From My Position: Ashland Ave. Station

One of my favorite locations to shoot from in the City, this neighborhood is, sadly, rapidly gentrifying. Probably not too much longer before low-rise industry (or what's left it) is replaced by condos. But for now...

Looking eastbound towards the City.

Old Chicago. Well, older Chicago.

Old Chicago at sunset.

Water towers and truss bridges make for a classic Chicago scene.

Not all shots are on the horizon.

A noble sentiment, perhaps.

Suicide is Painless

A few years ago when I was back in The City, the word came down: the suicide ramps were being removed. Long time Chicagoans will remember (fondly or otherwise) the on ramps used to merge onto the Kennedy Expressway and the excitement they added to your drive. For everyone else, the issue was that a lot of the cross streets had on and off ramps onto this part of the expressway, meaning that there was very (very) little room to accelerate and merge.

Over the years the city had rebuilt a lot of the bridges (poorly I might add in that architecturally, they broke up the unity of design that was already present - this really started with the Democratic National Convention in 1996, but that's a story for another day) but in the summer of '09, they were going to remove the last vestiges of the old ramps to allow for longer merge lanes.

So I set out to get some shots before they disappeared forever. But how do you tell the story about the Kennedy Suicide ramps in a photo?

Here's what I came up with:

Focus On: CTA El Platforms (Part One)

I've already started to cover the Paris Metro, so let's give the hometown system some love. Here's a few scenes from the CTA: