When I first moved to Chicago one of the things that struck me was the lack of a natural land barrier stifling the city’s growth. Sure there is the lake, and yes it very much impedes Chicago’s ability to have an East side, but that is only part of what I mean.
Manhattan Island is divided on all sides from the mainland in some way and this acts as a natural boundary for New York city and it’s development. The skyscrapers sorta go up to the water and then end there suddenly. As soon as you cross over into Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey or the Bronx and the cityscape changes dramatically. Chicago isn’t like this. Downtown is full of high rise buildings and skyscrapers but it lasts for a relatively smaller portion before it tapers off. And that’s just it, it tapers off without a natural boundary to do so. It seems once you get above Chicago Avenue all the buildings gradually get shorter. When friends of mine come to visit from NY they are often taken aback by areas like Lakeview and Logan Square. They ask if I live in “Chicago proper” or “the boroughs” because to them neighborhoods like that are very distinctly divided from the rest of the city by the East river. It’s silly and obvious but most people don’t think about it.
What gets me as well is that Chicago does have things that could act as natural divisions but don’t. Chicago, unlike New York, has major waterways stretching through it.What fascinates me most with this is the Chicago River which splits downtown and Michigan Avenue right in the middle yet does not seem to impede growth on either side. Still the river has a calming effect and the small amount of land around it can be a nice place to relax.
Here are a few shots I took back in March of the river and the immediate area around it.
A few weeks back I popped up to Loyola to visit a friend for lunch. I’ve always been a big fan of college campus’s especially the architecture. When I used to live in New York I would often find myself sitting in the middle of the Columbia University campus just taking in the surroundings and people watching, even though I wasn’t a student there.
Being the kind of person that I am Loyola’s campus was really interesting to me, but of course what fascinated me most on that particular day was not the sprawling lawns, beautiful brick work or striking arches, but the parking garage and it’s immediate surroundings.
One of the things I enjoyed most was it’s proximity to the CTA train line and the unique perspective it offered of the tracks themselves. Expect to see a lot more shots in the future focusing on the CTA.
I did of course also take a few pictures of the other the other things as well, not just the parking garage. Enjoy.
Last Tuesday a coworker and I grabbed dinner after work at “Goddess and Grocer” downtown. It was a nice night out so after eating our meal outdoors she suggested that we walk back to her place in Lincoln Park where she would then drive me back to my apartment in Wrigleyville.
My legs were still mighty sore from ‘Journey to the End of the Night‘ a few days earlier but I figured the exercise would do me well and give me a good chance to shoot some photos.
In preparation for ‘Journey’ I purchased a new camera: the Panasonic Lumix GF1. I am normally a devout Canon shooter but when James started talking about the GF1 and ultimately let me try his; I was swayed.
My normal body is a Canon 5D Mk II and it is hands down my favorite camera I’ve ever owned, however it’s a bit bulky and expensive to be carrying around day to day. What caught my eye about the Lumix was it’s small size, excellent low light performance and it’s compatibility with a variety of micro 4/3 lenses. It’s the perfect camera to throw in my bag and have on me at all times which made it the perfect camera for ‘Journey.’
The opportunity to go for a walk on this particular night was an opportunity to further test out my new toy. What follows are the shots from that night.
So, if you caught me on ChicagoNow Radio on Saturday you may have heard me mention I live in Wrigleyville. You may have even heard me refer to it as “the training wheels of Chicago.”
As much as I love to trash on my Lakeview-community-by-the-field I have to confess: I do love it here.
I moved to Chicago in May of 2007 after an epic hunt for apartments that had me flying out from New York three out of four weekends in March. When I finally settled down in a place, I had found one I loved.
The truth of the matter is the neighborhood isn’t that bad. The truth is I am a baseball fan so there is a certain magic and energy to me in living so close to the field, but at the same time I’m just far enough away that I don’t have to put up with the majority of the craziness.
If you can get past the craziness on Clark Street, Wrigleyville has a lot of hidden charm and I plan to showcase more of this as time goes on. What follows are some of my favorite shots I’ve taken of Wrigleyville, most of them have never been published before.
(This post is a follow up to my first entry found below or here. So If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go read that and this.)
I was introduced to Journey To The End of Night last year by my good friends Aki and Mark. They had participated in the inaugural Chicago running of the event in 2008 and when they told me about it I nearly died with excitement.
This year we were joined by my friends Lee, James and Kat, all who were really excited to participate.
