Bicycle Diaries

Journey of discovery

2009-11-23T05:25:00.000-06:00

just 6 miles
from home

A few weeks back, Roger Cohen wrote about The Big Apple's local peculiarities in his NYTimes op-ed column. He pointed out something that I've also noticed about The Windy City. You only have to go a few blocks in any direction and the city completely changes both in terms of culture and economics. I've been aware of this lately because og my shift in work from the high-rise Loop to the low-rent near North Side. Cohen experienced the same thing when the NYTimes moved its Times Square offices a couple of blocks southwest into the Garment District. As he describes it,

The former headquarters was trapped in the neon tentacles of Times Square, a once seedy part of town re-imagined as the tourist-filled set for a movie called “New York,” a place where people from out of town loiter six-abreast gazing at the flashing lights while New Yorkers try to dodge the phalanxes of flesh.

The new premises, as I’ve gradually learned, placed us just within the garment district, an area where zoning laws have protected apparel manufacturing space and so held off the developers who would otherwise have turned clothes factories into condos and created yet another gentrified district bereft of seediness, tawdriness, community and that strange high-low alchemy essential to any great city’s mystery and charge.

Unlike Cohen's, my new digs are defined less by industry than by ethnicity. It's the heart of the city's Puerto Rican communities which are generally much poorer than my former workplace just off North Michigan Avenue. However, like Cohen's Garment District, it's an incredibly vibrant area, despite carrying more of the weight of our current economic crisis.

It's an area I knew little about beyond the usual fears and prejudices of your typical Northsider. To be frank the first few weeks were a shock. I take regular smoke-breaks along the street next to our building. Most of the buildings opposite are abandoned or inevitably for rent. There's a city ordinance sign on the corner reminding me and my fellow citizens that its illegal to solicit prostitution in public (I guess then it's OK in-doors?).

But like I said, much of my initial shock resulted from being in a strange, new part of a very large, diverse city. I've started to discover all kinds of hidden, fascinating facets. Hopefully, I'll be able to write more about this as the months go by. For now, I've got to finish this year's Annual Report.

The ingenious velocipedeans

2009-11-22T06:38:00.001-06:00

Chicago Salute
with guns

30 October 1914: England's The Guardian reports on the latest developments in military technology. Mr. Cook Wilson, Moral Philosophy Professor at Oxford, highlights the advantages of cyclist troops. To me it sounds rather similar to the masser ritual here in The Windy City. To wit:

One officer who loves cavalry work was bitterly disappointed at the futility of employing cavalry against these cyclist troops. If attached in large numbers, the cyclists simply throw their machines in the middle of the road, where the spokes and wheels make a perfect obstacle to charging horses. The riders then take shelter in hedges and pick off their struggling mass.

It's about the lycra

2009-11-16T05:56:00.000-06:00

not the
commute

Magda Szubansk, a comedienne from Down Under, caught a whole lot of guff from bikers after her rant against lycra-louts last September. To be quite frank, I agree with her up to the point where she starts calling for cagers to run them off the road. Fortunately, she realized that she'd gone over the top and apologised. But aren't the streets, everywhere in the world, dangerous enough without ramping up the rhetoric?

Tweed hits the big time!

2009-11-14T05:38:00.000-06:00

and in a paper
of note, no less...

The NYTimes mentions Beer, Bicycles, and Brits, though I wouldn't call us the New Victorians.

This flamboyance is part of a curious new movement called Tweed Rides, informal gatherings of spiffily dressed ladies and gents cycling leisurely through town and disdaining finish lines. Tweed Rides began in London earlier this year and have spread this fall to Boston, San Francisco and Chicago. As the directions for this weekend’s Tweed Ride in Washington, D.C., put it: “Leave the fleece, Lycra and outer shell at home. This ride is for the dandy.”

Bike panache?

2009-11-12T05:44:00.002-06:00

'nuff sed...

Originally posted by Tina Roth Eisenberg over at Swissmiss, her NYC-based design blog and studio.

Two minutes of silence...

2009-11-11T11:00:00.000-06:00

for their sacrifice

It's Veteran's Day here in Lincoln Square. It's 55 degrees and sunny with a few puffy clouds. Anyone doing a little shopping near the corner of Western and Leland won't miss the neighborhood's ongoing memorial to our soldiers killed in Iraq. The Chicago Printmakers Collaborative has been putting these pictures in the upper windows of their building since August 2004.

