On my way out to lunch, I noticed a lot of police cars and fire trucks along State Street. I also noticed that the security guard in our building followed me outside, and was standing by the front door, looking at the commotion.
I went in and talked to the security guards at Block 37, and learned that the rooftop area is technically on the building… but belongs to a different company entirely. There is an apartment complex right next to the mall, called Marquee – and the rooftop belongs to them.
I’ve been able to peer down Wabash a few times during my commute, and I’ve always found it fascinating. Partly for the actual construction work going on, but also partly because I found myself imagining some distant time in the future.
In my head, I compare what I see now in the present tense, imagining some future day when this will seem incredibly old and antiquated.
I walked near another guy who was also looking up, and asked him if he knew what was going on (he didn’t). I explained that I saw all these folks staring up, but that I tried looking… and had no idea what they were all staring at.
Up until this point in time, it was another normal Wednesday at work, with me doing normal Wednesday things. Seeing this shook me out of my routine, and it was an absolute breath of fresh air. My only regret is that I couldn’t follow them, to see where they (and all their art) ultimately ended up.
I assume this sort of things happens all the time for people doing deliveries in downtown Chicago. But it was just funny to see a ticket on the windshield, and one in the cab that had still not been handled yet.
For some silly reason, I heard a narrator’s voice in my head saying things like “No one ever went to that train station, because the townspeople all knew it was haunted.”
A few days ago, while walking to work, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I was at Wabash and Washington, and something just seemed… a little off.
At this point, I heard a voice yell out to me “You can walk on it.”
Whenever I’m walking down the street and I run into a group of people moving slowly, I get frustrated. I usually will try to find a way around them, but if it’s a large group… sometimes, there’s nothing you can do but roll your eyes, slow your pace, and shuffle along until there’s an opening.
There is a plan underway to get the George Lucas museum here in Chicago. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in favor of it, but has encountered opposition from a group called “Friends of the Park.”
Spotted a truck dropping off a dumpster on State Street, yesterday. I walked by at first, but then swung back with my phone to try to snap a photo. Luckily for me, a guy had hopped onto the truck to talk to the driver… and the dumpster was paused in this position.
I found all this fascinating and could have stayed out here for an hour, just watching. I’m curious why they had three welders at once, and whether it was necessary for them to be working in tandem… or if they were just rushing to meet a certain deadline.
While walking to work this morning, I spotted two welders working on a new bus shelter on Madison. I’ve seen the ongoing construction along both Madison and Washington this year, but didn’t really know much about the Loop Link until I looked it up this afternoon.
My suspicious nature immediately made me think this was part of some marketing campaign. Anytime someone is hustling a hashtag, that’s my basic assumption. But despite those feelings, the sense that someone shared a message about utopia by taping a piece of paper up… it caught my eye. I think I looked the look of the message, rather than the message itself.