12-Aug-16 – New Eastside resident David Sudler believes a passing tourist snapped this photo of him wrangling a fallen tree on the Chicago Riverwalk this week. Chef Didier Durand, owner of Cyrano’s Café & Wine Bar, posted the image on Twitter on Wednesday.

A recent storm felled two trees along the Riverwalk near Columbus Drive. Although Cyrano’s was open at the time, the trees did not hit anyone and missed a structure Cyrano’s is building to serve food for take-out.

Sudler, who has considerable experience chopping down trees and is on a mission to clean up his neighborhood, wanted to clear the tree debris before the city showed up because he feared “they were either going to knock that pole down or crush the roof” of the nearby structure.

To dig a stump out, he says he wedges a log into it to make a lever, then asks a heavyset pedestrian passing on the Riverwalk to sit at one end.

In January, fed up with buildings in his neighborhood not shoveling snow off their sidewalks fast enough, Sudler shoveled for them and stacked the snow like bricks in the median of Wacker Drive.