Giant Ginkgo

This afternoon I heard the buzz of helicopters overhead, and my immediate reaction was that it was time for the yearly death at the Morse Red Line stop. It seems like every year there is an accident, or suicide, or somebody pushed out onto the tracks but fortunately this wasn't the case, and nobody lost their life.

What was lost instead was at least several local businesses, due to a two alarm fire that ripped through the old buildings. It took around 4 hours for the Chicago Fire Department to stop the blaze, before it took out the entire block.

One of my favorite cheap restaurants was taken out by the fire, Pollo al Carbon - A very tasty Columbian restaurant that's been there for a year or two. They had really good charred meats, my personal favorite being the excellent garlic chicken. It was a huge meal, a massive pile of extremely garlicky chicken on top of plantains, yucca and a couple of boiled potatoes.

Hopefully they were insured, and will make it back to Clark again. In researching my picture postings on Flickr I found another restaurant with the same name somewhere else in Chicagoland, so maybe all hope isn't lost for a return of the tasty goodness. Here are a few shots from the evening's blaze: