Former Chicago Police sergeant John Herman faces a minimum of 24 years in prison after he was convicted of rape this week. Herman had a bench trial rather than a jury trial, and Judge Joseph Claps not only found Herman guilty, he also had some additional harsh words for the rapist. "The defendant's testimony is unreasonable and nothing short of perjury," Claps said. Claps also didn't believe two officers who testified on Herman's behalf, saying......

Of all the egregious things the city can do to property owners, from jacking property taxes to the current favorite, the misuse of TIFs, none seems more unfair and ripe for abuse as eminent domain. For the uninitiated, eminent domain allows the city government to seize ownership of private property, paying the owner whatever the city deems as "market value". It's supposed to be used for the "greater public good", such as the expansion......

Need an original idea for a hot (read: nerdy) date or just an escape from the city this weekend that includes dinosaurs? The Walking with Dinosaurs exhibit won't be showing in Chicago, but it is open today through the 9th in Milwaukee at the Bradley Center. Tickets are a little pricey, $35-70, when you could just buy the DVD for less than $50 online and stay toasty at home, but really, how can you......

Out of all of our celebrity chef crushes, Gordan Ramsay doesn't really crack the top three five ten. He just doesn't do it for us. There's something about the incessant swearing and love of horse meat that isn't attractive to Chicagoist. But he does do it for FOX viewers and restaurants that need a makeover on his Kitchen Nightmares show. We learned via Schadenfreude (and apparently there was an ad in the Reader as well)......

As it gets closer to Halloween for LAist, a contributer recollects her tale of staring down the serial killer, Richard Ramirez, otherwise known as the Night Stalker. Must think happy thoughts -- okay, free organic chocolate chip cookies for Los Angeles -- now that's a happy thought. Other happy Los Angeles thoughts include an interview with Jack Kehler of The Big Lebowski (he was the Dude's landlord), a beautiful and magical photographic moment in......

Hopefully, you already love Found, the magazine and series of books created completely out of found items submitted by readers. The Found magazines and books play on a voyeur mindset of peeking at all the things that are none of your business. Items within the series, include a list about a budget with $600 set aside for crack, and other more poignant items, such as a letter found attached to a floating balloon addressed to......

Winston-Salem, N.C., may have given their name to a couple of brands of cigarettes on the shelves today, but it's not their tobacco products we love most. It's their doughnuts. In the late 1930's Krispy Kreme opened their first store in Old Salem and began hawking their yeasty crack-like confections that were the basis for the glazed doughnut we know, love, and will basically kill for today. The company has had a rocky yet innovative......

We painfully remember a certain teacher at our high school that was completely and utterly against giving out passes to students to use the bathroom. Our syllabus at the beginning of the course had an entire page dedicated the many ways he planned on not letting miss days, let alone minutes, of his Marine Biology class. Which, on more than occasion, included watching Hawaii 5-0. We shit you not. The class, what we like to......

- BREAKING: The Tribune and Sun-Times agree to a historic distribution deal where the Bright One contracts the Tribune to handle most of its delivery. More on this tomorrow after we've had time to let this one sink in. - A Dallas real estate investment firm is thisclose to signing off on an $850 million deal for four downtown office buildings, including 440 S. LaSalle, aka One Financial Place. - United Airlines files lawsuits......

Each morning we're going to highlight five bands playing at Lollapalooza that we think are worth seeing. Some will be popular, some less known, but we believe they're all worth your time. And for those not making it to the festival itself, we'll round it out with an additional show going on after the grounds close down for the evening. The Switches We are sure we'll be cursing this band from England throughout the day.......

Since our hipster cred went down the drain last night when we saw The Police at Wrigley, we decided to just join the ranks of our parents and give up. The on-sale listings from Ticketmaster confirmed this for us when all we found were shows at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. Shows that would have excited us about forty years ago, but who's to say grandpa and grandma don't deserve a great night out. The......

There’s been a subtle shift in Chicago’s independent music scene over the past year. As bands like The Ponys, The Changes, and Bound Stems are out of town more often in accordance with their newfound national attention, other hardworking bands are stepping up to establish themselves as the foundation of the city’s new music community. One of the leaders of this pack is Cracklin Moth, who has built a following on the strength of a......

Schanna Gayden, a thirteen-year-old honors student and innocent bystander, was killed yesterday as she bought watermelon at a vendor's cart in a park just blocks from her home. This morning, charges are pending against a 19-year-old gang member likely from either the Imperial Gangsters and Spanish Cobras, the two gangs that have previously sparred over the turf in Logan Square As a press conference yesterday, a visibly upset Mayor Daley said yesterday, "Parents have to......

Back in May of 2003 we started watching one of the few reality shows that had us hooked from the first episode. Four years later we're still watching and have become borderline obsessive/compulsive about America's Next Top Model. It's not Tyra that's the draw for us. Nor is it Twiggy, the original waif. Not Nigel Barker who is "married", nor is it even really about the girls competing for the big win (well, maybe just......

First-round draft pick Greg Olsen is getting a quick lesson in media scrutiny after the local press discovered a raunchy rap that Olsen, rapping under the G-Reg moniker, recorded along with a number of his fellow dorm mates / teammates. The 7th Floor Crew, as they called themselves, recorded the rap, and somebody posted it to a MySpace page (warning: NSFW lyrics, autoplay music) for all to hear. And yes, the lyrics are very explicit......

