last day of 2013

I did it again, vanished from this blog for months, over six months this time, looks like. Life changed in some big ways just days after that (wonderful), in another big way a couple months later (terrible), and the end of 2013 has been...well...I just can't do a recap of 2013 yet. As always I'll set the goal to do more blogging in 2014, but I won't make promises. Anyone still reading this before I do a relaunch or whatever--thank you!

In between my "adventures" today--yet another New Year's Eve day I've gotten a $7 Metra pass and enjoyed the chance to take Metra lines I can't take with a regular weekend pass--and going out in the neighborhood for New Year's Eve, here's my last time doing some of my banal neighborhood activities in 2013. Am I making fun of my blogging with this post? I don't even know anymore!

Walking home from Metra! Not the Irving Park Metra stop nearest me, but the Grayland stop further away on a different line. I was tempted to stop in the neighborhood bar next to it, Kennedy's, but didn't have enough cash on me. Also didn't feel like walking blocks in the snow after a cold drink (even though I may very well be doing that later on NYE).

Last coffeeshop visit of the year! At my closest Starbucks, Irving Park & Kostner, beautifully remodeled this year. I go here because as of the end of 2013 my neighborhood (all the way from California Ave. on the east to the railroad east of Cicero on the west) doesn't have an independent coffeeshop. I got a mocha (not a holiday one) and sat and read a couple chapters in a new book on writing I'd checked out from the Des Plaines library. My favorite suburban library is now much more accessible because of the Irving Park Metra stop.

Then I got my bicycle from where it was parked between the Irving Park Metra and Irving Park Blue Line, walked it to Walgreens at Pulaski, locked it though I really wanted to see if leaving a beat-up bike unlocked in snowy weather would be okay, and made a few small, semi-necessary purchases to get cash back to go out tonight. This was all too boring to photograph (although sometimes I take photos in Walgreens).

Now to enjoy my last couple hours of 2013 and first New Year's in the "new" neighborhood.

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.

waiting for the train

Waiting to catch my first CTA Holiday Train of 2011 on the Cicero Green Line, abandoned Brach's factory in the background, multiple rush hour Metra trains going by between the platform and the factory, I got a couple quick and fuzzy videos. Really just posting this to see if I remember how to include video properly, and because I'm still in the habit of blogging daily (if not promising to do a NaBloPoMo for December, too):

I agree with this booklet

Cooking is Fun
Originally uploaded by mod as hell

Didn't mean to have that previous post be at the top of the page for so long. Oh well. Tonight I finally got the rest of this 16-page recipe booklet from 1955 (1961 reprint) posted on Flickr (the full set is here). It's from the National Dairy Council out of Chicago...and does seem to have a lot of dairy in the recipes, now that I think about it. Adorable front and back cover, lots of basic kitchen tips, many decent recipes and some terrifying ones, as is standard for this era. (Well, prunes aren't bad per se, but "Prune Whip with Ice Cream?" For kids?)

I've made soup from scratch several times this year already and I'm quite happy about this. It's easy and it makes meals for days. Going to Soup and Bread nights at the Hideout in Chicago (okay, only been to one so far) has inspired me even more in soup-making.

Ugh, so much to catch up on. I might be inside a lot the next couple days blogging, what with the weather, and waiting to buy a CTA pass. This weekend is the last weekend (in over 20 years!) that Metra passes will be $5 (going up to $7, still probably the best transit bargain in the U.S.) so I need to make it out at least on Sunday...

how the Metra-riding obsession started...

I've always said my biggest regret in my years in Chicago (just in terms of photography; thinking of regrets in all areas of life here would be a ticket to unending misery, wouldn't it?) was my failure to document the tremendous changes going on in the city--in particular, the old Maxwell Street area, Wicker Park/West Town (I've lived not far from there virtually all my Chicago years), and the South Loop (I went to school there for years, starting when "South Loop" only went to Roosevelt at most, not all the way to Chinatown). Then I added my failure, until 2007, to get the concept of "urban exploration" and get more intimate photos of the buildings I've seen vanish. Now I'd add how infrequently I took Metra commuter rail until the past couple years. I've never needed to take it for family, school, or work, so it's been purely recreational.

