Changes

Just wanted to confirm I'm still here, although life changes that I thought would give me time and motivation to post regularly haven't done that yet. I moved for the first time in over a decade to a new place and new neighborhood (Independence Park/Irving Park), and I'm still settling in. Even after two months living there. Here's a photo that seems to work for now, taken in the new neighborhood (and this would be a good choice even if it hadn't been the Gapers Block photo of the day. See you here soon!

Candy hearts and plush hearts

This is late for a Valentine's Day post (and I'm only doing one because I wanted a post of actual photos in between posts about what publicity I've been getting for my photos recently), but I didn't get the photos until a nice long photowalk on Sunday from downtown Des Plaines to Allstate Arena in Rosemont.

I'll definitely photograph a Valentine's-themed display if it includes a takeoff on conversation hearts. This was a church on Lee. Another view:

At the end of the walk, longer than I remembered it to be (so I missed warmups before a San Antonio Rampage-Chicago Wolves hockey game), I stopped in Target by the arena and caught the clearance display, with hints of an upcoming holiday in the background:

All right, this is mostly an excuse to post the 2013 update of one of my most popular Flickr images ever, 2008's "What nerds do for Valentine's Day", in which I sorted and cataloged a whole bag of Necco Sweethearts. 2008 I did an 18 ounce bag and alphabetized the hearts and put them on my scanner instead of taking a photo. 2013 I found a 7 ounce bag at the Family Dollar across the street from the apartment I'm moving out of the night before V-Day and put them on an old cookie sheet, arranged by themes and words, not alphabetized. (The two rows of messages escalating from "TWEET ME" to "MARRY ME" is my favorite part.)

Flickr version with notes and comments here. The update was nowhere nearly as successful as I'd hoped, but it was the kind of obsessive thing I had to do. (I may have a lot of 5-year updates of projects I did the year I really took off on Flickr and the blog. Also, in part, because I've never fully finished posting some of the original projects.) Oh, and I got followed by the authentic Necco account on Twitter before I even posted this, oddly. (I'd tweeted my dismay that the store I was trying to buy candy hearts at only had Brach's.)

Hello 2013, and good news

Just stopping in while in the midst of a complicated move to a new apartment (my first since 2001!) to share three things:

My main Flickr account hit 2 million all-time views. These things are always fun to watch for, but I missed seeing an exact 2,000,000...in fact I missed noticing at all for a while. Presumably happened last Saturday night/Sunday when I was moving stuff. Thanks to anyone who's been a part of this.

I made it to 2 million views (and five years on Flickr, and some other stats too arcane to tell you about) without reaching a number of milestones for my photography I won't get into now. But then suddenly I hit one--the first actual feature of my work anywhere!

My friend Jason--who's largely responsible for getting me on Flickr in the first place, as I joined the day after my birthday (when I'd talked about it with him at dinner)--put together this attractive piece on my work the past couple years photographing shopping malls. I'm the second in a new weekly feature on photographers. I answered a few questions, talking about some of the things I've observed, but didn't try to make a big statement about the decline of malls or anything.

You can go directly to the feature here or via this post at the CCLaP site, read a little more and choose a PDF version if you'd prefer. Also, KoHoSo on Tumblr put up this nice piece about it and my work.

The CCLaP piece includes dead malls in the Chicago area, Gary, Indianapolis, Madison, Omaha (and a few shots not technically from deadmalls but I guess they fit well). Also, this prompted me to do a lot of work organizing my Flickr photos, sets, and collections, and there's now a retail collection for stores and shopping malls, a set for all my shopping mall photos, and many individual sets for malls, most recently, the very dead Euclid Square Mall in Euclid, Ohio, and Charlestowne Mall in St. Charles, IL.

And since I missed coming by to promote this, I also made it into the Chicago Reader's annual Photo Issue (along with some fine people I know from Flickr/elsewhere). I have two photos in the online version and the houses/mattresses one made it into the print version.

Back soon when things are less hectic. Thank you again to anyone who's supported my work, and big things are on the way...I hope.

The November blogging experiment

So here's what happened: I intended to do NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month this year. I did it "successfully" last year. Successful in that I managed to get a post up for every day of the month, but most were so quick and self-consciously talking about being for NaBloPoMo, especially the ones I did when visiting a friend out of state and using his computer. I was glad I did it to get a habit of blogging, but it became too much of a chore.

I signed up on BlogHer again this year for City of Destiny to be a NaBloPoMo participant, and decided to go the extra step of blogging every day on my nearly dormant sports blog, A Little Chippy, too. And I gave myself the additional challenge of making absolutely no NaBloPoMo references when posting here (I was more self-conscious with it on the other blog), just trying to look like I was back to blogging. Sort of. I mean, they still weren't lengthy story/photo-essay posts like the best ones I did around 2008.

