So I drive out to the far west suburbs to spend Christmas day with my aged parents, and of course it snows. On the way home, I’m thinking, no problem! The great City of Chicago would NEVER let a snowflake touch our hallowed city streets, not even on Christmas Day! For one thing, the lesson of Michael Bilandic is still fresh in everyone’s minds, and for another, our sainted Streets and San workers have pride in their workmanship, and the double or triple time holiday pay would certainly motivate those few recalcitrants that weren’t motivated by civic pride alone.
So I get off the Kennedy at California/Diversey, expecting streets as dry as Nancy Pelosi’s nether regions. When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but SNOW DRIFTS all over the pavement! I find myself slipping and sliding on Diversey, on Lincoln, and all the way to my tony Lincoln Park townhome in the high-rent and allegedly well-maintained high-property-tax district!
The shame! This would never have happened back when da Mayor was still alive. I predict that Rahm is toast. I certainly *hope *so. And I expect to see an excoriating essay in Royko’s column tomorrow.
You should be so lucky to live in a city where the civic response to snowfall is so prompt. Winter before last I had to drive 25 miles to work on a freeway covered in 18 inches of ice and snow that felt like a dirt road and where I couldn’t top 25 miles per hour because no one could even see where the shoulder was.
Snow removal in Chicago is a big freaking deal, and mayoral elections have been won and lost on it (as the OP mentioned). Whether or not it snows more or there are bad roads in some other random place is pretty much irrelevant.
Excellent question. Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the current holiday schedule, I haven’t seen any local media coverage one way or another. Maybe it’s just me. But the lack of snow removal certainly seemed out of character from my perspective. Maybe nobody cares anymore.
There was some mention of lack of snow removal a few Sundays ago, on my local Everyblock. It sounded like people were thinking because it was a Sunday there was no hurry. They weren’t OK with it.
I also noticed it last night. Was very glad I had decided to reserve the all wheel drive SUV for my carshare excursion to the “where the hell is this?” suburb of Volo, which I had never even heard of until my cousin moved there. Where is it? I still don’t know, over an hour northwest somewhere BFE, and an hour and a half back home, where the only clear road was the Edens. Luckily, I had zero slipping or sliding, but everyone was driving under the limit, even on the Edens where it was clear and salted.
In the back of my mind, I was expecting to find clear roads when I turned off on Pratt toward home. I was a bit disconcerted with just following tire grooves the whole way to my neighborhood. I’m also a bit disconcerted that no one seems to be yelling about it. I just don’t have much of a dog in this fight, since I don’t drive often enough and the car I use is garaged.