magnificent geekery in chicago (ii)

OK! So I didn't get outta my hotel til like... 11:30am or so. But first stop was to head down Grand to see 520 again in the daytime. Here we are, stalking closer from the east side:



Unfortunately the day was pretty overcast, so everything's kinda dark. When I get home I might see about adjusting the brightness/contrast on this pics, but for now, you're just gonna have to squint at shadows!

I was actually parked to take pics at this point. A nice old lady with a huge Russian accent approached to try to give me her parking permit, which still had an hour left on it. Alas, I was only there for 5 minutes, so I had to decline :{ In retrospect I shoulda just taken it and let her feel like she did a good deed!

Regardless, this is the view back up the street toward MM (the cluster of mid-high buildings). You can literally see Kingsbury from Michigan and Grand on the Mile -- it's that prominent.



And this is taken from the opposite corner from 520. It's so tall that I couldn't fit the base into the frame -- you can just see the top of the parking structure, where there's a rooftop garden, at the lower left of the frame. The building is actually kinda bluish in daylight, but bad lighting makes it seem darker:



At that point, I decided I'd stalked 520 enough, and headed north toward lake view. This seems to have been more or less the main street in lake view --



Here's another view of that church you can see in the first pic:



In all honesty, Lake View wasn't nearly as nice as I thought. One thing I'm discovering about big northern cities is that even the nice areas kinda look run-down. I think it's the bad weather. I remember seeing some seriously nice houses in Atlanta. And at some point I'll go take some pics of the wealthier communities in the SF Peninsula for comparison!

A residential street in LV. Pretty much every house was a 3-4 story victorian:



And these are probably the nicest buildings I saw there:



Heading west from Lake View, I started getting into the industrial corridor along the north branch of Chicago River:



Here are some warehouses in the area:



I didn't spend too long looking for cool rundown warehouses because I had to go meet up with an old friend. So at that point I started heading southwest. But then I ran across this:



Lookit that! Asha really is in Chicago! Only... she's a cow. And a spa.

On my way out to the 'burbs, I just had one more stop:



In case it's not clear wtf the sign on the door says, it's Spring. :D

OK! Next post will be all Stickney, and it's gonna be huge because I stalked that town to death *LOL*