James is an experienced runner and one of the most creative people I know so when I told him about Journey it was right up his alley and he brought along his always awesome girlfriend, Kat Carolan. Then there is Lee. Lee in addition to being one of my closest friends is he a member of local sketch comedy group, Long Pork. So naturally with his theatrical roots, Lee had to do something unique and ran the event in a suit.
This year’s Journey started off at Eckhart Park on the corner of Chicago and Noble. There we found Aki, Mark and their friend Alyssa waiting for us. There were over 400 people waiting in the park eagerly for the game to start. We picked up our maps and our arm bands, tying on our red bands symbolizing our starting status as ‘runners’ and putting the yellow ones in our pockets hoping never to need them.
Huddling together with our maps we began to formulate plans of how we would get to our first checkpoint. We had six stops to make and we knew we wouldn’t all survive but we were going to do our best to make it through. Before we knew it it was 7pm, the race was on and everyone was dashing east through the Chicago Avenue traffic.
Immediately we saw one of the “staff chasers” on a bike aggressively coming towards us. He managed to catch Kat soon after and unfortunately we had to leave her behind. Our little group got split up almost immediately but we stayed in touch and managed to reconvene at the first checkpoint on the corner of Hickory and Haines down on the South East side of Goose Island. Clearly the planners of the event had made some intelligent decisions. There are only 5 roads that enter or exit Goose Island meaning at some point every participant of the race would need to cross over one of them leaving them exposed for attack. At the first checkpoint we found people in robot costumes, they signed off our maps and gave us our clue for the second one.
We made some new friends on the way but eventually found ourselves split up and with myself, James, Lee and another guy Joey, being chased through an industrial waste management facility and almost back where we started. By the time we got our bearings we had hopped a fence into an industrial parking lot on the corner of Halsted and Division and did our best to avoid contact with other participants. When we got to the second checkpoint we caught up with Aki and Mark again but soon found that Alyssa had been caught. From there we made a pretty easy run through the third and forth checkpoints ending up in Oz park near the Tinman statues. There we came upon a giant scrabble board and tiles where we needed to create words in order to move on.
Aki and Mark were pretty beat at that point so we tried to figure out the most direct route to the 5th checkpoint, the park on Diversey Harbor. Quickly after leaving the park a female chaser came out of nowhere tagging Mark and then Aki and going for more of us. Aki took the opportunity to argue with her the legality of her double tag sacrificing herself to buy the rest of us time. The rest of us (Lee, James Joey and Chris, another guy we picked up along the way,) cut deep into the park along the zoo and managed to make it over to checkpoint 5. However, some of Chris’s friends were waiting there with yellow bands on and made it clear they planned to follow us out of the park. Chris took one for the team and lead them off in one direction while James, Joey, Lee and I ran off to the far end and managed to catch a bus up the Lakeshore drive to Rosco Street.
From there it would be a straight shot to the finish-line, The Town Hall Pub on Rosco and Halsted. We were extremely cautious as we got closer and closer. At the last minute I spotted a girl with a yellow band who saw me and then suddenly shouted “RED!!!” at the top of her lungs and charged at me. It was now 11:50; the event was ending at 12 and I had been walking almost non-stop for 5 hours. There was no way I was going to give up now. I dashed down Rosco as fast as my tired legs would carry me and lost her in a crowd outside of a bar successfully making it to the finish line where James, Lee and Joey would soon join me.
We celebrated for a bit outside before going into the bar to enjoy some music, comedy and a pitcher of sweet sweet victory. We had completed the journey and although we were all very tired we were immensely proud of what we had accomplished.
Epilogue:
It’s been almost a week now since Journey to the End of the Night and I am still covered in mystery bruises and aches, and every time I notice them I smile and think of what a great time I had. The most profound thing for me though was something I noticed while driving to get a haircut yesterday. I was driving down Halsted Avenue in Lincoln Park and suddenly knew exactly where I was and what was around every corner. Journey has given me a deeper appreciation, understanding, and excitement for Chicago.
In the two times I have participated in it I have learned more about Chicago than in all of my three years living here. It’s made me fall in love with this city in a way that I wouldn’t have otherwise had I just continued to go about my daily life commuting too and from my job. I hope you find this conveyed in my photos, it’s definitely given me some ideas about where I’d like to go back to and shoot on future days, or maybe just hang out.
(For the first set of photos please check the first entry, found here.)
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