Four men were attacked within minutes of each other in the city's Streeterville neighborhood Saturday night, the Sun-Times reported. Two were reportedly beaten while two others had electronics stolen. Seven people were arrested in connection with the incidents.

On Memorial Day, officials reportedly closed the North Ave. Beach due to sweltering heat, but eyewitnesses said the real reason was a flash mob of "gangbangers" descended along the Gold Coast lakefront.

WLS radio reported listeners at the beach said a "large gangbanger element" looking like "bad elements" showed up and began "pushing people off their bikes."

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed wrote cops shut down the beach "because a growing number of loitering street gang members from different parts of the city had invaded the beach." A source told her "the CPD was very concerned about an ever-enlarging number of loud, obnoxious and rude gang members who the cops feared might clash.”

"They were hooting and hollering and looking for confrontations,” Steve Daley told Fox Chicago. "A kid got in my face and was looking for a confrontation. What am I gonna do? I'm just trying to ride my bike, get the hell out of here.”

"I've been riding that bike path for 25 years,” Daley said, “and you won't see me again there on a big weekend, that's for sure."

Police closed the beach about 6 p.m., after ambulances were called to treat "eight people who fell sick on the crowded lakefront spot," the Sun-Times reported. But as others have pointed out, heat exhaustion after at 6 p.m. when the temperature reaches 88 degrees sounds a bit, well, wet.

"Based on a couple of conversations that I've now had, yesterday's beach closure had more to do with crowd control concerns than heat,'' tweeted Cook County Commissioner John Fritchety. "And if the police can't get a handle on beach safety, there are going to be a lot of problems this summer.

Then he added: "Even more interesting is that the papers so quickly bought into the heat story without reporting on any of the real problems that went down."

Acting Police Supt. Garry McCarthy denied last week that the mobs were behind the beach's closing.

"There was no gang activity involved in the commander’s decision to close the beach. ... It was based upon the public safety concerns where we had to get ambulances to victims on the beach and the overcrowded conditions made it difficult for that to occur,” McCarthy said. "The folks who showed up at North Avenue, what I was informed of, were suburbanites who were coming to the beach to enjoy a nice day."

New Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who said he was not part of the decision to close the beach, publicly backed the move.

"If they didn’t take those steps, there would be a different set of questions here — a whole set of other questions. ... There was an abundance of those phone calls from one beach. … They made the appropriate professional judgment."