I enjoyed doing it, even if I was a bit dishonestly catching up on several days' worth of posts at a time sometimes. I thought that was better than just quitting a few days in. And I got into a weird trap where I felt I couldn't link posts on social media if they were from a couple days ago and I didn't have new posts updated to the current day, if that makes any sense.

But then I had two out-of-state trips in one week, with less than a day in between. I could have blogged from my friend's computer (or even from my phone, though I've never tried) and I could have blogged from a computer at my parents', but I just didn't care to do that. I came back from the Thanksgiving week trips--and by the way, November is a terrible month for NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo, given that many people travel for the holiday (or host, and have a lot to do) and might be in the same dilemma as me, if they don't have a laptop--with many days to catch up on.

I felt overwhelmed with catching up on over a week of posts, and wondered what the point was. It's not a whiny "no one's reading my blog!" thing; it's that I didn't know anyone else doing NaBloPoMo to support me (and I didn't read any of the other participants except for clicking on a few things through Twitter) or anyone I knew clearly following my attempt and supporting me and nudging me to get more done. I struggled with the thought of catching up on all those short posts on both blogs the last couple days of November. I felt bad I failed at this. Then I realized I didn't complete NaBloPoMo here, but that I got halfway through the month on two blogs, which is the equivalent of a month, right? (Actually a total of 31 posts.) That's not awful.

Just to prove I did think about what to possibly post on these blogs, here's a rare and odd glimpse into the thought process, a list of what I did or saw in the second half of November. I had photos, links, and screenshots to go with some of the items. Some will end up in posts eventually!

Thank you to anyone who read anything I did in November!

Black Friday approaching

I wrote about it last week, but this...yeah. I just had to post.

And in other fun things on the internet other people found for me, this site is still up:

And pointed out to me on Twitter, after I'd commented on this week's syrup AND flour (separate incidents) highway spills in Chicagoland, saying there needs to be a website devoted just to these stories (a quick Googling didn't turn up much):

Truck Spills. Yeah! A very well-organized site. There are some here I don't particularly want to click on...Alas, the site hasn't been updated since 2010. Surely someone's doing this on Tumblr by now?

Soup and sidewalks

Exciting to get to go to a favorite local event, Soup & Bread, held at the Garfield Park Conservatory (its usual season at Hideout on Wednesday evenings isn't till January). For a $5 donation I got to carry around a glass jar and try out an array of homemade soups inspired by ingredients found in the conservatory. I hadn't been in the conservatory at night before. It was fun to experience, if awkward to walk around (holding the soup jars and spoons and a map), and not great for photos with my camera. This one sort of turned out.

One of many soups I tried--this was beet and other root vegetables.

I'd gotten there with a just-bought CTA 1-day pass, and it's hard to be at the GP Conservatory and not want to hop on the Green Line and go to Oak Park, so I did, for a visit to the Whole Foods and Panera in River Forest. Buses home instead of the Green Line. At North and Harlem, an intersection I've been to many dozens of times, I saw this as I walked past Sears and just caught the #72:

What?! Another old sign of retail I hadn't seen before...

Forgotten Woolworth

There's few things more exciting than stepping out on a beautiful morning and discovering something you never knew about a place you've lived near for over ten years! Hmm, I don't know that this exact experience had happened till I discovered my local Family Dollar in Humboldt Park used to be a Woolworth store:

And this is soon after I learned one of the other Family Dollar stores in Humboldt Park (Division & Washtenaw) used to be a Woolworth! Both long before my time in Chicago. The Woolworth chain closed not long after I moved here and I visited several of the still-existing stores besides the one I already frequented on State St. (Logan Square, Little Village, others?). Maybe at some point I'd heard this used to be one, but it was still a shock to see the labelscar on the store Sunday. (I took these photos later; the sun was too bright Sunday).

Admittedly this more clearly shows the labelscar of what it was after Woolworth, but the L is in there! I hope I get better photos before they cover this up somehow. It's been a Family Dollar for several years, after being a day labor agency for a while before that and vacant for some time in-between.

Chain store changes

Two photos from today can be grouped together with that title. Sort of. (Coming up with frequent titles is hard, okay?) I was headed to an appointment Monday afternoon and my #72 North bus went by the Damen/Milwaukee/North intersection just as the "W" went up on the former bank that's being turned into a Walgreens (and from the looks of it so far, a fancy one; a big improvement from the plain one two blocks south, and more convenient to me, if I'm still taking the #72 when it opens).

