What F’nHappened This Week? August 22, 2026

What F’nHappened This Week?

Chicago had casinos questioning their existence, corruption cases refusing to die, catastrophic storms, flying sex toys and somehow two competitive baseball teams.

August 22, 2026

The inaugural F’nAround weekly report

Welcome to the first edition of What F’nHappened This Week?

The concept is simple.

Every week, F’nAround is going to take a look at Chicago, Illinois, America and wherever else we want to look and attempt to answer one increasingly difficult question:

What the fuck actually happened?

Not simply the biggest headlines.

We want government, corruption, crime, cannabis, gaming, laws, business, sports, weather, investigations, FOIAs and whatever else happened during the previous seven days that deserves another look.

Sometimes those stories will connect.

Sometimes they absolutely will not.

That is Chicago. That is Illinois. That is the world we live in.

And for an inaugural week, ending August 22, 2026 certainly understood the assignment.

Bally’s Chicago: When the Casino Starts Gambling on the Casino

Chicago spent years arguing over whether it should have a casino.

Apparently nobody asked whether the casino company itself might eventually need better odds.

Bally’s disclosed in a federal filing that conditions surrounding its finances created “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern over the coming year.

That is accountant language.

Translated into Chicago:

This seems less than ideal.

The company has roughly $400 million in costs expected over the next two years to complete its permanent Chicago complex while its temporary Medinah Temple casino still is not breaking even. Bally’s reported a $56.4 million loss during the first half of 2026 and an accumulated deficit of $233.3 million. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Meanwhile, Bally’s has slowed work on portions of its $1.7 billion River West development and blamed uncertainty surrounding Chicago’s newly authorized video gambling terminals.

Twenty-eight City Council members have pushed back, questioning whether VGTs are really the problem or simply a convenient explanation for broader financial difficulties. (WTTW News)

Bally’s continues to insist the permanent casino itself remains on schedule to open in early 2027. A company executive reiterated that position Thursday. (NBC Chicago)

So, for now:

Chicago has legalized additional gambling.

The casino company says additional gambling threatens the casino.

Aldermen say the casino’s finances may actually threaten the casino.

And Chicago taxpayers are probably wondering why every major development eventually becomes a graduate-level economics course.

We will be watching this one.

Closely.

Illinois Corruption: The ComEd Story Apparently Still Has DLC

Remember the ComEd corruption case?

Of course you do.

This is Illinois.

Federal prosecutors said this week they still had not decided whether to retry former Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore and longtime lobbyist Michael McClain after their convictions connected to the sprawling bribery investigation surrounding former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan were thrown out. (WTTW News)

That means one of the most consequential Illinois political corruption prosecutions in years remains alive, unresolved and legally complicated.

Which seems fitting.

Illinois corruption scandals rarely end.

They simply acquire additional procedural history.

And While We’re Talking About Public Money…

A former Chicago Public Schools principal and two others were sentenced this week in federal court for procurement fraud schemes involving more than $1 million.

Federal prosecutors said former principal Brian Metcalf, Kimberly Maddox and James Darnell Campbell participated in schemes involving Chicago and Indianapolis school systems and a nonprofit organization.

According to prosecutors, Metcalf and Maddox falsely represented that Maddox or her spouse had performed services that were never actually provided. Nearly $700,000 was paid out, with prosecutors saying Maddox and Metcalf split the money. (Department of Justice)

Metcalf received a year and a day in federal prison.

Another week.

Another public institution.

Another procurement scheme.

Welcome to the column.

Illinois’ Inspectors General Dropped Some Weekend Reading

If federal corruption proceedings weren’t enough, the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission published seven Executive Inspector General investigative reports on August 20.

Those reports document allegations, investigative findings, analysis and recommendations involving state-government misconduct. Some reports must legally be published when investigations result in termination or suspensions of at least three days; publication of others is discretionary. (Illinois Executive Ethics Commission)

Translation:

There is fresh state-government homework available.

F’nAround knows exactly what to do with homework.

Apparently Fried Chicken Needed an Italian Upgrade

Because Chicago cannot simply leave a fried chicken sandwich alone, Fry the Coop teamed up with D’Amato’s Bakery this week for a limited collaboration at Fry the Coop’s Chicago and Ashland location.

