Month: June 2010

Categories
Chicago Focal points Photography

Critical Mass 6/10 – Part 1

Cyclists congregate en-mass

From my experience, Chicago’s monthly Critical Mass bike ride can be a divisive topic for many of this great city’s residents. I’ve found people typically have one of three responses to it:

  1. They love it
  2. They hate it
  3. They don’t know about.

That may seem like I’ve covered all the bases but the truth is virtually no one is indifferent to it. Just doing a search for it here on ChicagoNow yields a variety of responses, few of them neutral.

Although I have participated in ‘Mass’ several times, my opinions are mixed. I find the event to be fun and mostly positive. Above all, it’s a great way to see Chicago and feel like a part of the community. The organizers, on their website describe it as follows:

Critical Mass is a bike ride plain and simple. The ride takes place on the Last Friday Of Every Month (in Chicago anyway). A Critical Mass is created when the group of riders comes together for those few hours to take back the streets of our city. The right of the people to assemble is guaranteed in the Constitution, and Critical Mass helps people remember that right. The Mass itself has no political agenda, though, no more than the people of any other community do. Critical Mass is open to all, and it welcomes all riders to join in a celebration of riding bicycles. Why? Because bikes are fun!

Sure, as with any community, you’ll see people of all types. Some people see Critical Mass as a forum for grassroots political change. Some people see it as a protest against cars. Some people just like to ride. The Mass, however, is just that…a bunch of bike riders. You can drive a car the whole month and ride in the Mass. You can be an anarchist and ride in the Mass. The point of the Mass is the Mass, nothing more. Critical Mass has no leadership. It is a ride where no one is in charge. At any time, riders are free to leave, stay, stop, or even help out. Everyone is responsible for themselves and the Mass.

The spirit behind Critical Mass is one I can get behind and I do believe it still stands for that. I think those who are annoyed by it and call for it’s abolition need to lighten up.

However, I do see the other side. There are many who participate that act irresponsibly and push a political agenda through the event. After a while Critical Mass leaves a bad taste in many people’s mouths as they start letting a few bad eggs influence their opinion of the whole community.

My first experience with Critical Mass was actually years ago in New York while walking through Times Square and seeing thousands of bikers holding up traffic. I didn’t understand it at the time. I just saw it as people acting irresponsibly and behaving recklessly. I remember writing a harsh blog entry at the time criticizing them. Now I find myself years later actively participating and realizing that the actions of the few do not necessarily represent the motivations of the many.

Last Friday I participated in the June riding of Critical Mass, it had been well over a year since I last participated so I figured this would be an excellent topic to focus on here. Attached to this entry you will find twelve photos and on Friday I will post twelve more and my account / findings of the ‘Mass’. Enjoy!

Categories
Focal points Photography

Guest Post: Reflections – Part 2

Hello dear readers. This week I am out of town on a road trip with the gentlemen of Long Pork for Sketchfest NYC. I will return with a new post on Wednesday 6/16. In my absence my good friend James Vest has submitted two amazing entries for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

Recently, I became a finalist for what I consider to be my dream job. I have been working two jobs almost continuously since moving to Chicago in 2005. One job pays the bills, and the other is what I love to do. This opportunity would be for the company I currently work for, but by moving to California, I would be doing exactly what I was born to do. There are really few drawbacks. Sure, it’d be hard work, but hard work to me is as satisfying and rewarding as a farmer standing in their field.

If there is one thing I would miss, that would be living in Chicago. I have spent the majority of my time residing in Lakeview. I haven’t had a car in so long, I would expect insurance companies to run a special background check to confirm I’m not under some kind of DUI lifetime driving ban. Admittedly, I am afraid of the unknown. What if there’s no good places to eat? What if there are no places to walk to? What if the buses don’t run?

I bought a camera a few months back. It’s the first really good camera I’ve ever owned. I took it on vacation and took a bunch of pictures of blue sky, purple flowers and white sand. When I came back to Chicago, I continued to take similar pictures, except these natural shots were of red brick, gritty cement and marooned bicycles. The city is beautiful. If you don’t believe me, take a look at some pictures.

