I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo last week. You can see some photos of the trip in my set here. But what I’m most interested in is this sign right here:

The animals can turn invisible!!! I think I’ll start my own zoo and have a bunch of empty cages with this sign on each one.

Why do I have the feeling that that smokestack used to be just a bit taller?

I suppose if you think about it, there’s no particular reason that one store couldn’t supply both needs. Fish are, after all, one of the few animals that are commonly* both kept as pets and eaten. But it still freaked Erica out. "It’s the same phone number!" she kept shouting.

* I said “commonly”. I don’t need to hear stories of cows as pets and iguanas as food.

A display in the window of the store Foursided.

I love HDR photography… something about the surreal super-saturated colors just makes me happy. And I love Chicago. So without further ado…

Chicago HDRs
Flickr Chicago HDR images

Enjoy!

Chicago photos are starting to roll into the Polling Place Photo Project. As well, Chicago Public Radio is encouraging you to add your election photos to their Flickr group with the tag “election08″ — they’ll be creating a slide show of submissions.

I think I got asked by three different people if I’d given back the special pen. Don’t take the special pen!

I know you’re not supposed to eat yellow snow, but nobody ever warned me about the pink stuff…

A section of Montrose near Wellington collapsed into itself. My friend Scott Sexton sent me an e-mail detailing his encounter with it during his morning commute:

The street is covered in mud, water and snow. Clearly a water main has broken. Shopkeepers are shoveling the debris off their walks. I get up to the next intersection. There are bulldozers and backhoes and more cops and CTA personnel. One of the lamp posts on the side of the street looks like it has sunk into the ground, but I really can’t see what’s happening. The L station appears to be open, however, but we can’t get to it. The cops route us up a block, through an alley, and then back down toward the station under the tracks. I pass the Beans n Bagels coffee shop and the floor is caked with mud and water. Crossing the street in front of a WGN news crew, I get to the L station. There are fans positioned everywhere trying to dry the soaked floor. It isn’t until I climb the stairs up to the platform that I can see exactly how bad the damage is. The earth has been literally washed away. Under the concrete, water is still gushing from the jagged end of a giant pipe. Montrose is dead.

He also took pictures from his camera phone:

Edit: My friend Gena has a great flickr set of the sinkhole as well.