The latest from the bikeblog.
I'm trying something new this year, possible for the first time because of Google Maps recently adding RSS feeds to every customized map made there; I call it a "placeblog," consisting of photos and write-ups of various random locations around Chicago I visit on my bicycle this summer and fall, only instead of presented by date they're all plotted on a city map, so that you search and browse by location instead of age. I'll be reposting most of the entries here as well, so that people can follow along in a traditional way if they want; and then you can click here for the actual placeblog/map, or click here for the RSS feed, or simply stop by the main headquarters for all my Chicago bicycle maps at [jasonpettus.com/maps].
Here: One of the benefits of the admittedly sometimes scary experience of riding in the Loop -- you get views like these while bicycling. Dearborn Street looking north, the "official" northbound street downtown for bicyclists (i.e. the one northbound street in the Loop with a designated bike lane). The city provides four streets like these downtown for bicyclists, one heading in each compass direction.
Here: The locally famous chess pavilion at the North Avenue Beach, which like Washington Square Park in New York is constantly filled with semi-pro players battling it out over small wagers. It was built in 1957 from a Mid-Century Modernist design by Maurice Webster, including Modernist king and queen sculptures on either end by Boris Gilbertson; the whole thing was paid for with a $90,000 donation from Laurens Hammond of the Hammond Organ Company.
Here: The infamous "open gate" in the east wall of Wrigley Field, where one can technically watch Cubs games for free from the sidewalk outside, down at the actual field level. Ironically, although the whole thing is designed to look like some nostalgic historic quirk from the century-old stadium, the Cubs only made this a doorless gate three years ago.
Here: The north wall of Wrigley Field, four blocks from my apartment, technically the back side of this historic stadium; but since it's one of the only sports arenas left in the United States still located in a residential neighborhood, technically all four sides of the structure receive regular foot traffic at all times.
Here: Although they're becoming rarer by the year, you can still randomly spot all the time here on Chicago's northside a plethora of retail stores that still have their original Art Deco signage from when the place first opened in the Early Modernist era, and with the signage still in pretty good shape too. Here, Granville Pictures, at the corner of Granville and Broadway, with signs that according to their website first went up in the early 1940s and have never been replaced.
