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.
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.
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...
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.
The very small Marshall Field's there was part of the well-known
Market Square shopping plaza, designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw.
Unfortunately, I was weeks too late to actually see the store...
More tasteful green, a post office this time.
Even more tasteful green.
A very nice independent bookstore.
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.
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.
Side view of this; the front was attractive too.
I ate lunch here. Charming, but the prices were higher than I'd expected...
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...
Brief wandering in another direction turned up the
Highwood library, so I went inside for a few minutes.
Puzzling...
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).
Wow, wow, wow...
Part of the Metra station in Highland Park, I think.
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).
This toy store had a huge window display of kid's Lego projects.
A cooking supply store, I think. I liked the sentiment (even if I prefer white for grilled cheese sandwiches at least).
Now to Wilmette...
There were a few cute buildings...another attractive cleaners.
I came back mostly to spend a few minutes visiting the
Winnetka library.
And to reshoot a few things...there was a little bit of sun.
Another attractive clock.
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).
A little bit of pre-Union Pacific history there...
Another attempted shot of passengers and approaching trains...
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...)
