The Dark Night
What you see during the daytime, is not the same as what you will see during the nighttime. The purpose of my map is to show you the city of chicago at night.The purpose of my map is to share with other chicagoans and help navigate the city on the dark hours. It’s to show others that our city is full of life, love and joy. From local business with great values and culture to the exciting nightlife, it has something for everyone. I’m a big fan of my city, but lately with the escalated gun violence , fights and the increasing murder rate it’s been very hard to get out at night and feel safe even in your neighborhood. My maps purpose is to help people explore, while using safe streets to insure their safety as they venture into the night. That’s why I named it the “Dark Night”. Every street differs from the next, every street gives you a different feeling than the other. Busy streets, like streets who have a lot of business going on around them tend to have the most people around, and they tend to give off that feeling of safety and warmness unlike streets who have no stores around or anything that would make it seem lively. Us humans are attracted to light at night, seeing a street that is full of light poles makes us think that the street is walkable and somewhat safe. Seeing a street that is dark and empty makes us feel like if we walk down that street something bad will happen to us so we just avoid it because we’re scared of the dark, we’re scared of the things we aren’t able to see, were afraid of the unknown. These past few weeks, every time we had a walking journal i automatically thought to myself that the walk should be done in the morning, it never once crossed my mind that i can still walk at night and explore. We’ve all been brainwashed to see the city differently once the sun is down, we’ve been brainwashed into thinking the city is ugly and nothing good comes out if it at night, “bad things always happen to those who wander the city at night.” Not everyone has been taught that the city holds a different type of beauty at night, that it holds a different type of life when it’s dark. The mood that i am trying to give off with my map is somewhat serious. During the daytime people think everything is all fun and games, but once the darkness hits everyone becomes serious, you will always find those who are still trying to have fun and be out and about, but the majority of the people won’t leave their homes unless it’s urgent. What i found to be pretty interesting while i was making this map is that summer night time is different the winter or fall night time. You will always find people roaming around the city at night during the summertime, but comes winter and you will barely see one person on the streets. I believe the reason for that is because during the summertime the days are longer and the nights are shorter, and the nice warm breezy weather makes people feel safer unlike the winter time when everything is the complete opposite. There are a lot of factors that will change people’s perspective of the city at night, i for one am scared to walk at night by myself. To be a female and alone in the dark streets is scary, you never know what can happen. My neighborhood doesn’t have much light in it, that makes it even scarier for me to roam around it.
The street that i chose to include in my map is sheffield ave at around 9 P.M. The reason why i chose that street is because of the cubs game. I wanted to see how lively the streets got and the joy in the people’s faces walking to the bars to watch the game or just simply taking pictures of wrigley field. Even Though the cubs lost, people were still roaming the streets and the joy and happiness was still on their faces. As I was waking i felt a sense of safety, but at the same time i felt a little scared. The feeling of safety was caused by how many police officers were around and by how many people were just walking on the street. The feeling of being scared was caused by the roudyness of some. But what i found to be so interesting is the fact that there were so many people in one street, but once you go to the next block the liveliness dies out and not many people were seen walking around.
What i learned from making this map is that every street differs from the other, whether it’s nighttime or daytime, the streets will always look different. Some might be enjoyable to walk around in the day time, others might be frightening to walk around when it’s dark.