The memorial is very powerful because you can't possibly avoid the pictures. You can see them if you bike north on the east side of Western Ave. You can see them if you're waiting for a citybound train on the platform of the Brownline station. When the pictures started going up there there was only enough space for 648 pictures. Now the windows on each of the three floors are completely covered. And as of last Thursday, the total number of our soldiers killed in Iraq has reached 2464.

Each time I pass it I'm reminded of two relatives who died in WWII. Robert Klippel, my mother's brother, flew P-51s out of Iwo Jima in 1945. This photo was taken a few days before he shipped out to the Pacific. On 1 June 1945, a little over two months before Japan surrendered, he flew escort for the B-29s called up on a last minute bombing mission. Before they reached their targets over Osaka, a tsunami engulfed the planes. Only a few ever returned.

My uncle was one of the unlucky ones. He and his plane were never found. In 1946 his Missing in Action status was changed to Killed in Action.

Some of his friends who survived visited my mother's family soon after the war. They said that the last time they saw his plane it was trying to climb out over the storm. Years later I got my hands on the afteraction peport from a veterans' organization. It states that this mission was the largest loss of life and equipment in the Pacific Theater.

The other relative on my mother's side of the family, Frederick Klippel, was killed in the European Theater. As you can probably tell from the photo here (he's the one with the canteen), Frederick served in the German Wehrmacht. In 1942, his infantry reserve batallion arrived in western Ukraine to consolidate the huge gains made by the German invasion of the Soviet Union the previous year. He was killed by Russian artillery fire on 12 February 1943.

As as a young boy, every time we visited my grandmother she would show us Robert's Army Air Corps insignia and medals. The stuff was always cool to look at; in fact, I've had a bit of an obsession with this uncle who had died 17 years before I was born. Thanks to the web, I've done a lot of research on his squadron and fighter group. A couple of years ago, I even made contact with the veterans from the figher group. But they were in different squadrons and didn't remember my uncle.

It wasn't until I was an adult, many years later, that I realized that Robert's death had torn the heart out of my mother's family. My grandmother firmly believed that he was still alive somewhere on Pacific island or in Japan. Her eldest daughter, my aunt, started to suffer from bipolar disorder at the end of the war. And my mother still can't talk about my uncle with getting extremely emotional.

As for Frederick's family, I don't really know how much his death has affected them. I've never met them myself. I didn't even know they or Frederick existed until I googled Klippel. One of the results was a Klippel geneaology posted by a distant cousin who lives on Stanton Island. Since then I've visited him several times. Just like with my grandmother, we look at the pictures and documents he got in Germany when he visited Frederick's family.

But I do know that once a soldier's ghost sits down at the dinner table it doesn't ever really go away. The one that started sitting with my mother's family in 1945 now sits with me as well as with my cousins and their children. This is why those 648 faces staring out of the windows of the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative have become an important part of my bike travels along Western Ave.

Today there are too many ghosts sitting at dinner tables or in backyards or on porches and decks around Chicago and the country.

Burning Guido Fawkes

2009-11-10T06:30:00.005-06:00

...the tweedy way!

The Guido Fawkes' Bonfire Tweed Rid e was a rousing success last Saturday. Thirty tweedy lads and lassies made it all the way down to Bubbly Dynamics outside Bridgeport. Special thanks to Viscount Wallace for organizing the route and Clan Lloyd for hosting the bonfire. Folks had suggested a November ride so we could wear the full tweed monty without sweating our arses off. But true to style, the weather was unseasonably warm ... perhaps we'll do our next ride in March to force a thaw!

Me & Viscount Wallace
by Heather

Me & Bob
by Allan

A lot of civilians took favorable note of our procession. This from Chainlink Chicago:

This afternoon my friend and I were sitting in a window seat at the Irkosium Cafe on Clark and Foster when my friend said: "Look, there's a guy on a bike who's dressed like Sherlock Holmes!" Before I could turn my head to look he said, "Wow, there's another one." Then the whole posse cycling by.

"Oh, that's a tweed ride," I told him.

"A what?" he asked.

He was impressed that I knew what it was all about.

You all looked very natty biking down Clark Street.

Lovely Lauren certainly thought
it was pithy success
by Aaron

Our honoured guest!
(thanks to Allan)

Burning the bastard!
by Sarah

The fall

2009-11-09T05:52:00.004-06:00

20 years ago
today

the joke's (still) on you
Uncle Joe!

