Photo by Roman.
The above popped up on a lamp post at Touhy and Sheridan recently. It appears to be signed, you’ll note.
This dog has a stylistic resemblance to a dog from last June:
Though that dog was unsigned… I expect to find others around the Rogers Park neighborhood and indeed just yesterday I found another at Morse & Ashland…
Whachewlookinat?
Just like the movie did, the title of this post promises lascivious scandal and delivers… grasshoppers? Well, the movie had Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon… and Buster Keaton but rather less sex and more prurience than this post has… from one day at Leone Beach Park:
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Photo / graphic by Roman.
Yes, I have been having fun lately with negative images… Depending on how you do it and the objects photographed, some interesting textures and effects can emerge. It’s a cheap trick so I’ll try not to do it too often. In this instance, I like the panorama of vegetation, street signs, vegetation and (of course) the light…
Yep. That’s what they are: love locks. Wikipedia even has an article about them as they do present something of a nuisance at times. Apparently the locks are something like humans. Once they have a foothold, they multiply and take over. Clearly something must be done and soon. Perhaps playing on an endless loop Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dash Light” would be a prophylaxis…
Did I ever tell you that I once witnessed this song performed, at a wedding, by a half dozen or so couples… Lip-synced or sung; I’m sure that some of them knew the lyrics to their part. I treasure the memory as it is too strange to be real but it is.
Photo/graphic by Roman.
Detail from a panel (#89) from the 2022 Artists of the Wall.
Aliens from Earth conquer Mars!
Photo by Roman. Panel detail from the 2022 Artists of the Wall.
Photo / graphic by Roman.
Of the “curios, oddities and cheap tricks” that I’m currently promising, this feels rather like a cheap trick. It’s nothing more than an image that’s been “poster-ized” by GIMP, meaning the number of colors has been drastically reduced. The photo itself is nothing more than a picture of a sharp cloud boundary over Lake Michigan from the Toby Prinz beach in Loyola Park.
Why do I like this altered version? Well, the Midwest / Great Plains sky is something to behold whether straight or in an altered state, but if you don’t have a fascination with that sky and the clouds inhabiting it as I do then it’s easy to shrug off. Reducing the colors makes the familiar slightly uncanny and, more to the point, almost paints the light in boundaries like a contour map. It’s a lot more interesting, imho, especially as the beach almost looks normal.
Liquid Sky, of course, is the title of a 1982 wildly successful independent “cult” film about the New York club scene of that time. That doesn’t have all that much to do with this photo, but I mention it because it is a pet peeve. When I first heard of the film (probably some public radio program) it bothered me. I had a distinct memory of reading a short science fiction story with possibly the same title but certainly with something called “liquid sky” as part of the story, but I was never able to find it, then or now. I suspect it was in one of Judith Merril’s fabulous “year’s best” anthologies, the edition that crumbled from age of course, following that well known fourth law of entropy: The universe tends toward maximum perversity. Thus the volume I want is the one that disintegrates.
Why did it seem like a proper title for an image of sky and water? I don’t know. A voice said, “Liquid Sky” and that’s what it is and I’m sticking to it. But it has nothing to do with the 1980s Manhattan club scene or alien creatures therein.
For the curious, the original photo is below.
Yip Abides 