I Am A Camera

Wow, look at how many places I bicycled last year!

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:34:47 -0500

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!

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New video online: "A tour of Chicago's lakefront bike path, northern terminus."

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 15:19:07 -0500

Northterminus

(UPDATE: Well, I can't get VOX's "embed a YouTube video" option to work, and their CMS software forbids the usual embedded objects, so I ended up having to upload the entire video again to my VOX account. Anyway, you should be able now to click on the above to view the video, or just click here to see it over at YouTube.)

Ooh, I'm being really productive today; got a new video edited and uploaded on top of everything else, for use in the series of customized bicycle maps I'm making this summer, which can be opened in both the 2D Google Maps and 3D Google Earth. This video is four minutes long and showcases the northern terminus of Chicago's 18-mile (30 km) lakefront bicycle path, the one I rode to 71st Street last week for Memorial Day. I'll be creating the map for that trip next week, as I slowly make my way through the 250 photos (!) I shot; this video was created specifically for that map, as well as the map for Lincoln Park North.

Oh, and more good news: just a half-hour ago, finally got my new URL cclapcenter.com pointing to the new website for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP), the local arts organization I'm re-opening this week. So that's good; that'll let me get all the templates up tonight and tomorrow, and have a working new CCLaP website by Monday afternoon. Skoal! Thanks a million, Jimi!

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Total distance bicycled this week: 42 miles!

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Sat, 12 May 2007 16:54:59 -0500

I really surprised myself this week, my first week of the year of daily bicycling: I ended up putting in a total of 42 miles (70 km), or an average of six miles (10 km) a day. Well, that is awfully good news; it puts me right on track for taking on the 18-mile trip I want to take on Memorial Day, from my neighborhood to Jackson Park on the southside (where the Museum of Science and Industry is), completely via the lakefront path. Given that these distances simply wouldn't happen if I hadn't quit smoking (68 days now cigarette-free and counting), and that for a long time I thought I'd never be able to quit smoking, I'm grateful for any length I can go at all.

I'm at Metropolis Coffeehouse right now, Granville and Kenmore near Loyola University and Rogers Park, finishing up my photos for my second customized bike map in Google Earth, this time of Lincoln Park North; as always when at Metropolis, I'm surrounded by sexy Loyola undergraduates, none of which I'll be taking a picture of today. Then I'll be biking back via inner Lincoln Park, right next to tony Marine Drive for two miles; then an examination of Clarendon Park at Montrose, and a check-out of a tea store near there, and then finally home. Well, for an hour -- then it's off to an art gallery in River West to meet up with my friend Patrick Welch. See you later!

Total distance bicycled this week: 42 miles!

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Prognosis: A little sore, but still good for another ride.

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Sun, 06 May 2007 11:22:57 -0500

So how am I feeling, a day after making an eight-mile bicycle trip (13 km), which was not only my first long trip of the year but also now officially the longest amount I've ever bicycled in my life? Eh, not so bad, actually, besides being a little stiff and a little sore; don't forget, though, that eight-mile trip actually took me two and a half hours altogether, and I made something like 20 stops to take photos for my eventual Google map on the subject. So, it's not like I was exactly pushing myself yesterday, so it's not exactly unexpected that I'm not too worn out; but still, given it was my first long ride of the year, and was done exactly nine days after having oral surgery, and that the thought of putting in an eight-mile day a year ago when I was a smoker would've been a joke, no matter how slowly I took things, I'm grateful frankly that I could manage yesterday's trip at all, much less come out of it not too sore. (Of course, I did sleep 11 hours as well last night, which should for honesty's sake be noted. I'm such a decrepid old man, I swear.)

Anyway, I'm hoping this is all good news, as far as my plans to slowly increase my maximum distance this summer -- for example, the 16-mile trip I'm planning for Memorial Day (from my place in Uptown to Jackson Park on the southside, as well as Washington Park and the Midway); or the 30-mile trip I'm hoping to tackle by the end of the summer, from my place to the Chicago Botanical Gardens in Glencoe, via the North Branch national forest trail (and then back home by train via Metra, because you must be high if you think I can take a 60-mile bike ride in one day at this point in my life).

By the way, didn't want to let my muscles get all tight and spasmy today, so ended up taking another ride, although not nearly as long today of course -- just down to Intelligentsia Coffeehouse, via the lakefront path getting there, then a straight shoot up Broadway on the way back (total distance 4.25 miles, or 7 km). Here's a shot, for example, from the busy Belmont underpass in Lakeview, where I also shot a video for my eventual Google map; for those who don't know, one of the most magical things about the Lakeview area of the lakefront is that it was originally developed during the Victorian Age, and contains all kinds of intricate structures from that era like these grandiose apartment buildings you're seeing, most of which miraculously survived the years that Lakeview was a slum neighborhood (roughly 1950s to '80s -- post-war white flight ruined the neighborhood, punk-era gentrification saved it). Anyway, my eventual map will be getting a lot more into Lincoln Park and Lakeview's tony Victorian roots, and how elements of that spill all the way up into my neighborhood (for example, the golf course and tennis courts found near Waveland, originally created because of both activities' sudden popularity in the early 1900s), for anyone who's interested in learning more.

Prognosis: A little sore, but still good for another ride.

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