Results tagged “elderly”

John Waters: Junk hoarder? Slum lord? Con man? (No, not that John Waters.) This Waters is an 80-year-old lousy neighbor who created a giganto junk house on the 4200 block of Melvina. The folks who lived around the trash heap (sadly not an oracle) were less than thrilled. James Parker, who lives next door, kept a close eye on Waters and even documented the junk man's movements with a point-and-shoot camera. Kopka called the...

Mary Mitchell goes to town today with an article about Chicago police officers Tasing an 82-year-old woman. The Illinois Department of Aging (who knew?) received an anonymous tip that Lillian Fletcher, alone in her West Side home, needed help; they dispatched the police to do well-being check. When police got to Fletcher's door, she refused to let them in, and when they pushed their way in, she got a hammer. Police spokeswoman Monique Bond tells...

Violent crime is up 1.9 percent nationally, but locally, it's down 3 percent. The city owes all of us noncriminals a pizza party. Crime dropped statewide as well. Uh, do we smell two pizza parties? The FBI released its yearly roundup of crime in the United States, and it's a real gold mine for info nerds like us. But the first thing we noticed was most of the tables say Illinois has "limited data...

Have you noticed the photos and merchandise featuring a green metal soldier throughout the city? At your local 7-Eleven there are Slurpee cups featuring the same soldier carrying a flag, there is a strange red-orange new flavor of Mountain Dew called Game Fuel, there is a commercial with a elderly man talking about the great battle where "Master Chief" saved his life, and there's another where "Master Chief" seemingly comes alive in the middle of a massive diorama. There are books, comics, web "machinima," toys, and even an article in Time Magazine. This is Halo.

SHOOTING: Two homeless men shot in a 24 hour span in Uptown -- they appear to be unrelated. In more shooting news (why is there so much?!): Police have two "persons of interest" in custody Sunday morning after two teenagers were shot in a playlot on the South Side in the Woodlawn neighborhood, blocks from the University of Chicago campus. TRAINS: Our dear friend warns us: This is why you NEVER put headphones in...

You know, all these food posts today made us hungry around the offices. If they've done the same for you, here's some reading material for you while you we ourselves a plate of something. Just the kind of publicity BP needs right now. The source of an oil leak that made its way to Munster, Indiana's storm sewers Monday night was one of BP's seeping, inactive pipes. In addition to jurors getting to view...

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,...

- Y'all know we were under a flood watch today? Could've fooled us. - The Chicago Police department unsuccessfully tried to fire an officer for punching an elderly man in the face during a fender bender. Now that same officer is accused of doing nothing while fellow officers beat up patrons at Carol's Pub in January. - All those "It's Gonna Happen" t-shirts, hats, and wristbands being sold at Cubs games are the brainchild...

A visit to the hopital is scary enough without having to worry about receiving a lethal overdose of medication, but for three elderly women that nightmare seems to have come true. Ruthie Holloway, 82, and Jessie Sherrod, 89, both died in the weeks following their admission to the University of Chicago Hospital in what hospital officials are saying could be "an intentional act" of insulin overdosage. Holloway, who was admitted on May 21 for a...

Wicker Park and Ukrainian Village have no shortage of places where Chicagoist can satisfy its sweet tooth. We love Alliance, Milk and Honey, Letizia's and Bleeding Heart Bakery, to name a few of our favorites. But one thing we've learned is that there is never too much of a good thing, especially when it comes to desserts. When we heard Sweet Cakes, a new bakery on Damen and Augusta was open we went over...

We all know that the problems that CTA is having is part crap management and part a real failure to figure out how to properly fund the whole works. And we've been talking about all of this budget stuff for awhile after they threatened to hike our fares and cut our service. However even with the looming $226 million combined budget shortfall for 2007, Springfield has shown little sign that comprehensive transit funding is on their list of priorities. Blago met with CTA officials Wednesday and indicated he wants to give $100 million to the CTA. According to a spokeswoman for the governor, he plans to meet with Metra and Pace officials, but nothing's scheduled yet.

It's not that politicians and the media don't respect young people when it comes to voting. They know all about President Clinton and Andrew Dice Clay (whatever) putting their thumbs up for rocking the vote. They've even pretended to try to pretend to care that young people are "apathetic" about their vote, publishing studies about what a shame it is that none of the youngsters in this country participate in democracy how they want them to, or read the paper.

This Chicagoist has just arrived home from work around 6:30 when we heard sirens get louder and louder, and then saw a number of fire engines pull up in front of our building at 2626 N. Lakeview. We knew something terrible was happening when we continued to hear more sirens.

We know Tank Johnson's busy getting ready for the Super Bowl and stuff, but Chicagoland isn't going to let those guns go unused. A man walked into a South Side restaurant Sunday night, fired two shots and hit a woman in the hand and a man in the leg. Then he cruised off into Washington Park. A leg shot gets you a trip to Northwestern, while a shot to the hand earns you a trip...