(Stalin is captured in this photograph by Lt. Gen. Nikolai Vlasik, the Soviet dictator's bodyguard. Vlasik's off-the-record photos of Stalin caused a sensation in the early 1960s when an enterprising Soviet journalist spirited some out, selling them to newspapers and magazines worldwide.)

and our piece of the wall
in Lincoln Square

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive,
but to be young was very heaven.

William Wordsworth
on the French Revolution

Chicago seen

2009-11-05T05:46:00.001-06:00

really seen
by Vivian Maier

She looks rather dour, this French immigrant who came to the States sometime before WWII. After a brief stint in The Big Apple, she settled in Oak Park, working as a nanny for a solidly Windy City, suburban family. Her immigrant story would've remained rather ordinary if it weren't for her photographic work (consisting of 20,000 negatives and about a thousand rolls of undeveloped film with 12-14 images on each) and John Maloof who bought it at a local estate sale. You can see here what he's gleaned from the vast collection. And you can read the story here of his attempts to meet her; she died days before he finally discovered her whereabouts, and then his efforts to discover who she actually was.

Though her life's details are spare, I think you can get a sense for Vivian from the sheer humanity (and sometimes humor) of her photography. It also reminds me that once upon a time, not all that long ago, The City of Big Shoulders was mostly working class folks little more than a generation removed from The Old Country.

She definitely had the eye for the great contradictions of our Prairie Metropolis. The photos of monumental buildings always include the human beings they supposedly served. More often then not, the foucs is tight, filling the scene with on the margins of successful, rich America in the 1950s and 1960s: the kids, the black maids, the bums flaked out on shop stoops.

It's a shame her artistry lived in obscurity. When I showed Vivian's photos to a co-worker here at Bickerdike, she mentioned that they would have made wonderful visuals for Studs Terkel's Division Street. As he wrote,

The nomadic, transient nature of contemporary life has made diffusion the order – or disorder – of the city….I guess I was seeking some balance in the wildlife of the city as Rachel Carson sought it in nature.

Bicycle wheels

2009-11-04T05:28:00.000-06:00

by
Ugly Kid Joe

Life is to be lived on the positive tip
Never lose the ground
You never gonna slip
If you never lose the ground Always draw the line
Never wear the frown

Should've got myself some bicycle wheels
Should've got myself some bicycle wheels
Should've got myself some bicycle wheels

On the wings of steel
There's dinosaur's in countries
Everyone that I've seen
There's dinosaur's in countries
If you know what I mean
I always keep a watch on the ever changing future

Doing what I want
And you could do what suits you
I said throw your hands in the air
I like to see your armpit hair
Throw your hands in the air
I like to see your armpit hair

Life is to be lived on the positive tip
I'll never lose the ground
You know I'm never gonna slip
Never gonna slip, cause I never lose the ground
Always draw the line
You know I never wear the frown

Shrine of the Vélotariat

2009-11-04T05:23:00.004-06:00

blessing the bike

On 2 November, The Oregonian reported that St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in downtown Portland has

become the nation's first church with a permanent indoor shrine honoring the Madonna del Ghisallo, who is the patron saint of cyclists. An entire section of the 80-year-old wood-and-stone sanctuary will be set aside for bike commuters to contemplate their travels and remember those who have died while cycling.

A painting of the Madonna del Ghisallo (above) by local artist Martin Wolfe will hang above bike parking and a nave where travelers can light candles or sit in reflection.

On the road

2009-11-03T05:11:00.000-06:00

with the original
Working Bikes

I was just listening to Bob Edward's Weekend on Chicago Public Radio Sunday morning. He did a piece on Charles Kuralt's famous TV essays, interviewing his cameraman, Izzy Bleckman. And he mentioned Jethro Mann who back in the early 80s had started fixing bikes for the kids of his town, Belmont, NC. He told Kuralt that it hurt him to grow up without bikes. So he started a bike lending library. His garage was filled with wrecked bikes. The kids were careful to return the bikes every evening, about suppertime. Then he would work on them, sometimes until one or two o'clock in the morning.

Everything you wanted to know about Cricket

2009-10-31T06:21:00.002-05:00

...but were afraid
to rap!

Thanks to San Francisco Tweed, here's the latest track from a new album from the chap-hop sensation. On the mean streets and cricket pitches of Surrey, Mr. B, the Gentleman Rhymer, reveals the strength of his cricket knowledge.