If you take the main ideas of the stories today and combine them, you get a medieval drug dog. Not bad. But separate them out, and you get pure stupidity, pure craziness, and pure laziness/greed. Sigh. When will people learn? We'd love to have a bunch of weeks where This Week In Stupid becomes obsolete, but people just keep doing crazy and dumb stuff. Onward, shall we? Oh we all wished we could go medieval......

Every once in a while a band rolls across Chicagoist’s desk with just the right combination of reverence for their influences and clarity of vision for their own work. Erie Choir is the recording name for Eric Roehrig, a Chapel Hill, NC, native with a crisp indie-folk sensibility and a lot of patience. Roehrig spent five years writing and recording Slighter Awake, a tight, classically constructed 38 minutes of lovely, embellished pop recorded for......

Chicagoist isn't really big on celebrating Easter, usually Easter is just another Sunday for us. But this year it falls on the same weekend as two of our family member's birthdays, so celebration is in order. In preparation for tomorrow's party, we prepared a kind of traditional Easter dish, deviled eggs. But let's be honest. We'd eat the shit out of these things any day of the year! They're so good. The problem was......

Many a pilot and flight attendant will be looking for somewhere else to sleep on their layovers at Midway; an anonymous tip led to an investigation into forty "crash pads" located within a mile of the airport. The airline employees use these crash pads to do just that, crash overnight on layovers. They are "two- and three-flats that rent furnished rooms to pilots and flight attendants who live in other cities but fly in and......

Today's finally the day for the Chicago Tribune. ... Well, most likely. After deliberations Saturday bore little fruit, the Trib's full board of directors is scheduled to meet today to decide on a buyer of the internationally-renowned media outlet. You may recall that as recently as a couple months ago, investors expressed little interest in becoming owners of the Trib, the Los Angeles Times, WGN and the Chicago Cubs, among other subsidiaries. But now, the......

Chicagoist really has no idea if these public meetings that are supposed to be to hear community thoughts/suggestions/comments/feedback really are that. Or if they're just legal due diligence, or if they're just so people feel that they had a chance to express themselves, or what. We still plan on going to the last meeting* about the three-track-were-you-smoking-crack sitch in the hopes that we can say something about it, but we're not really sure what it......

Fans of "Check Please" missed one doozy of an episode last weekend, one that perfectly encapsulated the appeal and genius of the show. The episode, which reviewed Lincoln Park raw food hot spot Karyn's Fresh Corner, Lincolnwood steakhouse Myron & Phil's, and Chicagoist 2006 favorite Haro, was spurred to must-see status by the staunch opinions and sharp tongues of retired lawyer Fred Solomon (pictured, left) and model Manase Latu (right). The stage was set......

We were recently going through, what we like to call, the take-out drawer of shame and realized we multiple copies of almost every menu we could possibly order from. Not to mention the fact that rubber bands and tiny plastic bags line our hall. Well, on January 9th the License and Consumer Protection Agency considered changes by Alderman Flores, 1st, and Alderman Rugai, 19th, which would crack down on the companies and those they hire......

When we think of sexy athletes, typically blonde tennis players come to mind. So we're not sure what to make of the recent Sun-Times poll and its result, naming Bears punter Brad Maynard as the Hottest Bear. Girls, your thoughts? Maynard won in a landslide by garnering 57% of the vote! Well behind Maynard, "Adewale Ogunleye was second with 8 percent of the vote. Hunter Hillenmeyer and Brian Urlacher got about 7 percent each, and......

Craigslist — a "virtual smorgasbord of products and services" — is a pretty fine resource for jobs, bikes, Sifl 'n Olly show DVD sets, and really killer missed connections. What it is not, however, is a pimping outlet. Two Chicago women must not have realized that when they decided to use the site as a means of advertising their wares, i.e. young girls. Cook County officers regularly look for prostitutes using the site, but were......

Sure, a comedy festival provides exposure and an excuse to get out of town for a weekend. But as the Sixth Annual Chicago Sketchfest gets underway, we’ve learned that comedy troupes also come here to nourish their inner fanboy (or girl) and to network. We contacted three veteran troupes to see how they make the most of these weekends. Big News performing January 5 & 6 Conceiving a weekly revue based on the previous week’s......

Mayor Daley continued his efforts to make Chicago the "greenest city in America" yesterday, announcing two environmentally-friendly public works pilot projects. Starting next year, the city will install 100 solar-powered bus shelters that could save the city $20,000 in electricity annually. The shelters will be easier to install because they won't require digging to plug their lights into the grid. The city will also be testing sidewalks made out of recycled rubber to see if......

We here at Chicagoist love good ideas. We’re so joyful when a simple idea benefits almost everyone, and even more joyful when that good idea benefits historic architecture. The Columbian Exposition of 1893 is probably our most famous world’s fair, but in 1933 Chicago hosted the Century of Progress World's Fair. The fair celebrated design and technology, emphasized by its many streamlined Art Deco buildings. One of the finer points of the 1933 World’s Fair......

Remember to crack a window. You don't want to die from inhaling Liquid Plumr fumes, like this guy. The Bulls are teaming up with WFP to feed hungry schoolchildren in Darfur, Sudan, with a $100,000 donation. Chicago Symphony Orchestra donated $60k worth of musical instruments to Chicago Public Schools. Jewel is closing Starbucks' in-store cafes and Dominick’s is adding them. Rivalfish shows how terribly white they are by trying to put together a remix......

You know how it goes. It starts off buying a Christmas present online during your lunch hour, then you remember that you haven't gotten your lovah anything. Then you think about something you'd like to see them in. Then you think maybe you don't want to see them in anything. Then why bother waiting until home, why not just check out some naked people RIGHT NOW? IS that how it goes? We don't know, because......