Huzzah, the holidays are over and the blotter is back! An SUV rolled off the Skyway at around 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning and caught on fire. Driving the vehicle was an unidentified 18-year-old female; she had with her three male passengers, two of them 22 years of age and one 20. Her GMC Envoy hit a guardrail at the 67th Street exit, rolled off the ramp, and burst into flames. All passengers were taken to...

Forgive us, we just watched Snatch again the other night (the movie, you pervs). To tell the truth, we're not too crazy about the creatures. People have been killed in our bar brawls for taking their side and insinuating that cats are anything less than little gods that happen to chase snotrags. But, we have let our guard down sometimes concerning cats' mortal enemies. Now, just in time for that fuzzy-wuzzy überholiday known as Christmas,...

We interrupt our gingerbread-baking schedule to give you the following stories: In a horrible but entirely preventable tragedy, a Metra train struck a minivan in Elgin on Friday afternoon, killing two adult sisters and an infant. Witnesses said the van tried to circumvent the lowered crossing gates. The train dragged the Dodge Caravan for approximately 150 feet. Five more van occupants, a third sister and four children, were taken to area hospitals; one of the...

Since Chicagoist started replacing red meat with veggies and tofu some seven years ago, folks back home have always thought us a bit crazy. Five years later we’d show up to Easter dinner only to have family members shocked that we still wouldn’t partake in the ham-eating. Thankfully for us, the teasing and concerns about our diet were never nearly as bad as those for our vegetarian, not to mention vegan, friends.

Spinach and lettuce, meet your new best friend: egg salad. Egg salad is being recalled in 17 states including Illinois. Ballard's Farm Sausage Inc. announced the recall on Saturday because of a possible Listeria monocytogenes bacteria contamination. This slightly different version of the AP story provides a little bit more information about which products are affected, as does the FDA alert. In addition to the Ballard's 12-ounce egg salad, the contaminated salad was also sold...

Remember back when you were a kid, and your school had safety drills out the wazoo? Fire, tornado, nuclear blasts (for the baby boomer Chicagoist readers - we know you're out there) ... oh, the fun that was had. The safer of you might also remember being told to make up an emergency plan with your parents in case of, well, emergency. Chicagoist vaguely recollects lessons of home blueprints, exit routes, even rope ladders for multi-story buildings. Then a really annoying song would get in our head, or we'd see something shiny, and then we tended to forget all about fire safety.

It appears that the E. coli contamination is far from over; Salinas, CA-based Nunes Co. Inc. has recalled lettuce after it found some "generic" E. coli in a secondary water source for the lettuce. Generic E. coli? That sounds sort of like "half-pregnant" or "mostly dead" do us -- we aren't sure if we buy it.

When we heard a CTA official was resigning, we thought we had a winner in our Dead Pool. Turns out that Chicago may be losing exactly the type of transit official we need.

On a recent road trip out to St. Charles, Chicagoist believes we spotted no less than three Portillo's restaurants on I-64. Being a sucker for a killer breaded chicken sammich and an equally lethal chocolate shake (their fries ain't bad neither), we yearned to pull over for a little anti-diet naughtiness. It's turning out to be a good thing we didn't, for on Friday Portillo's recalled 3,703 pounds of roast beef. The pre-sliced, fully-cooked roast...

In case you needed another reason not to eat your vegetables, the first person in Illinois has been hospitalized due to spinach contaminated with E. coli, the Chicago Tribune reported. Seriously, stay away from those leafy greens.

A CTA bus driver may need to have his mouth washed out with soap after launching into an expletive-laced tirade at an elderly woman on his bus. The woman boarded the 157 Streeterville bus around 5 p.m. on Monday. It’s not clear what the woman did as she boarded, but she sat right behind the driver and he then yelled for her to “get back up there,” according to Naperville resident Gwen Sylvain. The elderly...

The Illinois Commerce Commission voted yesterday to deregulate home phone service in Chicago, declaring the market competitive enough to swim in the seas of capitalism. This is a perfect storm for AT&T, which has been rocking the boat for removal of price controls for years. Under the new agreement, they will be able to raise local rates $12 annually for the next three years--effectively doubling the average customer's plan. AT&T did agree to offer "safe harbor" plans with prices that will be frozen for four years, but customers have to switch plans themselves, meaning these low rates won't be available to people who aren't inclined to spend two hours on the phone with customer service, wait from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. for a technician who shows up late, and spend another three hours on the phone to correct billing mistakes--a.k.a. everyone.

As if 130 bands, overpriced food, kids’ shows, an art exhibit, and people watching weren’t enough, Lollapalooza 2006 will serve up afternoons of interactive entertainment on the Mindfield Stage. Good to see three local comedy offerings on the bill but, with all due respect, they’re pretty much the opening act everyone’s sitting through to get to the headliner. To any of our readers coughing up $60 or more just to see Chicago comedy in Grant...

Hey, have y'all been using our new "Recommend this" feature at the bottom of each post? This week we're bringing you the "Most Recommended" posts from across the -ist world, as well as recommending some of our own.

Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddie for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bid's Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues with our World Cup broadcasters here, but this guy...

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