I Am A Camera

(Are you a YouTube person? Here's the link to the YouTube version of this video.)

Greetings, humans! Spring has officially begun here in Chicago, even if the weather hasn't caught up to it yet; it means that not only bicycling season will be starting again soon, but also the goofy little cellphone videos I regularly do during bicycling season, most of which act as supplements to the various bicycle maps I've created for use in both Google Maps and Google Earth. (I'm hoping to ramp up the amount of videos I do this year, in fact; hopefully by the time Labor Day rolls around this September, I will have shot and posted 10 to 15 of them.) Here, my first cellphone video of 2008, shot on opening day of the Chicago Cubs 2008 baseball season, which happens to be the 100th anniversary of the last time the Cubs won the World Series, a historically significant occasion that has already garnered a ton of national press, before the baseball season has even begun. Unfortunately it was a crappy, rainy day today, so I don't have a lot to share from the actual opening-day festivities; rest assured that I will be shooting another video around Wrigley Field later this summer (located, by the way, a mere four blocks from my apartment), giving a better tour of the neighborhood and showing what a more typical game day in the Wrigleyville neighborhood is like. For now, I hope you enjoy.

So, just a few weeks left until it's finally bicycling season again here in Chicago; long-time followers of the moblog, in fact, know that I first got heavily involved with bicycling last year, when not coincidentally I initially quit smoking. Of course, this being nerdy GTD me, I needed to invent an elaborate project for myself in order to justify all that bicycling in the first place; and this was right at the same time (spring 2007) that Google first allowed people to sign up for an account and start creating customized mashup maps through their official API, which convinced me to start doing such a thing too. But alas, because of the complexity of these maps (but more on that in a bit), I ended up doing a lot more trips than I had time to sit down and put together into a mashup; and I promised myself that over the winter I'd finally sit down and finish them, before it was time for bicycling season 2008 and yet more riding/photographing/mapping.

Anyway, it just occurred to me this weekend that I don't have much time left, so I better get started; and the first step, of course, was to sit down and look through all the photos and notes I took last year when actually on the bike trips, and determine exactly how much work I have ahead of me. The good news? It turns out that I actually biked a lot more and a lot farther than I had been remembering in my head, boding well for my chances of even longer and more regular trips this spring and summer. The bad news? I have 11 maps that need to be created, and so far only three of them "done" (and by "done" I of course mean "eh, like 80 percent done").

So, I just sat down on my other Mac (the one with Photoshop) and made a master map of all the mini-projects I'm shooting to finish by the beginning of May; this image, then, will also serve as a master map to interior pages over at the section of my personal website where you can always find the latest grand total of finished mashups. Anyway, so here we go with the descriptions...hold yr breath...

1 through 5: Chicago Lakeshore Path. An uninterrupted 18-mile bike and runner path stretching nearly from the north edge to the south edge of the city, surrounded nearly at all times by public parkland, a holdover from Edwardian times when the "City Beautiful" movement managed to get the entire Chicago lakefront declared a "public resource."

1) Lakeshore path: Lincoln Park North. Upper half of the seven-mile Lincoln Park, one of the largest city parks in the entire United States. Riding the length of Lincoln Park is a lesson in American history and architecture, in that the park was designed in regular stages from 1860 to 1960; here in the north half are the sections created between 1910 and the '60s.

2) Lakeshore path: Lincoln Park South. The lower half of the park just described, the sections designed from 1860 to 1900, containing the vast majority of the historical destinations the park is most known for.

3) Lakeshore path: North Avenue to the Loop. Want a smart alternative the next time you come into the inner city for a holiday like the 4th of July? Why not park your car on the northside and bike the rest of the way in? Although not regularly used by a lot of people, there is a perfectly safe and in fact delightful section of the lakefront path that stretches from the end of Lincoln Park to the Loop, including easy stops at Navy Pier, River North, the Chicago River and Millennium Park. It's only six miles from Montrose to the Loop by bicycle; why not try it the next time you're down there on holiday, avoiding the snarl of vehicular traffic that always forms during such events?