I have always fantasized about taking pictures of strangers, but I am a coward. I am fascinated by the expressions on people’s faces and the subtleties of character that reveal what’s inside one’s heart. I try to memorize everyone I see on the street. I can close my eyes and see young women grinning from behind large sunglasses. People wearing matching baseball caps, walking their optimistic and grateful animals. I see thirsty homeless men sitting with empty cups, casting long stares.

What I photograph are pictures of objects that look back at me, that speak with the same, subtle character. All I have to do is think of the streets for the people reappear in my mind. Maybe it’s because my father is an architect. Whatever the reason, for people like me, a picture of a building is all that is needed to remember what’s inside.

Chicago will be here forever. No matter where life beckons me to go, I don’t think that I will ever live in a place with so much character that it can be seen stacked in the bricks and paved into every street. Wherever I live, these pictures will place me back on the sidewalk in the heat of the afternoon, or next to the rainwater pools of the morning.

I take very few pictures of myself. All I need is to remember my surroundings for all the memories of these years spent in Chicago to captivate my mind, and retrace, step by step, the path back home. Whatever happens with my work, I will always remember my time in Lakeview fondly.

James Vest is a writer and video editor living in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. To see more from his life, visit his website, jamesvest.com.

Categories
Focal points Photography

Guest Post: Reflections – Part 1

Hello dear readers. This week I am out of town on a road trip with the gentlemen of Long Pork for Sketchfest NYC. I will return with a new post on Wednesday 6/16. In my absence my good friend James Vest has submitted two amazing entries for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

In 2005, I moved to Chicago for work. I lived alone in a 175 square-foot apartment in the Gold Coast without air conditioning and walked down Rush Street every morning to get to my job. In the spring, there were little baby roaches and by winter there were older, wiser roaches. I had a fantastic view of the Sears Tower and made up for not having a counter top by preparing all my meals on a wooden board laid on my bed.

In 2007, I reluctantly moved to Lakeview so my girlfriend could afford a parking space. I wasn’t sure what to make of Wrigleyville back then, considering  the only experience leading up to that point was the nostalgia of walking down Clark Street as a fresh-faced 15-year-old on vacation, witnessing for the first time a woman urinate on the sidewalk. Still today, there is an anything-goes spirit on Clark, but it’s one I still embrace as a local. I mean, what else does a neighborhood need? A mall? No thank you.

We moved into a place on Addison the first week of November. I remember spending the first two months mostly indoors, eventually braving the frigid tunnel under Lake Shore Drive so my girlfriend could take my picture holding up one ice-blue finger to commemorate our first walk to the lake front. I know for a fact it was New Year’s Day. To prove our shut-in nature, the previous image on the camera roll was of a half-eaten Lou Malnati’s deep dish next to a half-empty bottle of champagne.

The following spring came and though I can’t recall the first walk that we went on, afterwards I must have made a pledge to be outside as often as possible. Over that summer, Lakeview changed me. I bought some running shoes and ran along the trails until they ended, and then deep footsteps through sand and back again, across the tops of stoney walls.

Everything had to be explored. As a couple, we walked in every direction from home; down Broadway, over to Halsted, across Clark and up  Southport. We walked mostly in search of the three universal truths: breakfast, lunch and dinner. And though my food expenses take the form of Pacman on Mint.com, I am proud of being able to recommend almost any kind of food in a two mile radius with enthusiastic pride.

Yet it was the walks themselves that are held close in my memories. It’s always the first thing I think about doing when I am too tired to be entertained and too bothered by work to stay inside. Lakeview has been a womb I have expanded within, a home where I have grown, in relative peace. So it was quite a shock when I found out that I might be leaving soon.

James Vest is a writer and video editor living in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. To see more from his life, visit his website,ย JamesVest.com.

Categories
Focal points Photography

The Calm of the Storm

The Chicago Avenue CTA Brown Line station in a storm.

I love thunderstorms. I remember sitting on my parent’s porch when I was a child and just listening to the rain. It’s always had a soothing affect on me. Chicago’s storms are fewer and further between but no less beautiful.