From Metra March 2008

Not until 2008 did I get the idea of Metra-hopping (visiting many stops on a line so I can explore the communities they're in, using the $5 pass that's good all day Saturday and Sunday), and I believe what I'm picturing here, March 8, 2008, was my first true day of this. I had specific aims in mind--to visit the (closing in 2008) smallest Macy's/Marshall Field's store in Chicagoland (Lake Forest), my interest having been piqued by this piece on Chicago Public Radio, and to revisit parts of the North Shore I'd spotted out the car window (and wanted to photograph) on a long Valentine's Day drive up there with someone.

From Metra March 2008

This trip came in the midst of my project to photograph every station on the Chicago Transit Authority. The idea to photograph every Metra (and South Shore) station didn't hit me until much later...in fact, after much of my summer 2008 Metra travel. That's the project (among many others) I'm engaged in now. At first I wanted it to be open-ended, because it could take years (the fact that several Metra lines run only on weekdays, with limited stops, no $5 unlimited pass, messes things up). But now the hyper-organized side of me has taken over and I wish I'd set an official time frame. If I started it in summer 2008 (I'm not counting this trip, because I wasn't really making an effort to photograph all the Metra stations themselves), how about I finish shooting all the stations that are open every day sometime in summer 2009?

Anyway...I boarded a northbound train on the Union Pacific/North line at the Clybourn station (which is not near the street Clybourn; a recent issue of the Metra commuter newsletter "On the Bi-Level" explains this mystery; quoted by Jennifer). You can see I was already taking shots of passengers and approaching trains...

From Metra March 2008

I started off in Lake Forest. Everything was green and tasteful, discreet signage instead of a typical Walgreens. This is something you find on the North Shore...McDonald's that don't look like McDonald's because of some sort of tastefulness ordinance or something.

From Metra March 2008

From Metra March 2008

The very small Marshall Field's there was part of the well-known Market Square shopping plaza, designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw.

From Metra March 2008

From Metra March 2008

From Metra March 2008

Unfortunately, I was weeks too late to actually see the store...

From Metra March 2008

More tasteful green, a post office this time.

From Metra March 2008

Even more tasteful green.

From Metra March 2008

A very nice independent bookstore.

From Metra March 2008

I haven't taken many interior shots of Metra stations, because a lot of them are closed on weekends, or there's no real "interior" to the station; this is Lake Forest's.

From Metra March 2008

And then I went to Highwood, which originally developed next to Fort Sheridan. Many Italian immigrants settled here in the early 1900s, and there's now a substantial Latino population; all of these make Highwood different from all the other North Shore communities I visited that day.

From Metra March 2008

Side view of this; the front was attractive too.

From Metra March 2008

I ate lunch here. Charming, but the prices were higher than I'd expected...

From Metra March 2008

Sweet. This is what I'd spotted out the car window and NEEDED to come back and shoot. Like most of these photos, I need to go back again and get better photos for Flickr...

From Metra March 2008

From Metra March 2008

Brief wandering in another direction turned up the Highwood library, so I went inside for a few minutes.

From Metra March 2008

From Metra March 2008

Puzzling...

From Metra March 2008

And then I moved on, and the sun came out, but mostly just for Highland Park (which couldn't be more different from the Highland Park by Detroit I'm now familiar with).

From Metra March 2008

Wow, wow, wow...

From Metra March 2008

Part of the Metra station in Highland Park, I think.

From Metra March 2008

And now, a shopping area in Winnetka. I stopped in Winnetka, then went to Wilmette, but with the help of a Pace bus went back to Winnetka. Fun fact for non-Chicago readers: Chicago's public television station, WTTW, has been jokingly called "Wilmette Talking to Winnetka" (both posh North Shore communities) for as long as I can remember (does anyone know the origin of that? a Google search was no help; in fact, almost no one has quoted this phrase online).

From Metra March 2008

This toy store had a huge window display of kid's Lego projects.

From Metra March 2008

A cooking supply store, I think. I liked the sentiment (even if I prefer white for grilled cheese sandwiches at least).

From Metra March 2008

Now to Wilmette...

From Metra March 2008

From Metra March 2008

There were a few cute buildings...another attractive cleaners.

From Metra March 2008

I came back mostly to spend a few minutes visiting the Winnetka library.

From Metra March 2008

And to reshoot a few things...there was a little bit of sun.

From Metra March 2008

Another attractive clock.

