With defending state champion Hinsdale Central in the way, the Oak Park and River Forest High School and Lyons Township High School boys tennis teams both knew winning the West Suburban (Silver) Conference boys tournament championship was a virtual impossibility.

Sectional host Fenwick knocked defending state champion Lyons Township out of the playoffs with an 11-8 win Saturday. Matt Farmer (six goals) and Danny Farmer (two goals) paced the Friars.

Local restaurateur Charlie Robinson learned his 200-year-old barbecue recipe from his grandfather while growing up in the Mississippi Delta. It's been passed down in his family for, he estimates, 14 generations.

Not too long ago, the SOHO condominium and townhouse development in Oak Park seemed to represent all that was wrong with the local real estate market. The ambitious project was the brainchild of local architect John Schiess and developer Alex Troyanovsky, who originally purposed an all-townhome development at the corner of South Boulevard and Home Avenue (South-Home, hence SOHO).

The Park District of Oak Park was recently notified by the Office of Gov. Pat Quinn and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources that Oak Park will receive a $400,000 matching grant from the Open Space Land Acquisition and Development Grant (OSLAD) program.

If dollars were votes, the race between newly elected Village President Anan Abu-Taleb and his opponent, John Hedges, wouldn't have been much of a contest. Abu-Taleb snagged 58 percent of the vote, but he also raised and spent more than three times the amount Hedges' Oak Park Together committee expended. Abu-Taleb's campaign costs also included a hefty amount from his own wallet.

Wrigley has lost its nostalgia, its archaic wonder. It's time for a classy upgrade, one that will also bring a winner to town.  

Oak Park native and New York Knicks guard Iman Shumpert, who returned from an ACL injury earlier this year, threw down a mean tomahawk dunk during Game 2 of the Knicks-Pacers series Tuesday that has gone viral on YouTube.

A man wanted by River Forest police for more than six months for an armed home invasion was captured without incident in a Lombard laundromat on May 7 by a team of officers from River Forest and Forest Park in the West Suburban Enhanced Drug and Gang Enforcement (WEDGE) task force.

Most ballet pointe shoes are hand-made, expensive and provide little protection from the pressure put on dancers' feet. Oak Park and River Forest High School senior Noelani Ho, inspired by the young dancers she teaches in the Austin neighborhood, set out to solve these problems.