Expect the Unexpected

On Monday afternoon, my two paint chips took me on an adventure from Belmont back to Lincoln Park. I was very excited about this walk, my eyes were scouting for anything in green and yellow. I felt like a kid playing the game “spot it” all over again.

Along the walk, I found many objects in green. Trees, doors, roofs, street signs,… There were plenty of green to keep my eyes busy. However, I found a few interesting things that drawn my attention in.

First, just something very relatable with the recent second presidential debate and the viral meme “the one that got away” ft. Bernie Sanders.

A wooden fence that was covered in green mosses. I spotted it on W School street. It was a neighborhood area, a couple of moms pushing baby carts while exchanging conversation about the presidential debate from previous night, three people went on a run and many people were walking their dogs on the pavements. The traffic on this street was not busy at all, there were actually scarcely any cars crossing, only parked cars on the road sides and a few bikers rode by.

By the wooden fence were many trees and under them lied a white couch. It was not a common scene at all for a couch to be found on the pavement in a nice neighborhood like this. I would expect to find such thing in the alley where thrown away things are usually put at but the presence of this couch surprised me. On this couch, there was an empty envelope that addressed for Jim Bachman. I would assume that Jim read the letter on this couch and then just left the envelope behind. It’s fun to make up stories from the items collected on my walk.

Across the street, there was Hawthorne School and in front of the school was a big yard that people came for soccer practice and running. Obviously there was a lot of green and yellow color filled in this area since there were many trees and it is the changing color season. An interesting item in green caught my eyes at the front of the fence, there were ribbons tied to the fence by (i guess) the students at this school. On every green ribbons, there were notes written in children writing that promoting protecting the environment: “Go Green or Go Home”…

In the yard, a little girl was practicing riding bike and she got her dad with her. Her cute little bike was not green, it was purple but her sassy voice made me could not not notice. She yelled: “Daddo, you’re doing it all wrong. You pushed me. You can’t do that”.

Then, right by the fence was a green bike sculpture. The symbol of the bike, the color green show a lot about the value in this community.

A green door.

Two green doors.

I spotted many green doors in this neighborhood until I reached N Racine Avenue. Yes, it was a green and environmental friendly neighborhood.

On N Racine Avenue, I found less green and more yellow objects, also it could be due to the time of the day, it was around 7p.m and the sun had went down and street lights were on, shining a warm blurry yellow light.

A sunset painting with the bright yellow sun quickly got my attention. It was painted on the wall outside of a little bar called Will’s Northwoods Inn Super Club. There was a yellow-antlers deer sculpture in the bar’s garden, it was really big but I could only see its head because of the trees. Inside the bar and in the garden, the TVs were showing a baseball game and people were watching, yelling and drinking beers. They were all wearing white shirts with red letters, I was not sure which team it was.

After the bar, it was like a halloween decoration tour on this street. I saw a white house with white big windows but the interesting was what inside those windows. Two pictures of zombies with yellow background were taped to the window, they freaked me out when I was trying to take a picture and realized there was some figures in the windows. Huge applaud to this cool idea of Halloween decoration!

But that was not it, check out what the had under those windows… These people are ready for the Halloween month.

As the night got darker, I found more objects to be yellow and I started to wonder if any of them were truly yellow or if they were only the reflection of the street lights. However, I did found another painting on the wall outside of a building that has some yellow color on it, both on the painting and the doors. The building was the Rose’s lounge and the painting had a blonde woman in it.

When I got back to campus, I found a really cool object, which sadly was not yellow, however, it is not everyday that you see something like this on campus. It was a pink school bus. At first, I thought that it was a sorority’s bus night but when I took a closer look, it was a band bus. The band name was Let’s be Leonard. A band’s member was there so I took the chance to ask him about this very cool looking bus and what there mission was. He told me that they were a rock n roll jazz band based in New York and they were touring around the country. They did not have a show in Chicago but were only stopped by and hung out in the city. Anyways, the guy was nice and very hippie looking with long dreadlocks and beanie. I talked with him for a bit and then let the guy along with his simple dinner of cereal on his cozy tour bus.

I ended my walk right there at 7:30 p.m after meeting Let’s be Leonard. The walk was full of surprises!

Response: What is mappable? What is un-mappable?

I think what mappable are things that are big in size, easy to be noticed and that have fixed address or location. Also it has to be a place or location that many people go to. Things like roads, schools, churches, parks or malls are mappable. Many people go to these places or need to go to these places therefore they become mappable or in another word, needed to be added to the map. On the other side, things that are unmappable are things or places that are not shared to the knowledge of a lot of people or not stay in one location for a long period of time. For example, the couch that I have just found on my walk was unmappable. If I want to map the location where I found this couch, I had to refered to the location of the school across the street. In the reading, I remember there was a map of all the graffiti with the roads and turns and the title of these graffiti but without the names of the streets or the building (somthing that was bigger than them and more noticeable) that these graffiti were at, we would never find them, that is if we ever want to find them.