Naturally, F’nAround went.

We were sixth in line and still waited roughly 25 minutes, which started making considerably more sense when people ahead of us attempted to order 12 and 13 sandwiches.

There was a two-sandwich-per-person limit.

At first that sounded restrictive.

Then we watched somebody try to order thirteen.

We understand the rule now.

The collaboration brought together Fry the Coop’s fried chicken with bread from D’Amato’s, one of Chicago’s longstanding Italian bakeries, creating exactly the kind of completely unnecessary culinary crossover that Chicago somehow makes necessary.

We’ve tried several Fry the Coop collaborations before including some memorable donut experiments and they continue to understand one fundamental principle of food marketing:

If you make something weird, limited and delicious enough, Chicagoans will stand in line for it.

Including us.

Apparently that F’nHappened this week too.

Cannabis: Illinois Continues Being Illinois About Weed

The Illinois cannabis industry remains one of the stranger experiments in American regulated capitalism.

Legal cannabis.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

Enormous licensing barriers.

Social-equity promises.

Layers of regulators.

And somehow, seemingly every few months, another story that makes you ask how the system actually works.

The larger regulatory story surrounding Ivy Hall remains impossible to ignore.

Ivy Hall co-founder David Berger was convicted in federal court of laundering money and illegally structuring cash transactions connected to a Mexico-based drug trafficking organization. Prosecutors said he converted cash proceeds into private-jet flights. (Department of Justice)

His Illinois cannabis principal-officer license wasn’t terminated until May 11, months after the conviction, and IDFPR told the Sun-Times that disciplinary proceedings could not be scheduled until after sentencing. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Berger ultimately received a one-year federal prison sentence.

That background matters because the broader question facing Illinois cannabis isn’t simply whether regulators eventually act.

It is:

How quickly do they act, what triggers action, and are those standards consistent across licensees?

Those questions are becoming particularly interesting to us.

More on that below.

Meanwhile, F’nAround Was F’nAround With Cannabis Regulators Across State Lines

This week, our public-records work continued moving outside Illinois.

A Kentucky records request examining cannabis management relationships raised questions surrounding companies connected to nuEra’s expansion into the state, including management arrangements involving Botany Bay and Armory Kentucky.

The interesting part isn’t simply that management agreements exist.

The question is how management, control and ownership interact with Kentucky’s cannabis licensing framework and restrictions surrounding vertical integration.

At the same time, our Illinois regulatory work continues examining how IDFPR responds when potentially serious issues involving cannabis licensees are brought directly to the agency.

That means this weekly column won’t simply tell you what cannabis regulators announced.

We’ll also tell you what we’re asking them when nobody announces anything.

Mother Nature Decided Northwest Indiana Needed an Infrastructure Audit

Then there was the weather.

Severe storms that struck Northwest Indiana on August 11 continued dominating the region throughout this week.

Winds reached as high as 99 mph, downing power infrastructure and initially knocking electricity out for approximately 300,000 customers.

More than a week later, tens of thousands remained without power. NIPSCO said crews needed to replace hundreds of utility poles, and restoration in portions of Gary wasn’t expected to be completed until August 25. (AP News)

By August 22, thousands were entering an 11th consecutive day without electricity. (The Guardian)

Residents have now pursued a proposed class-action lawsuit against NIPSCO alleging failures involving infrastructure preparation and vegetation management. NIPSCO disputes allegations that inadequate maintenance caused the prolonged outages and says it has increased vegetation-management spending. (The Guardian)

This became particularly interesting to F’nAround because we’ve been examining the enormous data-center and development ambitions surrounding Northwest Indiana and the broader Chicago region.

Building massive new power-intensive developments is one question.

Maintaining and repairing the electrical infrastructure serving them is another.

Mother Nature occasionally performs due diligence without requesting permission.

Crime Didn’t Take the Week Off Either

Chicago crime remained Chicago crime.

Illinois State Police announced the arrests of two Chicago men on attempted-murder charges following an expressway shooting on I-290. State Police also announced an aggravated-DUI arrest stemming from a fatal weekend crash on the Stevenson Expressway. (Illinois State Police)

Among the more bizarre local cases reported this week was an allegation that a woman recruited her 17-year-old nephew to rob drug dealers at gunpoint.

