When revenue, law and property rights collide.
A stretch of public thoroughfare that hits peak traffic and parking needs at exactly the same hours when the parking regs become mysteriously draconian. The clock ticks over and suddenly that block is aswarm with tow trucks and ticketteers. It has nothing to do with safety, or law-n-order. It has everything to do with generating revenue; the big-city equivolent of a Hicksville speed-trap. Here, a driver took exception to being fleeced under the color of the law and refused to "step out of the vehicle".
However, I prefer this view of the same scene:
Less "Law and Order: Trivial Crimes Unit"; more 1985 video arcade.
A bright day, with fat dollops of light falling through the buildings. However...
...the dead and gone haunt almost every block. Faintly visible against the brick is the ghost signage of the Kimball Piano Company.
"...All your crying don’t do no good
Come on up to the house.
"Come down off the cross, we can use the wood
You gotta come on up to the house..." -- Tom Waits, Mule Variations.
What kind of pets could they possibly sell here?
I don't know. And I don't want to know.
And then one day,
there were no pickles.
Finally, a purdy tree.
Here solely because it came out well, and is a vivid little reminder that it was warm once, and the sky was blue.
5 comments:
Thanks for this little infusion of Chicago on a cold, stormy Midwest evening. No arty pretension here; just scenes from the street. I love the shot of the El in the foreground, and the tree in the last photo reminds me of the B&B where I stay in Oak Park. I've always wanted to do a pictorial of the old water towers around the city, left over from the days when you needed gravity to feed water to your factory.
Halloween weekend we were getting off the green line in Oak Park after dark when a slow-moving train went by on the freight tracks with three 1930s-era passenger cars in tow, on their way to a museum or private collection somewhere. Things like that happen in Chi-town all the time if you're paying attention.
Heres some of my (no kidding)PICTURES, since you did'nt ask.
nice!
I liked the pickle jar photo for some weird reason. It seems so lonely, so bereft, so... out of pickles.
Good eye, mon, thanks for sharing.
Re: The pet shop. Down the road aways from my home is a military base. Among the detritus that has inevitably washed up around the edge of the base is a restaurant that sells, according to the prominently-displayed sign, "1$ Chinese Food". I have been morbidly tempted to stop and see what they slop into the cartons..
but not too tempted.
Meow Meow Kitty Meow Meow...
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