It was around 2:45 a.m. May 20 when Erik Claesson, owner of Madly Pop’n in Oak Park, got a call from Oak Park police telling him that someone had busted out his store window.
Claesson, who lives in LaGrange, was at his specialty popcorn shop at 148 N. Oak Park in about a half-hour.
He saw that someone had kicked a hole in the plate-glass window and tried to steal a couple of the store’s gallon-sized tins of popcorn. A Black Hawks tin was discovered amid the broken glass in front of the shop, which is just north of Lake Street at the prominent Oak Park Avenue intersection. Hours before, the Black Hawks lost 3-2 in overtime to the Detroit Red Wings in the Western Conference Finals of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
In a stairwell of a neighboring property, at 156 N. Oak Park Ave., a second tin from the shop’s display was found. This one had the Chicago Cubs logo. Because both tins were for show in the window, neither had popcorn in it. With popcorn, each tin is about $40.
The price tag for replacing the broken window – curved custom-made plate-glass – is in another order of magnitude. There’s only one company in the Midwest, he said, that can reproduce such specialty glass, estimated at $3,000 for this window. Claesson still has the window boarded up and is waiting to hear back from his insurance company.
On the wood that’s covering his usual display space, Claesson has put signs up about what happened, including one addressed to the “moron who broke my window.”
Claesson thinks a person who was drunk getting off the el a block away wandered to the store that night and kicked in the window to steal the tins because of their logos. But the tins could barely fit through the broken opening; they were left inside, scratched when found. Claesson says he was told by police that, because of the low-priority nature of this crime investigation, fingerprints on the Black Hawks tin will take weeks, maybe even months, for an ID.
“Business is bad these days and you don’t want to compound that because of some knucklehead,” Claesson said, sticking with his theory that someone who was drunk is responsible for such damage. “What sober person would do this?”
Claesson bought the shop nine years ago from his aunt and uncle, who started the business in 1984.
Along with his personal venting to the unknown culprit, Claesson’s signs include pictures of both tins. He includes a number – 358-5541 – or tips to Oak Park police. He also promises, if the crime is solved, “a half-price Justice for All popcorn party.”