Post-appointment I took the Red Line to Division and walked to Barnes & Noble, exactly as I'd done a week earlier. I had better luck finding a section I couldn't last week, browsed a little, and decided to give in and have a first-of-the-season peppermint mocha. I'd had a Starbucks pumpkin spice latte the night before. This makes it seem like I'm at Starbucks much more than I am. I very rarely sit at a Barnes & Noble Starbucks, so I didn't realize the cafe had their drinks along with treats from two non-Starbucks businesses. Didn't know they mixed things up like that.

I noticed at an adjacent table that a man who used to hang out at the cafe of the Borders on Diversey and Clark seemingly every time I went in--one of the local characters--was settled in here. I don't think I'd seen him in a few years. I honestly didn't know if I felt relieved or troubled by this.

Colorful California Avenue

Before the sunny and 70 degree weather turned much worse--drizzle, rain, temperature drops of 20 degrees, then much more--I had an eventful late morning/afternoon excursion with a friend, much of it biking south on California Ave. As usual I only had a chance to photograph a few things that interested me on the way, always saving some for later. Here's a few random shots I liked together.

This, at 44th, was on my list to visit this summer, the one Tastee-Freez location in Chicago I hadn't visited, but I forgot. A great surprise, and it was still open this late in the year, and we ended up having a very inexpensive lunch. It was still warm enough for a mint chocolate shake.

Biking DuPage

I biked to the Western Ave. Metra station for a 3:30 train on the Elgin-bound line. It managed to be an absolutely stress-free bike-on-train experience both ways (not a lot of other cyclists despite decent weather), except that I'm back to using my heavy vintage bike after a lightweight used one I had briefly was stolen.

I got out at the Schaumburg stop, and while trying to find my way out of the station and parking lot area, went the wrong way past the Boomers baseball stadium, even though I biked this route twice earlier this year. It's not easy to figure out and I'd have wasted much more time without a map on my phone. I made it to the major north-south street, Gary, and the unpleasant choice of going on a 45 mph road or on the sidewalk paths with a tendency to end in the middle of the block, necessitating walking the bike for a while or crossing the 45 mph road to use the path on the other side, until it inevitably disappeared too. I noted which side to take for the ride back (and forgot it anyway).

I made it to Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale without incident, except biking up to the mall I didn't see any bicycle rack and didn't have time to search. (Some malls do have them, and I'm always the only one parked there.) I locked it to the "K" (easy to remember!) parking area sign in front of Macy's and had a short trip around the mall. More vacancies than I remembered from a visit a few months ago, but too nice and crowded to be classed as a dead mall (a topic that will be explored a lot on this blog later).  Santa Claus' area was set up but he wasn't arriving till Friday the 16th. (I'd have gotten a better view if security wasn't nearby.)

I was indecisive about the food court and needed to get cash without an ATM charge so I decided to go to the Meijer store across the street to buy some food and get cash back. It was getting dark by then and making it across the huge road and into Meijer's surprisingly badly-lit lot (on both sides; around the store itself was fine) was another ordeal. Nothing looked like bike parking, so I locked it to a stop sign/concrete thing (those things that keep people from driving too close to the store). As I did, a man walked by and said "Biking in November?" in a quizzical tone. (Er, I guess that's implied with the question mark.) He was wearing shorts. In November, because it was warm. I think this is an area where bicycling seems strange at any time...

I got a better meal for $5 than I would have at the food court (Meijer premade sandwich, blackberries on sale for $1, Meijer brand cola), and left the lot. Trying, not successfully for the trip, to recall which side of the street I needed to bike on back north to Lake. And being unpleasantly surprised that there are blocks and blocks in the suburbs that don't have street lights, except at intersections. You're limited to house or business lights, if any are around, approaching headlights, or whatever is on your bike, which, uh, wasn't enough.

I found the Coachlite Skate Center in Roselle, where I'd be seeing DuPage Derby Dames rollerderby for the first time, in their last bout of their first season. I looked for bike parking. Again, I had to lock the bike to a sign. I'm usually the only one biking to suburban sporting events, even in the midst of summer baseball season. The rollerderby was fun and concessions were inexpensive, but it ran to within about a half-hour of the last inbound Metra of the night, and I got nervous. The ride from Coachlite to Metra was shorter than from Stratford Square to Coachlite, but plagued with the same lack of light and disappearing paths. I got to Metra three minutes before the final train.

I try to use the #bikeCHI tag on Twitter often, to describe the joys and hazards of bicycling in Chicago. I ended up tagging this #bikeDuPage and #donotbikeDuPage.