Cosmos in the suburbs for ‘Sex and the City’
A small, stylish chunk of the $55.7 million box-office take for the weekend premiere of the Sex and the City movie came from River Forest and Oak Park.
On Friday night, two trolleys carried 68 fashionably dressed, cosmopolitan-sipping women and two of their male friends along River Road north to the Muvico Rosemont 18 cineplex in Rosemont for the much-awaited premiere of the HBO series’ big-screen spin.
The cosmo-a fave cocktail of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte (for the information of those uninitiated)-wasn’t the only fun extra on the evening’s agenda. The group boarded the trolleys from a house party celebrating the birthday of Lisa Lagios, one of the moviegoers.
Once at the theater, they settled quite comfortably into the VIP section-“velvet loveseats, all together,” reports participant Gigi Hoke. “It was great.”
So was the movie, which, Hoke says, met her expectations:
“The fashion was tremendous. The storyline was touching. And the characters were endearing and sunny.”
The 70 local partyers made it on Fox News 32, which was taping at the theater Friday night.
RF Township to host real estate tax presentation
River Forest Township Assessor Pamela Kende will host an outreach seminar for village taxpayers interested in appealing the recent assessment on their home. The seminar will be from 7 to 9 p.m., Thursday, June 12, at the River Forest Community Center, 8020 Madison.
Kende and Oak Park Township Assessor Ali ElSaffar will be on hand to assist homeowners with the appeal process and answer questions. Kende said she expects a strong turnout in the wake of the Cook County assessor raising single-family home EAV rates on average by about 20 percent.
“We’ve probably done 200 appeals already,” Kende said late last week. “The phone rings constantly.”
Graffiti cleanup time extended
The village board made a change to a new graffiti ordinance that’s in the works. But they chose to delay putting the new law into play Monday.
Oak Park is crafting a new ordinance to tackle a surging number of graffiti incidents over the past three years. It originally required property owners to remove graffiti from private property within three days of receiving notice from the village. The village could then remove the paint itself after three days, and bill the owner for the costs.
Officials could place a lien on a property if those costs weren’t paid within a certain number of days.
However, residents complained and the village is boosting the cleanup time to seven days. The ordinance also prohibits sale of graffiti products to minors, bans the paints near various public properties, and has a fine for their use.
Trustees could’ve adopted the ordinance, but decided to wait Monday. Some voiced concerns about hassling kids for carrying certain kinds of markers. Trustee Ray Johnson also asked the village to explore a free removal program, which Cicero reportedly provides.
The board may vote on the new law at its June 16 meeting.
Controversial condos break ground
A hot-button condo building broke ground Monday, over a year after the developer demolished the previous homes on the site.
Allen Realty and Builders purchased three homes on the 400 block of North Maple. They planned to wreck the three homes and erect a four-story, 11-unit condo building.
Neighbors of the building fought tooth and nail, trying to save the three homes and arguing the addition was out of character with the surrounding neighborhood. However, the historic status of the homes was rejected in late 2006, and the developer demolished the homes shortly after.
Bob Allen said the project was delayed after he was incapacitated by two hip surgeries and the market took a nosedive.
“The economy is starting to come around so we’re moving forward,” Allen said Monday. He said marketing hasn’t started on the units, but he expects to finish in the summer of 2009.
Neighbor Astrida Cirulis is concerned that the developer is just trying to do the least amount of work on the project to meet the permit and the lot will remain vacant for another extended period of time.
“We are worried that the village is going to allow him to do the minimum,” she said. “To build now is insane, because who’s going to buy it?”
Correct that
In our LifeLines feature last week, “Ageless wonders,” we inadvertently added five years to Virginia Harris’ age (in the photo caption). Since she’s about to turn 92, she doesn’t need any extra years piled on by us. We regret the inflation.
Of course, Virginia is a kid compared to Paul Soderdahl, whom we also featured in the story. Paul is 102 years young and still walks from his lifelong home at Humphrey and Chicago all the way to First United Church of Oak Park at Lake Street and Kenilworth each Sunday. In fact, we found out from his good friend and neighbor, Ellen Plourde, who stopped by our booth at Day in Our Village last Sunday, that Paul had suffered a stroke while walking to the main post office a week or so before we interviewed him for the article. He stopped and rested, then walked home and asked to be taken to the hospital, where the medical personnel couldn’t believe what they were seeing/hearing. Paul recovered fully enough to stop by our booth on Sunday also and tell us to correct an error in the story. He wasn’t 4F during World War II because 4F would indicate some sort of physical insufficiency. Duh, what were we thinking?