3 cheers for Dutch vélopunk

2009-10-30T06:00:00.002-05:00

five minutes
in heaven

With Stardust Memories
by
Artie Shaw

3 cheers for Dansk vélopunk

2009-10-29T05:46:00.000-05:00

The Voice of the Globe 1937
rolls in Copenhagen

From James A. Fitzpatrick's
Traveltalks

The American documentary film director specialized throughout his career in travel documentaries. Besides directing, he also wrote, produced, and narrated. As well as The Voice of the Globe, MGM distributed a series of his travel films under the umbrella title Fitzpatrick Traveltalks. Paramount also distributed his series, Vistavision Visits. Their hallmarks were Technicolor photography and stolidity.

And you thought computers suck...

2009-10-28T05:15:00.003-05:00

what
about
books?

So one day that old mediator between Good & Evil, the Egyptian god Thoth, invents writing. Up till then, folks just filled up their noggins with pretty much everything. And Thoth proudly offering it as a gift to the Pharaoh of Egypt, claiming it'll be

an elixir of memory and wisdom.

Pharaoh ain't all that impressed. In fact, he's downright horrified, replying,

This invention will induce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it, because they will not need to exercise their memories, being able to rely on what is written…rather than, from within, their own unaided powers to call things to mind.

So it’s not a remedy for memory, but for reminding, that you have discovered. And as for wisdom, you are equipping your pupils with only a semblance of it, not with truth.

Oprah's not famous in Europe

2009-10-26T08:18:00.002-05:00

so the Olympics
won't be in Chicago

As you know, lots have been going on with me over the past few months. I haven't had time to comment of recent events ... like the Windy City's lost bid for the 2016 Olympics. So here's a funny mash-up of Downfall that brings us into the Mayor Bunker to reveal just how disappointing all this has been for The City that Works. Especially hilarious is the line 53 seconds in:

Everyone who has already been indicted for something, leave now.

Remember, remember...

2009-10-24T16:03:00.006-05:00

the 7th of November

Well, it's supposed to be on the 5th when the Brits captured poor Guido, AKA Guy, in the cellars of Parliament. But that's a school night so we're doing it on Saturday, when he finally admitted to The Gun Powder Plot after some extreme interrogation methods. In any case, Viscount Wallace has submitted preliminary details here!

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
the Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent to blow up King and Parliament.

Three score barrels were laid below to prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s mercy he was catch’d with a dark lantern and lighted match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Hip hip hoorah!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.

A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.

Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.

Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.

Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

Biker killed by truck

2009-10-22T11:03:00.005-05:00

Liza Whitacre
1986 - 2009

Jeremy Gorner reported yesterday on Chicago's Breaking News Center,

A 23-year-old woman died this afternoon after she fell from her bicycle, landed underneath a truck and was run over by the vehicle outside Hamlin Park on Chicago's North Side, police said. The victim, Liza Whitacre, was riding south on Damen Avenue with another cyclist, a 24-year-old woman, when they came across the truck and a CTA bus about 12:30 p.m. The 24-year-old, Whitacre's roommate, was able to travel "between" the two vehicles as Whitacre followed, Chicago police said.

But the victim slipped and fell underneath the truck.

"The truck driver was apparently unaware that the woman had fallen underneath," said Officer John Mirabelli, a police spokesman.

The truck then rode over Whitacre, 23, of the 4900 block of North Winthrop Avenue, and she was pronounced dead at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, officials said.

The operator of the CTA No. 50 Damen Avenue bus was questioned by police as a potential witness to the crash since the bus was in the "vicinity," said Chicago Transit Authority spokeswoman Wanda Taylor.

She did not know if the operator witnessed the crash, but said no CTA buses were involved in it.

Buses traveling along the Damen route were temporarily rerouted around the accident site, Taylor said.

No citations have been issued in the crash, Mirabelli said early this evening.

I've been remiss...

2009-10-18T11:44:00.011-05:00

but now
I'm back

It's been a hell of a last 9 months or so. Laid off in February, underemployed until just last month. Among other things, the blog has suffered. First it was the general funk that accompanies what became is the worst unemployment experience in my life. I wasn't turned out of my apartment of a decade; nor did I starve. A lot of good, good friends and close acquaintances had my back. Perhaps the depth of our national economic crisis has brought out in the best of folks or maybe after almost 11 years in the same neighborhood I've found my community: I've certainly learned that it takes a village to survive The Great Recession.

