A Real Green House

This is the Ashland stop on the Green (and Pink) CTA lines. It's one of the oldest stations in the CTA system and certainly a unique one. It seems that there were four stations built in a Queen Anne style. Only two remain, this one (in its original location) and the station at the Garfield Park Conservatory/Central Park el stop (which was relocated from the Homan Avenue stop).

March Winds

Seems like a few people were taking advantage of the March winds and doing some precision kite-flying routines over on Northerly Island.

Bad Bad Bad

To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit:

"These old pieces of wood aren't bad, they're just painted that way"

Smudgy Sun

Today's post is brought to you by the letter "S": A Spring* Smudgy Sun Setting in the Sky by Sears.

*As of yesterday, it is now meteorological Spring ;)

Window Pane

Lawry's Steakhouse has these interesting metal frames on the windows.

Bronzeville Sign

While you are on the Stevenson Expressway, near Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Drive, there is a large sign identifying the area as Bronzeville, a subsection of the Douglas Neighborhood. The area has a lot of history and, based on a little research, quite a bit of public art and historical plaques (thus, moving it up on on my list of future photo excursions).

I've never quite been able to get a photo of the whole sign because stopping your car on the expressway is very dangerous and generally frowned upon. This is the center portion of the sign. I'm pretty sure the image depicted in this logo is the Stephen Douglas statue, which is in the area.

I have a correction: The image is the Doughboy statue from a memorial, in the Bronzeville area, to 187 national guard members who died in WWI. Thanks Jim (who's informative Chicago photo blog is here)!

Election Day

It's election day in Chicago. We're voting for a new mayor. There are six candidates, down from twenty that initially filed for candidacy.

If a candidate gets an absolute majority (50% of the vote + 1) then that person gets to move into City Hall on May 16 and the whole city gets spared 42 more days of speeches, debates, TV commercials, and photo-ops (including snow shoveling, restaurant visits, el stop handshakes, and way more information about all the different areas of the city each candidate ever called 'home' than most people care to know). In short, we get to move on from politics to the pressing topic of whether the Cubs can break their 103 year pennant drought (and don't think we haven't noticed that while the candidates like to discuss their solutions to budgets, taxes, and education, none of them seem to have a plan to solve the Cubs' curse).

If no candidate gets an absolute majority then the top two vote getters get back to the trenches until April 5.

Wish us luck!