Farewell to an Era

The Berwyn Spindle, an unusual ode to the car culture that was erected in the 1970s, was torn down in the dead of night yesterday. The link includes a short video of it coming down. It was pretty sad to watch.

I am grateful now I went out to capture last fall. The entire short photo set is here.

The French Quarter, as seen from the convent grounds

Almost looks more like Europe than it does an American city, doesn't it?

Verandas in New Orleans

The French Quarter in the spring. So pretty.

(Yes, I am back. I will try to post every day this week, I promise. I have New York and New Orleans photos to share!)

Coney Island Countermen

A trip to Detroit would not be complete without a stop at Lafayette Coney Island. (A Coney, if you've never had one, is a hotdog with chili, mustard and onions. My husband is a very big fan.) The place was pretty empty, (unsurprising for 11am on the day before Christmas) and the countermen were nice enough to let me take pictures. I'm not crazy about the colors -- they came out with a lot more yellow than I remember there being -- but there is something so timeless about the place I had to post them.











The whole set can be found here.

Happy Birthday Joe!

Today is my nephew Joe's birthday. I wanted to take some photos of some fire trucks around here, but I couldn't get a good one. Also, I live in a city area, so getting a good shot of a tractor or farm equipment was kind of tough. So I looked and looked all over Chicago, and I think I found some vehicles put together in a way he's probably never seen. Check this out!



Yes, that's a pile of real cars all stuck together on a pole! Up in the air! See?



I know, it's crazy. But it's real! It's even been shown in movies!



That's Uncle Richard's favorite kind of car on the top: a Volkswagen Beetle. We play Slugbug all the time.



I like that one because it's kind of arty. :)



Chicago has some weird stuff, don't you think? I'll find some other cool things to show you when you come to visit, promise.

Happy Birthday, Joe!

Joe Ma Ma!

Possibly the best store name in the city. Taken January 6, 2007, on the north side of Chicago.

(Click the photo to see better as a larger version.)

Korean Vegetables

Taken at the Super H Mart, a new enormous Korean grocery store in Skokie, IL. Aloe is on the far left, banana roots are the red ones in the middle, and I don't know what the third tan vegetable is. I love shopping in this store, although many of the foods and cuts of meat are unfamiliar to me, and most of the packaged foods are written entirely in Korean. There's just so much energy in the store, all the time, and the variety of fresh foods makes me want to learn how to cook it properly.

Except the squid. I'm okay not eating that.

A few more shots of the store are in the Chicago Neighborhoods set.

Graknitti!

After seeing a tip about these on The Chicagoist, I decided to wander back to our old neighborhood this weekend and see if the knitted "tree cozies" were still up. They were, and so I took a bunch of photos of them available here. Apparently this was a bit of performance art/knitting workshop done by some local residents. Very clever, and cute!

While we were out enjoying our old neighborhood and checking out the South Loop, my husband and I decided we want to continue exploring different Chicago neighborhoods on the weekends. So you can expect to see more like this after our "Sunday morning drives" each week.

Okay, maybe not exactly like this, but other unusual or Chicago-iconic neighborhood shots. It should be fun!

Our Lady of the Underpass

An image of the Virgin Mary was alleged to have been found under the 90/94 underpass at Fullerton in the spring of 2005. I came upon it on April 23, and took some pictures of the event/pilgrimage. The area was cordoned off a few weeks later, preventing anyone from getting this close again, and within a couple of months it was gone entirely.

More pictures are available at the Lady of the Underpass set at Flickr.