This innocent little balloon knocked out power to 2,000 customers in Roscoe Village, including the Retro on Roscoe street festival. more ›

Last night's game between the Cubs and Dodgers will likely be remembered for its wacky interruption - a power outage that shut off the Wrigley Field lights in the fourth inning. But a game of baseball was also played and the Cubs suffered their own power outage, falling 8-5 to Los Angeles. Tom Gorzelanny gave up seven runs - five earned - over five innings. The Cubs, as usual, struggled with knocking home runners, batting 3 for 15 with runners in scoring position and stranding nine men on base. In the third, they had the bases loaded with no outs but only brought in one run when Mike Fontenot was hit by a pitch. Down 7-2 late, the Cubs knocked in a few runs but never got a full rally going. As for the power outage, which delayed the game for 18 minutes, ComEd reported a falling tree on Racine as the culprit. It's the third light outage at Wrigley since they were installed in 1988 and the first time since 2003. The teams tango one more time this afternoon (1:20 p.m., CSN). more ›

We've all seen balloons float harmlessly around our neighborhood, riding a breeze. But we've never thought how thankful we should be that we don't see more Mylar balloons floating around. According to ComEd officials, a Mylar balloon was responsible for the power outage last night to 3,825 customers on the Northwest Side. The balloon got tangled in the power line near Laramie Avenue and Belden Street. more ›

10,000 Commonwealth Edison customers were without power when they woke up this morning. People living in the south suburbs in Evergreen Park, Bedford Park, Oak Lawn, Burbank, Stickney, Summit, Bolingbrook and Bridgeview lost power about 1:30 a.m. more ›

Chicago Weather Godfather Tom Skilling confirmed that Monday evening's intense storms spawned three tornadoes that produced damage across the Chicago metro area. According to Skilling, Griffith, Indiana was hit by an Enhanced Fujita scale-2 tornado (winds 111-135 m.p.h.) while both Bloomingdale and Bolingbrook were hit by EF1 tornadoes. In addition to the twisters, nearly 2.5 inches of rain fell at O'Hare, already making this the wettest meteorological summer in fifteen years. more ›

Bad news for those ComEd customers left without power after last night's storms: restoring power may take several days. According to ComEd executive vice president Anne Pramaggiore, "Given the magnitude of the damage ... we do expect this to be a multiday restoration effort." Ouch. According to ComEd, as of 11 a.m., over 220,000 customers were still without power, roughly half of those in Chicago. Almost half a million customers experienced outages since the storms hit. more ›

It was a dark night for Dark Knight fans when storms moved through Evanston last night, knocking out power to the Century 12 Evanston Theater. Twenty minutes were left in the show when the power loss cut the flick short. Movie goers were issued rain checks, and those waiting to see later screenings waited for the power to be restored, an hour and 15 minutes later. more ›

Standing on the bus this morning, we glanced at another rider’s Red Eye, where a Golden Globes article was visible. The images featured Borat and Chicago native Jennifer Hudson, with a headline to something of the effect of “surprise nominations.” While the movie about a crass Kazakh is a bit perplexing, Hudson’s nod is anything but a surprise. While we are waiting like everyone else to see the much-lauded film version of the hit 1981... more ›

Building, Antennae, Span, Earth -- and other crap like construction cranes. This is the sport of BASE jumping. Every time we hear about people getting all crazy Bond and jumping off of high stuff, parachuting down and then cruising away as fast as possible to avoid criminal charges, we are entirely nonplussed. Not only do we admit to having a little fear of heights, but we also get a little vertigo just by walking a little too close to the edge of the el platform. more ›

As we headed out of the Chicagoist offices yesterday to meet up with some of our fellow colleagues who had already left the office for the day, we were a little hesitant to jump on the CTA given the morning's snafu (power outage, missing rail, possible suicide?). However, our spirits were strangely lifted by the existential queries on this ever-so-helpful CTA sign. We, too, have asked ourselves these very same questions. If anyone can... more ›

What a bad day for the Brown. Not such a great day for the Red Line either. It took Chicagoist 2 hours to get to work today and we heard it took some people up to 3 hours. We sat at the Belmont stop for about a half hour and were told that a piece of rail was "kind of" missing up ahead. At the same time, someone on the train got a message that the power was out somewhere. And then our CTA train driver came back into the cars to let everyone know it was a piece of track missing between Belmont and Armitage. more ›

Even before the question was asked, Chicagoist knew that its readership was opinionated about diners. Our new infatuation with Eleven City Diner was cut short by a power outage Saturday, so we decided to stick close to home yesterday and head down to an old neighborhood standby. The Bridgeport Restaurant was as close as we got to The Ballmall Formerly Known As Comiskey - we had tickets to Wrestlemania. The combination of springing the clocks forward and an early evening imparting our knowledge of alcohol to Dutch jazz musicians left us a might peckish and our first choice, the Ramova Grill, taken out of play by our desire to stay in bed. more ›

The local theater community weathered the first big snowfall of the season yesterday. Snowstorms can sucker punch a company’s attendance but Old Man Winter was courteous enough to strike on Thursday, when smaller crowds are the norm. Chicagoist spent last night at The Theatre Building, which aside from a few no shows was not affected by the weather. As our curtain time approached, we were informed that two actors were still stuck in traffic and... more ›