Another defendant was sentenced to 28 years for a murder committed while he was on electronic monitoring. (CWB Chicago)

There are weeks where this section may require substantial analysis.

This week we’re simply going to say:

Maybe don’t recruit your teenage nephew into your alleged armed-robbery operation.

That seems like sound general advice.

Springfield’s Law Factory Is Still Running

Illinois lawmakers also continued sending legislation into the world.

One new law expands the ability of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to investigate patterns of suspected child grooming even when conduct does not independently satisfy the criminal threshold for grooming.

The measure takes effect January 1, 2027 and also requires clearer school policies governing staff-student interactions. (The Telegraph)

Meanwhile, numerous other bills are approaching Governor JB Pritzker’s statutory action deadline.

Bills delivered to the governor June 29 face an August 28 deadline. If the governor neither signs nor vetoes them within the constitutional period, they automatically become law. (Jacksonville Journal-Courier)

So next week’s edition may contain considerably more:

Surprise! That’s a law now.

NOW FOR SPORTS, BECAUSE CHICAGO NEEDED SOMETHING NORMAL

Cubs vs. White Sox Was Actually Important

We need everyone to appreciate the historical significance of this sentence:

The Cubs and White Sox played each other while both teams were good.

The Crosstown series arrived with both clubs legitimately in postseason contention, something that has occurred remarkably rarely in Chicago baseball history. (Bleed Cubbie Blue)

Pete Crow-Armstrong gave the Cubs one of the week’s highlights, hitting a leadoff homer and then another homer to win an extra-inning game against the Sox.

The performance also gave Crow-Armstrong consecutive 30-homer, 30-steal seasons and made him only the sixth MLB player to hit both a leadoff and walk-off home run in the same game. (Reuters)

Meanwhile, the White Sox entered the weekend atop the American League Central and then staged a ridiculous comeback Saturday against the Mets, hitting three consecutive home runs in the sixth inning before Jake Rogers ended it with a two-run walk-off homer in the ninth. (Reuters)

Chicago baseball being interesting on both sides of town simultaneously?

We checked.

Apparently it is legal.

The Sky Started Winning Again

The Chicago Sky snapped a six-game losing streak Sunday with an 82-80 win over Seattle behind 22 points and 12 rebounds from Kamilla Cardoso. (CBS News)

Then Natasha Cloud exploded for a career-high 35 points in a 93-86 victory over New York. (NetsDaily)

And then Chicago defeated Golden State 73-70 Friday.

Excellent.

Normal basketball story.

Except people also threw sex toys onto the court.

Again.

Cloud responded after the game by condemning the trend, which has interrupted multiple WNBA games and created legitimate player-safety concerns. (People.com)

So congratulations to the Chicago Sky for reaching the inaugural edition of What F’nHappened This Week?in perhaps the most appropriate way imaginable.

The Bears Are Back to Playing Games That Don’t Count Yet

The Bears entered Saturday 1-0 in the preseason after beating Cleveland 34-10 and traveled to Cincinnati for their second preseason game.

Cincinnati was expected to rest Joe Burrow and several starters, meaning Saturday’s game would largely function as another roster audition before the regular season. (Windy City Gridiron)

Which means Chicago has entered our annual tradition of carefully analyzing football games while simultaneously reminding everyone that the games do not count.

Football is back.

The Fire Are Quietly Doing Their Thing

Chicago Fire FC entered Saturday’s road match against Red Bull New York with an 11-6-2 record and 35 points. (chicagofirefc)

Considering the amount of oxygen the Bears, Cubs, Sox and Bulls consume in this city, somebody occasionally needs to point out:

Chicago does, in fact, have a soccer team.

And they’re pretty good.

WHAT F’NAROUND DID WHILE EVERYONE ELSE WAS DOING ALL THAT

As though Chicago wasn’t providing enough material, we had our own week.

We continued our EXXXOTICA investigation with Part II examining financial discrimination and banking access affecting people working in legal adult entertainment.

We went back into the Illinois public-records system and examined a massive collection of Attorney General Public Access Counselor decisions, looking not simply at individual FOIA disputes but at the patterns created when the same procedural questions repeat across agencies and years.

