Seattle’s Father and Son sculpture, by Louise Bourgeois, reveals different skyline views as the fountain alternates between obscuring its two figures hourly.
Green was the theme of the Chicago Green Music Festival, held near Wicker Park on June 23 and 24. Along with street festival fun and a music lineup programmed by Subterranean, the Green Music Fest aims to promote environmental sustainability and introduce Chicagoans to eco-conscious products, companies, and ideas.
Clevelanders check out a UN-H1N Huey helicopter in Public Square as part of Marine Week, a weeklong showcase of skills, equipment, vehicles, and demonstrations.
Over 750 Marines invaded Cleveland last week for a friendly engagement to celebrate Marine Week. The week’s demonstrations commemorated the city’s support for the military and honored community, country and Corps.
One of Chicago’s most visible landmarks, the 150 foot ferris wheel at Navy Pier pays homage to the wheel’s creation for the 1893 World’s Fair. – Chicago, IL
Have you ever seen the tunnel at the Jackson stop look so serene? Like the passage from the red to blue line, it's a fitting transition for the New Year. - Chicago, IL
“Where anything might happen – and usually does,” the narrator of this 1930′s newsreel describes Chicago, “a city of superlatives.” The forces of energy and movement, this sense of anticipation are what attracts so many people to city living. Whether or not you’re a nerd for history, any viewer enjoys seeing their city on the screen. It’s fascinating to compare the world you know to a past, fictionalized, or futuristic version.
This clip allows us to tour places we now take for granted through the lens of the extraordinary superlatives they were at the time. The skyline seems strangely stark behind the Wrigley Building and Water Tower. Rail yards line Michigan Avenue in what has only recently become Millennium Park. The Haymarket Police Statue is on public display in a park sometime between attempted bombing attacks. We dash from the Union Stockyards to the buildings of the 1893 and 1933 World’s Fairs, admire gypsy women at a market on Maxwell Street, and then bask in the State Street’s bright lights.
Thomas Edison shot Chicago’s second movie ever in 1897 at the corner of State and Madison (a police parade film preceded it by a year). Yet on a corner that is still one of Chicago’s busiest, we see no stolid sepia-faced citizens posing stiffly. Streetcars and horses pass through a sea of bowler and boater-capped heads, while picketers brandish indistinguishable signs in the thirty-second clip. The city is a measure in motion.
With shape-shifting neighborhoods and movements that come and go, our contemporary street corner will morph someday as well, sooner than we know. Compare Edison’s intersection with the State and Madison intersection of 2009.
Cities changes every day, it’s why we’re drawn to them. Step out on the
sidewalk, inhale the energy, and examine what’s in motion around you. After
all, anything can happen.
Revelers return home after a parade celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Chinese Revolution commemorating Chinese Independence. - Chicago, IL
“Hundreds of thousands of buyers repeatedly receive up-to-the-minute information concerning products necessary to their daily living.” No, we are not talking tweets or Google+, the advertising medium in mind is billboards.
“To Market to Market,” by General Outdoor Advertising Co. offers a look at daily life in Chicago circa 1942. While we discover the scientific processes behind outdoor ad placement, Chicagoans are seen running errands in furs, hats, and heels or pulling up vintage automobiles to a filling station. A billboard reading, “Help Defense, Don’t Waste Antifreeze,” displays a sense of the times, yet ads for Sunkist, Coca-Cola, and Rice Krispies remind us that maybe nowadays are not so different.
