Chicago Weekend Fun!

Governor Blagojevich’s plan to place speed cameras on all Chicago and Illinois Interstates will fail. It will fail because no one speeds anymore now that gas prices have gotten so high. (and fewer people are driving all together) That said, every citizen that owns a car in Illinois should still be going to the Illinois State [...]

I think Chicago is a bad choice for the 2016 Olympic Games. I know that I am in the minority with that opinion, so I wanted to make my opinion points (and those of others like me) visible online. Just to be clear, it isn’t that I am not a fan of the Olympics. I actually [...]

This is some very disturbing news. The state of Illinois will be deploying radar and speed cameras all across the state in July to record photos and track speeds of cars going over the speed limit in construction zones and work zones on the highways and tollways. The first ticket will be for $300.00 fine [...]

Times are tough for the Tribune company, so tough that 19% profit margin on everything they sell isn’t enough anymore. So, the latest plan hatched by the new quirky Tribune owner Sam Zell is to sell the naming rights to Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field to the highest bidder. Will we see Ebay Field? Amazon Wrigley Field? Google Field? Kraft [...]

I just got a message forwarded to my entire office about Com Ed giving customers back credits from 2007 usage costs because of a second rate hike of 22% in January 2008. (the first rate hike of 22% was in January 2007, this is just pure greed now)
Is this rate rebate for real? or is it a Joke?
Well I [...]

I just learned that you can go to the Oak Park, IL town site and view daily crime police report summaries for the last 10 days. It is a PDF file you download with icons on the map where each was crime committed. I think this is good to view if you live in Oak Park or [...]

I noticed yesterday in the Jewel grocery store that the Christmas and New Year’s 2008 merchandise had already been herded to the back of the store, marked down and arranged with no particular care to indicate that within 12 hours of the holiday season being over, the store had moved on and it told me I should [...]

The cold and flu season is here again and if you work in a high rise building in Chicago like I do, you will be exposed to the germs of thousands of people who work in your building, eat at the restaurants you go to and sneeze on you while riding the CTA. The virus [...]

Cook County is looking to add new taxes on phone, gas and electric bills of consumers. The most contested new tax is the one for $4.00 added to everyone’s phone bill.  don;t know when the last time was that you looked at the details of your phone bill (especially if you have auto pay by [...]

Today I got an email from the Hillside Garbage Landfill Closure Project. They wanted to let all of us know who drive by the dump along side 290 at the Hillside strangler, that they have successfully closed off one portion of the dump. We are grateful for that and hope that the stench ends soon. It [...]

I got my Oak Park FYI newsletter in the mail today and it has a mention that a new condo tower will be built at South Avenue and Harlem Avenue in Oak Park. Don’t we have enough condos in Oak Park? At any given moment in the current housing crash and real estate meltdown there are over 500 [...]

I was startled to find out that there are red light cameras monitoring the intersections on Boughton Road in Bolingbrook, IL now. These cameras are taking photograph evidence of cars at the intersection in order to write tickets. These thing they call violations are hardly so. They have been sending $100.00 tickets to people who [...]

No one needs to tell us that Chicago has awful and unbearable traffic jams and congestion. We are familiar with sitting in traffic on any highway or street at any hour of the day or night. (I have sat in traffic jams at 2am) What we didn’t know is that Chicago ranked 2nd in a national [...]

First they allow a buyout by smarmy National City Bank, and now someone is targeting them for a spam email phishing scam. I got this email 3 times on Friday and luckily my spam filter cought it and I didn’t see it till today and I recognize it as a fake message. Here is the text [...]

MidAmerica Bank may not be a financial institution you have heard of, or it could be your personal family bank. Mid America has been a fixture in the suburban working class neighborhoods of Chicago since the 1960’s. My family has banked there since the late 1960’s and I am sad to report that they were recently bought by [...]