partnerships between local governments and hospitality businesses like hotels. Businesses will be able to add a charge to customer transactions and that revenue will go toward marketing efforts for local tourism. John Groh of the Rockford area Convention and Visitor's Bureau testified in favor of the bill earlier this week. Groh says indoor spaces like convention centers are still struggling to attract people.

Today is World AIDS Day and community leaders in Chicago are calling for more equitable funding for HIV and AIDS programs in Black neighborhoods. My colleague Clare Lane has more on that.

Clare Lane: Health Department data show Black Chicagoans make up more than 50% of new AIDS diagnoses. But black LED healthcare organizations on the south and west side say their funding doesn't meet that demand. Here's Southside health centers Vanessa Smith.

Vanessa Smith: There are 14 more times Black women who are HIV positive than white women. That in Chicago, Black CEOs have never received their fair share of HIV funding.

Erin Allen: Advocates say as HIV rises in Black communities, resources should go directly to culturally competent programming.

Democratic state lawmakers are proposing to ban the sale of assault rifles in Illinois according to the Sun-Times, they'll introduce a measure today that would also prevent the sales of magazines that hold more than 10 bullets and raise the age of eligibility for a firearms owners card to 21 for most folks in Illinois. 

There are some earth signs out there who like to stay grounded here on this planet. And then there are the air signs like me who get excited about the idea of traveling the universe. No matter what your sign, if you're constantly thinking about what going to outer space is really about, you may be able to peek in and learn a little something soon. Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry has received a spacecraft from Space X, the company by Elon Musk, that will be the centerpiece of an upcoming exhibit. The museum is holding an outdoor ceremony today so we the public can see the Dragon capsule before it gets prepared for the exhibit scheduled to open this spring. Voula Saridakis is the curator at the museum.

Voula Saridakis: This is a Dragon 1 first generation spacecraft, cargo spacecraft, that's coming to us. It's twice flown on two missions one in 2017 and 2019.

Erin Allen: Those missions brought cargo to the International Space Station. Saridakis compares the Dragon and its future display to the museum's German submarine and 727 airliner that have been popular with visitors for decades. 

And before we get to weather a few quick hits. For those who still like to get their food directly from the people growing it The Wicker Park farmers market will launch indoors this coming Sunday. According to Block Club Chicago vendors and local farmers will set up at the market from 10am to 3pm. Select Sundays between then and mid April. And if those typical holiday season activities are starting to feel a little bit too typical, my colleague Samantha Callender has some fun, offbeat and affordable suggestions for you over at wbez.org. 

As for weather today is going up to the mid 30s, sunny all day, clear skies until sunset around 4:30pm. Then tonight is going down to about 30 degrees. And that's it for today. Thanks for listening and thanks for rating the podcast. If you don't like it, I won't take it personal. But if you do, tell your homies too. You can rate us, you can subscribe, you can share, all that by clicking a few buttons in just a few seconds. I'm Erin Allen, this is The Rundown. See you bright and early tomorrow morning.

WBEZ transcripts are generated by an automatic speech recognition service. We do our best to edit for misspellings and typos, but mistakes do come through.