Fleadh away on a car-free Cicero Avenue

The Oak Forest Fleadh is pronounced Oak Forest Flah, and it's Irish. It's also the largest Open Streets event—a car- and truck-free transformation of a huge road, multi-lane highway into a mile of serenity, fun, family and self-propelled freedom—in the suburbs…maybe in any suburban region, anywhere in America.

And it's this Saturday.

Last year, the chilly spray of soaking mist during the Fleadh and Open Streets proved a point and that point is this: The bars along IL 50/Cicero Ave. open at 10 a.m. Also, poor March weather went unheeded by more than 2000 people who walked, ran, biked, trotted, & wheel chaired up and down five asphalt lanes as if they had just been set free. If the weather is just 5 percent less wet this year, the event's going to blow up.

Set on the Tinley Creek Trail system and the Metra Rock Island line (which comes out of the Loop's Van Buren station), Cicero Ave. allows easy access by bike or foot. And the experience is worth the drive; free parking will be available all day and night in the Arbor Commuter Lot at the southwest corner of 159th Street and Oak Avenue. Look for the Active Trans tent just north of the Metra viaduct at Waverly and 159th.

See you on the street!