4) Lakeshore path: Loop to 57th Street. For many years the Hyde Park area of the city's southside was built up along the lakefront, but nothing else between there and the Loop; that finally changed throughout the mid-20th century, especially once a series of corporations and civic groups came in and sponsored the landscaping of vast tracts of the land. Although not as historic as the northside's better-known path, this slice of Chicago's lakefront is a beautiful and uncluttered space, perfect for lazy weekend rides as well as weekday wind sprints for more serious riders.

5) Lakeshore path: South Campus. The extreme south tip of the city-sponsored 18-mile lakeshore bike/running path, encompassing several historic areas: Hyde Park, the University of Chicago campus, the Museum of Science and Industry, Jackson Park, and the South Shore Cultural Center, spanning roughly 57th to 79th Streets.

6) Northside to the Loop, via Southport/Lincoln Avenues. Hey, city-dweller creative-class fucks! You know how the mayor and your hippie neighbor keep crowing about how easy it actually is to bicycle from your place to your office in the Loop each day? Keep wondering if it's actually true? Here's one of what will hopefully be an always expanding series of maps, looking at various inner-city routes from residential neighborhoods to the Loop, all of them lying along streets with dedicated, legally-protected bike lanes. Featuring not only the routes themselves, but various practical tips about city bicycling embedded in my photos and videos.

7) Northside to the Loop, via Halsted/Milwaukee Avenues. Exactly the same as map 6, but this time using the city bike lane on Halsted, passing through such neighborhoods as Boys Town, Old Town, Goose Island, Fulton Market, River West and more.

8) Burnham's Boulevards and the West Side Parks (north half). As part of the "City Beautiful" movement's 1909 overhaul of the city, architect Daniel Burnham recommended building a "green ring" through the most congested neighborhoods at the time, allowing not only for rapid middle-class development but also a small slice of healthiness in the middle of the most packed places in the city. At the same time, then, a group of Gilded Age entrepreneurs started a series of grand, giant public parks on the west side of the city as well (where the vast majority of the city's immigrants lived at the time); these were linked to Burnham's green boulevard system, to form a legitimate grand green circle all the way around the city's downtown, a few miles out in distance from the Loop's center. My map, then, is just of the north half of this circle; it includes Diversey Boulevard at Lincoln Park (including the Goethe statue, Hamilton garden, Elks headquarters and more), Logan Square, Garfield Park and more.

9) Northside Neighborhood Parks. It's the giant civic parks of the Victorian Age that get all the press in Chicago; but did you know that the park district here actually maintains over 550 public spaces? The vast majority of them, in fact, were created and first maintained by private neighborhood organizations, before the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal consolidated all the groups into one unified government administration. In this map, a winding and detailed route that will take a bicyclist to over 65 small neighborhood parks on the northside, ranging from a mile or two in size to sometimes the length of someone's backyard; the total route lasts 25 miles, with of course many opportunities to stop for food, shopping, coffee and more.

10) Northside to the Westside, via the "Industrial District." Here, a supplemental add-on to either map 6 (inner-city path on Lincoln) or 7 (inner-city path on Halsted) for getting over to such hipster westside neighborhoods as Wicker Park and Bucktown, specifically by riding through the last area of the northside left with working factories, smokestacks and more. A fascinating route to take at least once, especially for those who enjoy photographing urban industrial areas.

11) Near South Historic Neighborhoods. Did you know that there are half a dozen nationally important historic neighborhoods all butting against each other in Chicago's Near South Side? There are! Here, a map detailing them all, including the IIT campus, Bronzeville, Prairie Avenue, the Museum Campus, Chinatown, Printers Row and the South Loop.

Whew, okay, that's it! And three of these are now "done," like I said (i.e. 80 percent done), which you can find over here for now; and hopefully by May, like I said, I'm going to have all 11 of these maps finished and online, and with downloadable KMLs as well for Google Earth (for those who like their maps in 3D and spinnable and all that shit), and with a brand-new interface as well over at the section of my personal site where people will be able to find all these. And that's it! See you later, fuckers!