We continued developing our examination of Northwest Indiana infrastructure, data-center growth and the enormous difference between announcing new electrical capacity and demonstrating the ability to maintain the grid when something goes wrong.

We pushed further into Kentucky cannabis records.

We reviewed Normal, because sometimes Bob Odenkirk fighting the Yakuza in Minnesota is considerably easier to understand than Illinois government.

We covered Taylor Street food, Festa Italiana, Stunod’s, Sliced & Stacked and Italian street corn.

And somewhere in there we apparently continued demonstrating why people have compared F’nAround to Vice.

Except Vice probably didn’t spend this much time reading FOIA decisions.

Chicago Ethics: Apparently the Firehouse Is Not a Campaign Studio

Chicago’s Board of Ethics opened an investigation into mayoral candidate Kirby Birgans after videos posted to his campaign’s social-media accounts appeared to have been filmed inside Chicago fire stations.

The issue is bigger than somebody finding an interesting backdrop.

Chicago’s ethics rules restrict the use of city property and resources for political activity, meaning the investigation raises the wonderfully Chicago question of exactly where campaigning ends and city government begins.

No determination of wrongdoing has been made.

But somewhere in Chicago, an ethics investigator apparently had to watch campaign videos and ask:

Is that a firehouse?

Welcome to municipal government.

NASCAR: Chicago’s Streets Have Apparently Completed Their Pit Stop

After turning downtown Chicago into a racetrack, NASCAR confirmed the Chicago Street Race will not return in 2027.

Instead, NASCAR will race at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet as part of its 2027 schedule.

That doesn’t necessarily mean downtown racing is permanently dead the Chicago agreement contemplated the possibility of future events but it does mean Chicagoans can apparently spend at least one summer driving downtown streets at their traditional speed:

Approximately four miles per hour while screaming at construction.

After several years of race cars flying past Grant Park, Chicago’s most dangerous downtown motorsport returns to its traditional format:

Trying to merge onto the Kennedy.

AND FINALLY, WHAT THE F’N HAPPENED IN MOVIES & TV?

Because after spending an entire week reading about corruption, casinos, cannabis regulators, crime, storms and Chicago politics, sometimes you need to relax by watching fictional people make considerably worse decisions.

Normal Is Absolutely Not Normal

This week F’nAround watched Normal, starring Bob Odenkirk, and if you went into it expecting another Nobody, that’s understandable.

But that’s not quite what you get.

Our best description remains:

Take the underestimated-ass-kicker energy of Nobody, drop it into the small-town structure of Hot Fuzz, move everything from rural England to Minnesota, replace the secret English conspiracy with the Yakuza, sprinkle a little Fargo over the top and hand Bob Odenkirk a gun.

That’s Normal.

And we had a ridiculously good time with it.

Our full F’nAround review went considerably deeper into why the comparison works and why Normal manages to feel familiar without simply becoming Nobody 3.

What Else Should We Be Watching?

That’s going to become part of this column too.

Every week we’ll keep an eye on the movies hitting theaters, whatever Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney+, Prime Video and everybody else decided we absolutely need another subscription to watch, what’s unexpectedly good, what’s unexpectedly terrible and whatever becomes culturally unavoidable for seven days.

Because F’nAround can spend Monday investigating government records and Friday arguing about whether a movie is basically Hot Fuzz with the Yakuza.

Nobody ever said this publication needed to make sense.

It just needs to be interesting.

And apparently that’s what F’nHappened this week.

THE QUESTION WE’RE TAKING INTO NEXT WEEK

If there is one thread connecting this week’s completely unrelated pile of Chicago insanity, it may be this:

Systems tend to look perfectly functional until something stresses them.

A casino project gets stressed by financing.

The electrical grid gets stressed by a storm.

A regulatory system gets stressed by an unusual licensee.

A public-records system gets stressed by someone who keeps asking questions.

A corruption prosecution gets stressed by appellate law.

And the Chicago Sky apparently gets stressed by airborne adult novelties.

Some stresses reveal resilience.

Others reveal cracks.

Our job is going to be watching both.

Welcome to What F’nHappened This Week?

Unfortunately for everyone, we will be back next week.