Whatever the reason, I did survive. I've back in a full-time job thanks to some very fine folks in the bike community here. It's as the Resource Development Manager for the Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation. That's a fancy title for grant-writer and all around fund-raiser. Bickerdike is a member-based, non-profit community development corporation that advocates for, builds, and maintains affordable housing in the Latino and African-American neighborhoods on the northwest. That's a big change for all kinds of reasons. But I'm liking both the mission and the organization. It's also exposing to a whole new world in this great, grand city.

Second, nine months is a damned long time. There were days when my own problems coupled with the general mood of the country nearly overwhelmed me. I kept my sanity by riding ... a lot of riding. With a little help from my friends, I put together The 2nd Winston's Tweed Ride on 12 September. A lot of new folks joined us on a Don't Mention the War bummel that ended up at my neighborhood's annual German-American Festival. Get it?

Then a few weeks ago, Sir Aaron heard about a new tweed ride in Grand Rapids, MI. We loaded up the steeds on his cage and headed over for the day! Amanda, the organizer, as well as her small group of tight friends made us very welcome indeed. I don't think we considered the impact two big city gents would make on our country cousins. And let me say, Grand Rapids is a fantastic city. Imagine a slightly smaller version of Milwaukee, with the same turn of the century architecture, surrounded by rolling meadows and gentle hills a few minutes from Lake Michigan. I would seriously consider moving there if the job were right.

Even outside the City of Big Shoulders,
it takes a tweedy village to survive...

9.11.09 & 11.11.1918

2009-09-11T07:18:00.001-05:00

the eleventh day
and the eleventh hour

Today is the 9th anniversary of 9.11. The very fact I don't have to explain these two numbers reflects the enormity of the attacks particularly in how they changed our lives as well as the world around us.

There is another aspect of this enormity. For there are as many meanings of 9.11 (here as well) as there are people who have felt the impact of the attacks over the last seven years. For example, I photographed this painting by Mirshakarov Akmal during a trip to Tajikistan in 2002. It is his response to 9.11. It alone shows that any attempt I could make to capture the meanings of this event would fall woefully short of the mark.

I've decided to let the enormity of 9.11 speak for itself rather than adding to all words that will be written about it today. What little I will add, can be summed by Wilfred Owen, the most famous of the WWI English trench poets. In the Preface to his book, Poems, Owen wrote,

This book is not about heroes.
English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power, except War.
Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
This is in no sense consolatory.

They may be to the next.
All the poet can do to-day is to warn.
That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
If I thought the letter of this book would last,
I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia, --
my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have
achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.

Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour - the eleventh) before the signing of the Armistice. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day, as the church bells were ringing out in celebration. He is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery.

The proper anti-freeze...

2009-09-08T06:44:00.000-05:00

for Chicago
Bikewinter!

5 year old girl killed...

2009-09-07T08:28:00.002-05:00

by cager
last night

From The Chicago Breaking News Center,

A 5-year-old girl riding her bicycle was struck and killed Sunday evening by a vehicle exiting a West Rogers Park alley, police said.

The girl, Ester Kenig, was riding her bicycle in the 6100 block of North Sacramento Ave. at about 5:30 p.m. when she was struck by the emerging vehicle, police said.

Ester was rushed to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, where she was later pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

The driver, who remained at the scene after the collision, had not received any charges or traffic citations as of late Sunday, police spokeswoman Antoinette Ursitti said.

An autopsy on the girl is scheduled for Monday morning.

Why be conservative?

2009-09-04T05:29:00.002-05:00

why
not?

I don’t have much faith in my fellow man. In fact, my own conservatism has much to do with the fact that I reject the entire notion of human improvement altogether. Grandiose liberal efforts do not work, not because they are simply led by the wrong kind of men, but because they are led by men, period. “Progressivism” is a great idea. But most progressives can’t balance their checkbooks much less create nirvana. “Feminism” sounds swell. Too bad females are most cruel to other women. “Multiculturalism” is well intentioned. Yet it seems every time different cultures cohabitate it creates more friction than friendship.

I’m a mess too ... I’m awful with money, eat poorly, drink too much and don’t spend enough time with friends and family. But then again, most of those same friends and family are guilty of the same flaws and faults.

Jack Hunter
August 09, 2009

Chicago bikewinter approaches

2009-09-03T06:10:00.005-05:00

and with it
our 10th Anniversary

To get things rolling, we're aiming to encourage ALL fair-weather bikers within our propaganda's grasp to stay in the saddle through the longest, coldest nights. We'll meet on Tuesday, 22 September, 7 p.m. at the newer Billy Goat - 309 W. Washington (a nod to BW winter meetings of the past), directly following the One Million Less Cars Rally.