CHICAGO #2
White Palace Grill   
Chicago, IL   

Last month, Bobby and I were walking down Milwaukee Avenue and a young goateed fool is driving up Milwaukee in a new-looking gun-metal grey Isuzu Trooper sport utility. He's got one arm and his head completely out the window, and he's singing "Love me two times, baby!" at the top of his lungs. He makes a squealing, high speed turn onto Honore and just keeps turning. He pops the curb, plows through a bicycle rack, flips over once, slides on his side accross the sidewalk, flips over again, landing upside down and 2 inches away from the Burger King. I rush to the pay phone on the corner to call 911, and Bobby attends to the driver. He is still sitting in the driver's seat, unhurt; in fact, he is starting his car in the upside down mode. "Uh, I'm cool, I'm cool..." A crowd gathers, the cops arrive and put the driver in the back seat of the cop car. On the way he tells him that he just got a letter in mail from Isuzu saying these cars can flip over at any moment. Time elapsed: less that 5 minutes? An hour later, we walked past and the car, the crowd and the police were still there.

- jp