Mermaid Sea and Flannel Pajamas
Georgia Reese
October 2, 2022
The colors I picked for this week are variations of my two favorite colors. Purple and green. The purple color is a sort of gray-purple shade called “Flannel Pajamas” and the green shade is almost a dark teal shade called “Mermaid Sea.” I tried to pick colors that were more unique and would maybe be harder to find, but surprisingly, once I started looking, the colors were seemingly everywhere.
Neomi suggested that I take my walk in Uptown and I asked her to come with me. We got off of the Wilson stop and almost immediately found something that was the same color as Mermaid Sea. It was a mural outside of a restaurant called Lucy’s. As I was taking my pictures, an employee walked out of the door with a burger that looked so enticing. She looked a little confused as to why we were standing outside of the door holding a paint chip up in the air, so Neomi told her, “sorry we’re doing a school project,” and she smiled at us and carried off with the burger.
We continued walking and almost instantly found a sign that matched Flannel Pajamas. It was the bottom part of an ombre sign of a smoke shop called, “Smoke Dreams.” And then about two steps later we found another match for Mermaid Sea: an empty box of NewPort cigarettes. Whether it was fate or an ironic coincidence, I appreciate it either way. As we continued walking, I looked over at Neomi’s bag and realized that a star on the design matched Mermaid Sea, so I made her pose.
The next colors that we found that matched the paint chips were on a mural wall. The mural wall is a project made by nine woman artists who painted their own unique murals on the side of a wall called Yard Walls Project. The murals had colors that were shades that matched my paint chips, but I found a mural that had a shade of purple that was a completely perfect match to Flannel Pajamas. I would not be surprised if the artist used Flannel Pajamas to paint her mural because when I put my paint chip up to the wall it almost entirely blended in.
As we walked I had a genius epiphany, my new piercing is the exact color of Mermaid Sea. Neomi tried to convince me that it was not, but when I looked at the pictures of my piercing right next to Mermaid Sea, it was almost as perfect a color match as the mural and Flannel Pajamas. We turned a new direction and made our way into what I believe to be a residential neighborhood. We saw dogs, people, and many apartment buildings. On one of the poles outside of a building I saw a sticker that was fading into a color that resembled Flannel Pajamas.
With that, we walked back to the red line and Neomi almost convinced me to get on the wrong train, but I stopped her with about two seconds left before we could get completely lost. Overall, I feel quite accomplished on this walk, as it is the first walk I have done without getting lost, and I enjoyed hunting down Uptown for Mermaid Sea and Flannel Pajamas.
Malchick emphasizes walkability to a community’s social capital because it builds connections in those communities. Social capital is when a group of people work together for a single goal or goals. My hometown somewhat supported a good walkability. When all of the gas prices went up, there was a noticeable increase in pedestrians walking to stores or school or work. There were sidewalks everywhere, but one downfall to the walkability of Jeffersonville, Indiana was the lack of crosswalks. It was so hard to find a crosswalk that would allow you to avoid running across a busy road to the next sidewalk. This is very different from Chicago, which has many crosswalks, so many crosswalks that in some places I get confused as to where they lead to. My hometown community’s walkability has somewhat affected the social capital. There are many community centers and projects and the community is very friendly. (150)
