Say what you will about that parking or speeding ticket you receive. Rail at "the man" about the unfairness of being given an expensive ticket Red Light ticket even though it was your ex-boyfriend driving the car. Challenge the ticket in court. Hire a lawyer if you're so enthused. But please, for the love of all that is good and holy, do not poop or wipe your poopy butt with that ticket. This is a simple lesson in etiquette, one that should be easy to handle for most people who have evolved. But it seems at least one man thinks doing so is a proper form of protest. Alexander J. Bailey received a parking ticket in Bartlett and allegedly decided to show his disgust by wiping poop on the ticket and mailing it back to the village. Even better, there was a note written on the ticket telling the unlucky recipient about what he had done. Bailey, who lives in Medinah, was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. He's out on $500 bail but will back in court later in June. more ›

The wintry weather we've had the last day or so - rain changing over to ice and snow as temps have dropped - have made things a mess on the roadway and made things even worse for the city's troubled parking meters. Having already gone through the freeze before, the city's parking meter payboxes are freezing up again according to our friend the Parking Ticket Geek. Out and about doing post-holiday shopping or returns and encounter one of those frozen meters? Here's what the PTG suggests: more ›

• The most updated swine flu er, H1N1 influenza A tally for Illinois stands at 20, give or take.
• If Judge Clayton Crane has his way, former Chicago police commander Jon Burge will have to testify in the torture case against him.
• Governor Quinn's reform commission panel stands by their decision to advise against a recall amendment.

If you've got unpaid parking tickets, you'd better get to paying them off because the city is leveling the boot on motorists. Now that the limit for booting is two tickets more than one year old, the city is going all out in a bid to reclaim some cash with a $300 million budget hole looming. Revenue Department spokesman Ed Walsh gave the Sun-Times the lowdown: 415 boots already applied and more than 65,000 seizure notices mailed out. If you receive a seizure notice, you have 21 days to request a hearing or, yep, you get the boot. Acknowledging the economic clusterfuck that's hit everyone, the City is urging people on the list to consider payment plans or at least paying one of the tickets. more ›

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. Being the nation's capital, DCist felt especially proud to let freedom ring this week by exposing the really important issues, like how sad they... more ›

We recently bought a car from a friend and on the day we decided to clean it out we opened the center console and what we saw was a sea of orange and white. Parking tickets. Lots and lots of parking tickets. Now, sure, we've gotten our share of parking tickets, but this was a little out of hand. Well, according to a Sun-Times report, there are a lot of very very large balances of... more ›

"The Cruise" via pantagrapher. more ›

In the past, parking ticket scofflaws with more than three unpaid tickets who have gotten the dreaded Denver boot clamped on their front wheels had to wait for a city crew to come out and remove it. Instead of begging for coins to buy Khlav Khalash while they wait, many of them to try to remove it themselves, damaging the boot and racking up more costs for the city than the unpaid tickets themselves. So the city is trying a new program that lets them remove the boot themselves, no jackhammers necessary. more ›

On Tuesday, a Chicago man was sentenced to 18 months probation for leaving his 82-year old, wheelchair-bound mother outside in the cold while he gambled for 15 hours at the Majestic Star Casino in Hammond. more ›

The city is expanding its parking ticket payment plan as part of a massive ticket and tax amnesty program. Officials hope to collect at least $7.5 million of the almost $123 million that is owed the city in unpaid tickets, business taxes, and fines. more ›

So, last year the cops wrote out 60,000 fewer parking tickets than they did in 2003. Of course, the heat from the top was on officers to pick up the pace, issue more tickets... but they didn't. Yay, us! more ›

Chicagoist got a copy of the Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life and cannot stop paging through it. The book, which goes on sale today, was written by fellow Chicagoan Amy Krouse Rosenthal and is a memoir on what it's like to be.. well.. ordinary. Chicagoist leads a pretty ordinary life and probably if we sat down and made an encyclopedia of it, no one would read it, but Amy does this in a way that makes you keep going back for more. Just one more entry then we'll get to work. Ok, just one more. Ok, one more.. you get the picture. more ›