Chicago's Snowplowed Bike Paths: Bring Your Ice Skates

Much is being made of the fact that the Chicago Park District is regularly plowing the snow off of the city's bicycle paths.

The ice blocking the bike path
at Foster Ave. is almost 3 feet thick

Lauren Cohn, the Minnie Mouse-voiced former FOX 32-TV news reader, has been complaining about it regularly on WLS-AM radio.

There, the transplanted New York J.A.P. assumes a pseudo-conservative pose with John Kass each morning from 9 AM until Rush finally comes along to restore conservatism to the 50k mega-station.

Cohn worries that efforts to clear the way for dog walkers, joggers and the few stray winter cyclists would be better spent on the streets.

Consequently, she's endorsed a city trial balloon that calls for taxing bicycles.

That leaves us with little doubt that before her rightist political epiphany, brought on by the exigencies of unemployment, she spent a good part of her adult life casting primary ballots for the likes of tax-loving fellow New Yorkers, like Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.

The ice patch at Peterson Ave.
 is only about 2 ft. thick

Anyway, Ms. Cohn needn't fret that winter cyclists have it any easier that the 4 wheeling gas guzzlers.

You see, we discovered, that altho Chicago's bike paths are snow-plowed, they are not salted.

Consequently, at key junctures, bike path users are confronted with impassable ice logjams. Some are up to 3 feet in depth.

Today we took a little bike trip on the Legion Park bike path, which runs along the Chicago River from Peterson Ave., South to Lawrence.

It was pretty nicely plowed of snow. But at the Peterson/Lincoln Ave. underpass, we found a virtually impassable 2 foot thick block of ice on the pavement. At the Foster Avenue underpass, it was closer to 3 feet thick. (see accompanying photos.)

Just imagine some jogger or winter bike commuter barreling down the path at twilight right onto these de facto, skating rinks. What laughs! As good as something right out of the Stooges.

And if anyone should get hurt, the good news is, the Foster Ave. bike path ice floe is within crawling distance of the Swedish Covenant Hospital emergency room.

WLS' Kelli Walker Spurts Anti-White Slur Over Richard Sherman Rant

Once again the dual racial sensitivity standard prevails as black radio traffic info babe, Ovation hair care products spokesperson and  recent WLS-AM affirmative action hire, Kelli Walker, blurted out an anti-white slur while bantering with morning talkers, Bruce Wolf and Dan Proft.

The white-sounding
non-cornrowed Kelli Walker

On their Monday morning program, Wolf and Proft were discussing Seattle Seahawk, Richard Sherman's now famous, thuggish and threatening post-game rant.

In the widely disseminated interview with Erin  Andrews of Fox Sports (see video below), the cornrow-coiffed Seattle  cornerback assumed his most threatening pose and semi coherent ghetto lingo and foamed at  Andrews, "

“Don’t you ever talk about me!”


“Who was talking about you?” Andrews asked


“Crabtree. Don’t you open your mouth about the best. Or I’m going to shut it for you real quick. LOB"

At this, the non-cornrowed, black traffic news reader, Kelli Walker, blurted into the Wolf-Proft discussion: Sounds like she had a blond moment with that question.

Huh?

It was an entirely legitimate question in the context of Sherman's vitriolic gibberish -- Time Sports correspondent Sean Gregory even wrote that it showed the blond Andrew's professionalism in keeping the rant going.

But Kelli Walker called it: A blond moment.

A blond moment?.

Why isn't that considered a racial and sexist slur? Only white people have blond hair and the "Blond moment" taunt has become a racially-tinged suggestion of stupidity on the part of white women.

Imagine the brouhaha that would ensue with racial hucksters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton if a white WLS employee blurted that Kelli Walker had a "big butt moment." -- or a "Cornrows moment."

Oh wait a minute, the white-sounding Walker has straight hair.

Do Ovation hair care products work for cornrows?

Banning Goober Peas at Chicago Park District Fieldhouse

Having successfully saved the peasantry from its mindless flirtation with death and disease by banning the airborne water vapors of the dreaded E-cigarette, Chicago's health elites have taken on a new bogeyman -- the peanut.

Unilateral Decree Making River Park "Peanut Free"

Posted prominently on the front door of the stately old River Park fieldhouse on Chicago's far North side is the following notice:

Peanut Free Park 

As a result of several children having severe Peanut allergies we ask that peanut products not be brought into the building. 

