Sunshine’s overrated - especially when you’re like me and have a whole ton of risks for skin cancer, and have skin damage and already had a precancerous growth removed. (I’m only in my mid-30s and have diligently avoided the sun most of my life.) I think I’ll duck it for longer, thanks.
Besides, I work in downtown Chicago, so I spend the better part of my days here. It’s not like there’s some wall that’s been erected to keep us uncultured, hick suburbanites out.
I reread my above post and realized I probably should have put a 
on the end, else it comes off as harsh, which wasn’t my intent.
No, but it sounds like a great premise for a John Carpenter-Kurt Russell movie.
“In 2008, the United States Police Force erected a 30 foot concrete wall around the Chicago Loop. The streets were mined, and the river patrolled. The rules were simple; once you were thrown out, you couldn’t come back.”
“Escape From Bloomington. The greatest escape of them all.”
Just call me Snake. No, I’m not dead; thanks for asking, though.
Stranger
Eva, I’ll go with you to throw bricks through the windows of their home, if you figure out who did it.
Happens in Beantown as well. This year the mayor told the sanitation workers to throw every chair or other placeholder into their rigs 48 hours after the storm. He did that in Dec, not sure what will happen after this storm. It could be quite interesting.
I personally think it’s a vile custom, but it’s pretty ingrained in the communities. A wry, witty note on your windshield I could see. Smashed windows in criminal and should be punished.
Waitaminute, you *didn’t * call the cops already?
It could indeed have been worse. Last April, some asshole used a blowtorch to break a window on my car (the asshole in question did so to steal my stereo and CDs). It was the rear-seat window in a 2-door car, and the blowtorch melted the rubber seal around the window. The insurance adjuster said it was about $2000 in damage (and no, the number of zeros is not a typo) excluding replacing the stereo.
Hey, don’t be dissin’ my hometown!
Eva Luna
Proud Alumna, Evanston Township High School
Actually, I filed a police report by phone within about 3 minutes of discovering the incident - for all the good it did (it’s not like they came out to dust my car for prints). I meant I’m not above calling the cops on the asshole who did this, if I can figure out by some miracle who it was.
However, given that years ago when I was burglarized, one of several identical burglaries in my apartment building over a period of a few weeks, and they later caught the burglar red-handed in someone’s apartment, they pooh-poohed my suggestions that perhaps they should investigate whether he had perpetrated the other burglaries, I am not entirely convinced of the enthusiasm of our city’s finest to deal with property crimes of this nature. Their squad cars may say “We Serve and Protect,” but I’ll believe it when I see it.
True enough - in fact, I’ve never heard of this happening to anyone in Evanston, where I grew up, or in any of the other suburbs. In fact, I’ve never known anyone to whom this happened. Just lucky, I guess.
Evanston, Skokie, and Oak Park are all excepted from typical Chicago suburban rants. You are honorary Chicagoans. The rest of you suck. (I remember back in the 80s when Chicago and the suburbs first split the 312 area code into 312 and 708. There was a pretty popular t-shirt at the time expressing the sentiment “No 708ers” on it. We South Siders hate the North Siders and vice versa, but we come together in hating the suburbanites.)
Lest anybody misunderstand, this is mostly playful ribbing. Mostly.
You are exempting Skokie? Sheesh, the town where 2 of my best HS buddies were arrested for, of all things, breaking curfew - they decided one rainy summer night that they were going to walk to St. Louis. They ended up spending the night in jail.
Nothing can compare, though, to the fun we used to have all piling into whoever’s car was the loudest and rattiest, driving up to, say, Lake Forest (you non-Chicagoans, think John Hughes movie scenery), and waiting to see how fast we’d get pulled over by the cops and asked to show ID.
Lake Forest cops assume, when they see a ratty car full of kids, that a new fast food place has opened in town and the car contains imported Waukegan workers (who are, in Lake Forest, regarded as illegal aliens.)
The rest of you - quit dissing my 'burbs. Not all who live in Elgin are committed there by court order.
EvaLuna - there’s room in my driveway for another car and I promise nobody will break your windows if you park there.
See, this is exactly what I’d love the city to do (whatever cities this happens in (and believe it or not, li’l ol’ Lancaster, PA, Amishtown itself, has this “tradition” as well)), because really…if they leave it out on the curb, they MUST be throwing it away, right? innocent
I too hate this custom. Luckily it does not happen in my neighborhood. Pretty much everyone who parks on the streets near my apartment had to dig out to get to work, so the whole thing was pretty clear. I wish Mayor Daley hadn’t come out in favor of these kinds of actions.
But I do want to say, for all those people who are knee-jerking that they’re never moving to Chicago because of parking, that you can live perfectly happy in this city with public transportation. I did for almost two years, I only got a car because I work way out in the 'burbs now (sadly Lake Forest). And there’s lots of places to live (like mine) where you don’t have to have your own parking space and can get along just fine.
Of course, there’re assholes anywhere. Sorry you encountered one, Eva.
But how are you going to See And Be Seen if you aren’t driving your Jetta? (Or SUV if you are a Chad.)
Stranger
And people wonder why I only ride a bike.
We have the ‘chair space saving tradition’ here in Philly too. Its amusing how some folks think they still own the space and keep the chairs there long after the snow is melted away.
You know, there is a Hummer on my block, and almost every evening is double parked for at least a couple of hours. Maybe I’m behind the curve.