From Metra March 2008

Heading back towards the Winnetka Metra station...I believe this did end up, as I'd predicted at the time, being the strangest and most random graffiti I saw anywhere in 2008 (Huckabee was already out of the presidential race by then).

From Metra March 2008

A little bit of pre-Union Pacific history there...

From Metra March 2008

Another attempted shot of passengers and approaching trains...

From Metra March 2008

I finished Metra-hopping by ending at the Davis station (next to the Davis CTA) in Evanston. I must have gotten a very early start (8:30 on a Saturday!), because looking at my photos from the day I went on to shoot CTA stations in Evanston and the North Side, and stop by a demolition site, all before dark, in winter.

I didn't do much more Metra travel until summer, when I finally took my long-awaited trip to the end of the UP-N line, Kenosha, WI (I loved the idea that I could get to a different STATE on Metra...even if we no longer have the interurban that runs from Chicago to Milwaukee, sadly). And that was my first trip on Metra with a bicycle! Though I've had a few more trips to Kenosha, I feel I've neglected this line and hope to get out shooting on it again soon.

(Oh, and I still like using a lot of lowercase letters for things, especially on Flickr, but I've already dropped it as a habit in my writing here, because I'm not trying to be cute. Well, I am, but not in my writing...so back to standard sentence form...)

Ruins at sunset

As promised, some late afternoon exploration at an abandoned, ruined, and since my last time by, partially demolished industrial facility in Chicagoland. Enjoy this horizontal photo; it's the last one you'll see for a while. And all but this one are in chronological order.
I may be well past the "why does every abandoned building have so many chairs and sofas?" stage in my exploring career, but I'm still in the "why do so many abandoned buildings have pianos?!" stage. This was a fantastic sight.

It's an imposing building from the outside. I'd driven by with a friend, but we didn't go in that day. I'd been at the nearby Metra stop, but it was too busy around to try. Finally, Saturday I biked downtown for a bike/Metra trip.

Stay 25 feet away?
I didn't start off here. I started with my first solo trip to what might be the most fantastic ruin in all Chicagoland (not counting Gary). My trip there with a friend, a year to the day earlier, was incredible. (It's in the archives. Not a story, though; I still haven't written the story from last year; both trips merit their own post, later.)

After more than two glorious hours there, I biked to another nearby spot...well, I couldn't find it. I'd never been in. Then I biked to find a place I'd only briefly explored after discovering in the spring. Went the wrong way, couldn't find it either.

But this site was there, if missing at least one building. As is common for a new place, I went in a more difficult way and found the easy way later. It was all easy, except for the building sealed up for asbestos abatement. I could have gotten in but decided to take those signs seriously this time.

I still had plenty to see, even if much of it was emptied of anything but a few signs, pieces of equipment, and yes, chairs.

I walked through all of two low industrial buildings, one much bigger, and by then, giving off a beautiful late-afternoon glow.

As with most exploration spots I've seen this one in other's photos. But I didn't study them before I went, I wanted the place to be somewhat fresh.

Of course, now a lot of it's missing or less accessible, and I wonder if that's where all the stuff (the research labs) were, and if I should have tried the abatement building, or if it'd been cleared of anything intriguing anyway.

Rubble + nature = another cliche of Katherine's photos!

And factory windows, factory windows...I did what I could with the back buildings and figured I'd better try the main one before it got dark.

This beautiful stairway awaits at the main entrance (seen in the first vertical photo). I didn't do much on the first floor because of debris blockage. So I went up and zipped through the second and third floors of this enormous building, stopping where it met the sealed-for-abatement adjoining building.

One part is extremely open to the major street in front. The sign across the way says "Outreach Plaza." Outreach Plaza and signs for new condos viewed from this rubble--a little too perfect, another cliche of Katherine's photos!

I had more trouble than I anticipated getting down from the third floor, making a dozen or so unnecessary jaunts down this hall or that, wondering where the stairway had gone. I think I handled being alone in a very ruined building I'd never visited before, in an impoverished suburb, as it was getting dark, and I only had a small flashlight, with aplomb, or at least a minimum of panic. (And why is this quality never mentioned in personal ads instead of tedious requests for a woman who's equally comfortable in jeans and a party dress?) Oh, past that door at an angle, there's the stairs. I got out quickly, so exhausted, yet ready for more, I left my bike locked outside that Metra station to come back the next day.