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.

We all know the temperature has dropped. However, it has made for some beautiful pictures. This is a flickr set of a freezing Lake Michigan that I took early Saturday morning.

Not to be a shill for Borders, but the one at 830 N Michigan, at least, has a stack of Real Chicago — a vibrant photo book of 60 years of photos from the Sun-Times archives — on the bargain table for $10, down from $35. I used one of Borders’ email-inbox-filling coupons to get it down to $7.50.

“Made to Feel Powerless”
Photo by Erin Nekervis

Instead of the regularly-scheduled Photo of the Week, I’d like to post pictures of the marathon. It was so inspirational, amazing, heartbreaking, and hot yesterday. I think it would be cool to see multiple perspectives on it.

If you have Chicago Marathon pictures (in it, spectator, pic of news), please post them to our Flickr Pool and I’ll start launching them up here.

Those Michigan Avenue sculpture displays are getting more abstract all the time.

“Existing”
Photo by Buckshot Jones