The scorching sun decried any chance of cooler summer days as the Taste of Chicago’s five-day festival was underway, though that hardly stopped 1.4 million people from attending. In its 36th straight summer in a row, the Taste of Chicago not only featured 67 restaurants and food trucks, totaling over 200 different food items, but also a wide variety of artists, from a late surprise performance by Chance the Rapper, to Billy Idol to The Isley Brothers.

For many Chicagoans, attending the festival was merely a tradition, spiced up every year with new featured foods and artists. It was an opportunity to try both the empanada from Beat Kitchen, and the pot stickers from Pad Thai Noodles. Outside of the favorable foods, other locals were solely there for a chance to see their favorite rapper.

“I’m not even just talking about Chance, but you’ve got Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment alongside with The Roots, it’s incredible and I’d have bought tickets if I knew about this earlier,” Tom McNamara, 18, said.  McNamara stood planted within the tightly-packed vibrant crowd, watching from Grant Park’s grass, as the artists closed for the festival’s first day. “You can say whatever you want about Chicago, but if there’s one thing we’re good at it’s food and music, man.”

“And sports,” He said.

And whether it was the food or music — probably both — there was denying the city was leveled with energy during the festival week.

The sun’s searing heat kept up through the week, and so did the people, as the food festival saw no decline in interest throughout each day. The heart of Grant Park was an ocean of people, as packs and families moved throughout like a school of fish. The day would have its rush hour and calmer moments, though waiting in line for food tickets was practically unavoidable.

Different colors of t-shirts clashed amongst the crowd, and as the smoke from the grills engulfed the upper level air, the aroma of cooked meat and spices flooded your senses — offering a little taste of Chicago.

Yet, for some first timers, the packed crowd, the atmosphere and the overall spectacle of the festival was a tad overwhelming.

“I’m thinking this was going to be like a food market, you know with some local music or something. There’s thousands of people here, this is a concert with more food,” said Shauna Moynihan, a university student from Ireland spending her first summer in Chicago. “We don’t really have this kind of thing where I’m from, Cork is one for music but this amount of food is whack.”

And while it may be hard immersing to completely be immersed in the food and music festival for the first time, Moynihan’s experience was rather out of the ordinary.

Protestors covered the streets and sidewalks of Chicago’s Loop on Saturday afternoon, eventually ending at the Taste of Chicago, in hopes to shut it down — this all, in response to the police shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling earlier in the week. A Facebook event titled “Taste of Chicago Shutdown” gathered more than a thousand people clicking interested, but it was reported that a hundred or so were in attendance. Protestors staged a “die-in,” in the middle of the festival streets. Though the protest was peaceful, the reaction of  Taste-goers remained mixed.

“I thought it was brilliant, I obviously don’t know a number of what’s going on outside of these police shootings, but these people want their voices heard, and this is where to do it, you know,” said Moynihan. “In Cork — which is a relatively calm city back in Ireland—you won’t see this but in Dublin, in Belfast, protests like these have happened of course.”

Some local Chicagoans saw the protests as a misdirected disruption.

“Don’t do this here, not at the Taste of Chicago. I don’t know, we are here to eat and listen to music and just enjoy the summer, none of these restaurants or food trucks have anything to do with police shootings,” said Andrew Huffman. “I’m not against Black Lives Matter, I just think this will turn more people to have a negative view of them for disrupting the Taste.”

As the Taste continued throughout the weekend, the protests throughout Chicago did as well. And while the two dissimilar Chicago events interweaved this weekend, one aspect remained clear —

the fact that Chicago served not only a vocal platform of music and arts, but a city with a public voice, and one that’ll always be heard.