Unfortunately these days I’m very often working or sleeping through these storms and my garden apartment does is so well insulated that even just listening to a storm is next to impossible.

Sunday as I was leaving work I got lucky. I managed to get to the Chicago Brown line stop just as it started to rain. I took a few moments to just sit and watch the rain and listen to the sound of it beating down on the wood and metal around me. This is my calm, this is what puts me at peace.

By the time I got up to my neighborhood the rain had stopped and the sun was brightly shining through the clouds. Moments like these are among my favorites, everything just glistens from the moisture before it completely evaporates into the sun.

Categories
Business Photography Technology

‘nofollow’, I Don’t Follow

Example of nofollow on flickr

When Google announced it would support the “nofollow” HTML attribute back in 2005, I was pleased. Blog spam was (and still is) a major problem. The invention of “nofollow” took a lot of bite out of the usefulness of comments for spammers. It seemed like the right move at the time, and looking at it now; it still makes a lot of sense. I can’t imagine how bad things would be without it.

For the unfamiliar, “nofollow” is an attribute that can be assigned to links on websites. This attribute, when recognized by Google, causes the link to be ignored in Google’s index, thus preventing it from contributing to the sites “PageRank” score on Google. Therefore, in theory, leading to more relevant search results.

Here is my gripe, when Google announced this feature, it did so under the stated guise of “Preventing Comment Spam,” but it’s turned out to be abused. There are those who would argue that “nofollow” has become a tool that creates an unfair balance where higher trafficked sites don’t share traffic with lower-ranked ones. Now I’m not saying that “nofollow” should go away but that it should be used less. Why am I complaining? Because three of the sites I use most often implement “nofollow” in places that, while well-intentioned, work out as unfair. These sites?

Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

For starters, Facebook’s usage makes no sense. Facebook has several checks to prevent spammers from joining the service and multiple ways to report it when it happens. I am not saying they are perfect, but it has very much maintained a strong and effective walled garden. Considering that Facebook has pushed users to make more of their content public (while also having major issues with privacy), it is downright unfair that they will not allow a PageRank incentive for this.

At first glance, however, the inclusion of “nofollow” does seem logical for Flickr and Twitter. The ease of access to these sites makes them obvious targets for spammers. In the case of Twitter, a platform with a substantial spam problem, “nofollow” seems like a practical solution to de-incentivise spamming. At least in the short term.

Despite this reasoning, I still believe it to be the wrong solution.

Flickr is a publishing system, and some users use it as a blog with very long written posts to accompany their photography. Yet Flickr automatically attaches “nofollow” to any link posted anywhere on its site, even in the user’s written content.

With every photograph I post on my Flickr account, I include a link to a related blog entry whenever possible. These things directly relate and semantically should be linked. My analytics also clearly show this has been effective for increasing my readership. A significant portion of my traffic comes from these Flickr links. Yet, Google ignores them because of the “nofollow” attribute. The same with Twitter.

Doesn’t this go against the whole spirit of “nofollow”? In my opinion, it is lazy and unfair, especially as a Flickr Pro user. I’m paying for a service that is going out of its way to prevent me from getting PageRank from it. That’s a bunch of crap.

There is another way to look at this, though. One could argue that PageRank is doing the opposite of its intention and hurting Google’s relevance. The three biggest traffic sources to this site are Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr; these account for almost 50% of my traffic, however, Google’s mysterious PageRank algorithm ignores these sources, thus making it harder for my site to gain relevance in search results. Isn’t this leading to an inaccuracy in what’s “relevant?”

“nofollow” is used almost ubiquitously by any service that has an easy sign-up system. Therefore it is creating a tiered system on the web that takes away power from user-generated content and gives more strength to those who have a greater technical knowhow. There are many out there who will never understand how to set up a blogging platform such as WordPress or MovableType but can easily get a Twitter, Flickr, or Facebook account. Why should their voice matter less to PageRank? And on the flip-side, why should a major media outlet matter more? Isn’t this working against the democracy of the web?

How do we decide what is signal and what is noise? Surely just because something is easier to do doesn’t make it less relevant, does it? Can’t we come up with a better technological solution that empowers users not punishes them for their lack of tech-savvy?