INCLUDES: Peanut Butter, Peanut products, Candy bars and regular nuts. Thank You.

Now the casual observer would conclude that the Chicago Park District in its entirety has jumped aboard this latest health food mania. After all, the notice practically yells at you that River Park is now a "Peanut Free Park."

And the fact that the notice appears just above the Chicago Park District logo, gives it what barristers would call, "The color of law."

Will Vera Onate next declare River Park
 a "Gluten-Free Zone?"

But, alas, that is not so.

According to Colleen Gallagher, the Chicago Park District's $78,504 a year "Risk Analyst," this was the unilateral doing of the busybodies who run that particular field house. She said that the CPD does not have a blanket ban on all things related to the tasty, native American legume.

The chief busybody and safeguard of public health and decency at River Park is one Vera Onate, the $60, 149 a year River Park recreation supervisor.

Seems that the glorified summer camp counselor, Ms. Onate noted that her idol, Barack H. Obama, proclaimed that since he had a pen and a phone, he could simply proclaim binding ukases on the peasantry at will.

She apparently decided to do the same.

Her rationale, according to Gallagher, was that a former denizen of the field house, recently succumbed to peanut allergies at school and everyone was sad.

Ergo, no Snickers bars for you kids.

Gallagher said that she would request that Onate remove the "request" since it is not CPD policy to ban the goober pea.

But as of this writing, it was still prominently on display on the River Park field house door as well as at several locations inside the building.

Seems Onate likes the concept of "tyranny of the minority."

Maybe next she'll go to work -- Bloomberg-style -- churning out dictates banning trans-fats, salt and 20 oz. Slurpees.

Maybe next, she'll declare the Chicago Park District's River Park field house a "Gluten-Free Zone." 

Or how about a "Lactose-Free Zone?" Because, after all, there might be some lone kid out there somewhere who is gluten averse or lactose intolerant, who clamors for government protection.

And after all, government always knows best. And as for the concept of "consent of the governed" in Obama's fundamentally transformed America--- Nuts to that!

Chicago's Godawful Branch Libraries

Mid-day vacuum cleaning at
Chicago Public Library's Northtown branch

Along with Cook County Forest Preserve outhouses, cholera wards and feminist writers' circles, Chicago's neighborhood branch libraries are generally in the category of places to be avoided.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, however, we have, of late, found ourselves inside several of these centers of accumulated wisdom.

In late Autumn, due to a Metra train delay, we found ourselves guests of the nearby Norwood park branch of the Chicago Public library system.

Incisive minds, such as ours, being terrible things to waste, we sought cognitive stimulation there. Thinking to upgrade our computer knowledge we scoured the stacks for useful tomes on the subject.

To our amazement, we found the entire collection very well suited for a technological history museum. But with the latest tome having been published around 2004, they were, alas, of little practical use to us.

If, however, you ever find yourself in need of books with titles like "Success with Windows 2.0" and "The Wang 2200 for Dummies," the Norwood Park branch of the Chicago Public Library is just the spot.

Due to immobility brought on by Chicago's most recent paralyzing blizzard, we again were thrust into a Chicago Public Library branch, this time in search of a wi-fi connection.

Chicago's Northtown
 Branch Library - built in 1962

We went to the Chicago Public Library's ultra-modern North Town Branch. This place - at 6435 N. California - was built in 1962, during the waning days of the JFK administration.

Weak, though it was, we found wi-fi there and also made the amazing discovery that the cleaning lady vacuums the place right in the middle of the day!!

So there we were trying to write and surf the web, while old Russian men were trying to read their old Russian newspapers and Korean kids were trying to master their mathematics concepts and along comes this dour looking babushka, wielding a noisy vacuum cleaner (see photo above.)

It was a very noisy vacuum cleaner.

Right in the middle of the library.

And this was at 3:08 pm  -- right in the very middle of the library's day.

Asked why the night cleaning crew was operating loud heavy machinery in an ostensibly quiet study zone, a library clerk responded, "The cleaning lady always does this - all the cleaning ladies do this, that's just what they do."

Oh, that explains it.

Our spies tell us that next week they're bringing in a jackhammer operator to work on the front sidewalk.

He's scheduled for 2 pm.