I was a strange child. I didn’t like comic books; to me, they were like someone else’s coloring books. Why spend a whole quarter on them, when I could buy a blank one and color it in myself? Unfortunately, coloring books—like comic books—never really captured my attention. I was—if anything—pragmatic. I felt that if I wanted to color a picture, it would be best for me to draw it myself: or get someone else to draw the hard parts and the difficult characters, and then use my deluxe box of 48 Crayola colors to my heart’s content. Because of that little childhood quirk, I have no happy memories of comic books, coloring books, and other bits of childhood paraphernalia. In recent decades, comic books have phase shifted. They exist, and will continue to do so…but now, Hollywood has gotten a hold of their money-making potential. Characters (once relegated to used coloring books) are now portrayed on screen by actors in updated costumes. I’ve developed a vague, clinical interest in Gotham City. I can’t say this is recent. I’d always been interested in the place. I once read a poem by Wallace Stevens. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” I’d read a reference in the seventh stanza in which he made reference to Haddam, a city in Connecticut. I wondered if Haddam and Gotham shared similar roots. In English lore, Gotham (a real place, apparently home to goat-herders) was also a place friendly to fools. In 19th and 20th Century American lore, New York, sometimes called Gotham, was also a place friendly to all manner of indolent-minded people of fickle persuasion. I saw connections between Haddam and Gotham, simply because in the Wallace Stevens poem, the men of Haddam were not the sharpest knives in the drawer…they imagined “golden birds” when there were plenty of blackbirds surrounding the pretty women of the city. I was a teenager when I first read that poem, and as a teenager, I’d first made that subjective connection between Gotham and Haddam. I theorized that Batman existed in Gotham simply because the people of Gotham (as the name of their city implied) were foolish and unable to protect themselves from themselves. The bad guys in Gotham City never seem to come fromoutside of that city, after all. Because of recent incarnations of Batman, I’ve been thinking of Gotham City a lot. For anyone who has seen the most recent Batman films, you might recognize Chicago. It would seem that in the 21st Century, Chicago is the new Gotham. (Not surprising, really, the original Gotham was a New York/Chicago hybrid.) As I wandered around making photos last summer, I found places that struck me as familiar, places shown on screen during Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Unfortunately, there is no monorail on Wells Street (but there is an elevated “El” track, though it doesn’t look as…Hollywood flamboyant) the old Sun Times Building is gone; its swan song was actually a bit of destruction and smash-up involving the batmobile, and—to my knowledge—no one has seen Morgan Freeman or Christian Bale ordering pizza anywhere. I can’t recall the name of this building, but I suspect that Corey can give you its exact address. I was more interested in the Chicago Gothic influences of the architecture, and the manner in which the newer Trump Tower reflects itself in the windows. This, I think, is a tiny part of what Gotham City looks like…on a good day: complete with history, folly, and more-than-occasional bad taste looming somewhere just out of frame. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.