Signals by Chipka
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Description
Twilight lives on VanBuren Street, beneath a stretch of rusting municipal history that thunders with the passage of electrified trains. There are sparks, on occasion. There is thunder. Tens of thousands of volts power the silvery, serpentine people movers, their lines comprising an odd spectrum of public transportation. The primary colors (Red Line, Blue Line,) keep to largely north/south vectors, despite Blue’s rebellious veer westward, and the Purple Line’s secondary-color intrusion into what is clearly primary color territory. The more pastel-tinged secondary colors (Pink Line, Brown Line, Orange Line) ramble at oblique angles, making their various ways to Chicago’s secondary airport, and various townships known for their writers, their lawns, and their local-celebrity schlock-horror maestros.
On nights driven by unseasonable temperaments, the South Loop boundary of VanBuren Street holds moist shadows and implications of things that might be rats, or vermin of a more plastic nature. Condensation in the air forms an unctuous, oily layer of sleaze, and the flash of signal lights color the sodium-vapor tinged shadows with the hints and whispers of rubies, emeralds, and hearth-fire orange, flashing in spastic Morse Code. Cabs engage in their territorial duels. Busses, like dumb, leviathan whales, lumber northward and southward along State Street, pausing only long enough for lights to change from red to green. They echo beneath the VanBuren el tracks, and the things skittering in shadows pause to listen, in order to mark—with their ears—the directions in which likely predators might wander. There are predators in Chicago: small things with bloated egos; there is prey, and then there are pigeons, their circadian rhythms skewed by the ever-present intrusion of light pollution. The pigeons of Chicago exist in their own ecological stratum. Though descended from prey animals, they are simply feral now, and as prodigious in number as cicadas.
There were no pigeons beneath the el tracks of VanBuren street, on the night that sleaze condensed on the windshields of dueling cabs, and no one paid very much attention to the color-coded lights informing the city’s life forms (automotive and otherwise) when to move forward, when to pause and idle, and when to give up all hope and simply, scamper away…
*
I took this photo yesterday; it was unseasonably warm—at least I thought so—and moisture in the air took on the distinct attributes of sleaze: precipitation of some sort. It hovers like fog, and is only visible on surfaces of glass, metal, or automotive fiberglass. I took this photo simply because I liked the colors and the odd, urban mood.
As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week/end.
Comments (15)
KatesFriend
I do like the colours in the shot. Of coarse, I love colours of all kinds. Night time colours in a modern city are so very etherial - a cherished favourite. Perhaps because of the quantum principles which generate them. Evoking a world which humans would not have previously experienced. Except for the old neon tube signs which used to adorn Dairy Queens, motels and bowling alleys. Most a forgotten, inactive and untended eye-sore even when I was a boy. The colours are so pure in a scientific sense - the light interferes with itself bouncing off common objects. They create shadows where shadows would not be expected to form. At the same time they are intense to the eyes, not the filtered light of old but colours in the raw. Light specifically tuned to be red (orangy-red) or green (blueish-green) or the dual lines sodium yellow. A pin prick hole into an alien world if you will.
giulband
Superb artwork !!
renmmk
cool!
wysiwig
Writing as evocative and colorful as Raymond Chandler. The photo is a perfect accompaniment to the writing.
Faemike55
Very interesting image and narrative well done on both
durleybeachbum
The fabulous read and this photo are perfect partners.
kgb224
Superb capture my friend. God bless.
helanker
I agree with Andrea. Together it gave us a special atmosphere. Thats awesome :-)
jendellas
Yes I have to agree tooooooo. x
Sea_Dog
Well done. Great composition.
photosynthesis
Love the bright urban glow framed by the darkness of night. Fine composition & postwork, as well as a poetic description...
auntietk
i'm trying to comment using my phone, so I'm just going to agree with Mark, Andrea, and Claude and call it good. A wonderful presentation!
flavia49
marvellous
MrsRatbag
And I'm going to agree with all of the above; I know about that city sleaze, having spent many years living in Virginia, the land of hot and humid summers and unexpected blizzards in winter. When I first moved there I could not believe that people could live in that moist environment. I never felt dry, and it was a horrid feeling for a non-fish. We have sleaze here too, but it masquerades as sawdust and sea tears, except if you go downtown you can see the "implications" of verminlike creatures too. The implications in the suburbs are of much larger life-forms, beings that have pelts large enough for some humans to have stolen at one time or another for coverings. Another fun photographic ramble, Chip!
anahata.c
when I first read this, I thought, this is one of the best descriptions of downtown chicago at night that I've ever read. Yes, there's some Raymond Chandler in it (Mark/wysiwyg), but I also hear a little Nelson Algren, and even old boogie artists like Jimmy Yancey (who didn't write, but somehow captured your moods in his slow sautering and moaning piano). But it's mostly Chip; and your descriptives are multi-layered visions of night in the South Loop, and the details are spot on. It's a shame that non chicagoans can't get all the little details, but the overall can touch anyone who's known huge central districts of big american cities, at night. "Tens of thousands of volts power the silvery, serpentine people movers, their lines comprising an odd spectrum of public transportation"---even the music of that line is beautiful, and steeped in the numbing rhythms of the Loop at night. (Lots of s's there---you do it so naturally, your verbal music.) Your battle of the colors for the train lines, your sense of the activity beneath the tracks, or the 'leviathan whales' of the buses, or comparing pigeons to cicadas, or the description of sleaze condensing on metal and glass, or the creatures of the road paying little attention to the lights above---as if those light were strictly for show, and a sleaze-show at that---are all brilliant and heartful, a mini slide-show of the loop at night, written in words. Dazzling, in fact. Your image couldn't say it better. Great image, not only because of the directions blaring in our faces---one going one way, the other going another. (Well one isn't going anywhere, but rather stopping us---in a cheap dive striptease bar sign kind of way.) But the blasting contrast of that dayglo-orange and that deep saturated blue, with it's aqua-marine blue around it...it's a visual sleaze punch. And hints of Chicago's cold drab stone all around it, lit by the unreal reds and sodium vapor yellows that we all know so well in this crazy town. Chicago has lots of modern (often cold) towers, but somehow at the heart of it is still that cold drab stone that still sits in the loop like the old relatives who retire to another room and don't leave because they feel they've been around too long and this night belongs to them). It's a great image, and you couldn't have made a better description for it if you tried. Brilliant, eye popping, and moving. It's moving. Terrific work as always, Chip.