The Bloomingdale: Oasis or Devil's Playground?

Despite easy access and great publicity, the 2.7-mile stretch of abandoned rail bed isn't slated to open as a park till at least 2016. Whose job is it to secure it until then?

by John Greenfield

[This article also ran in the Chicago Reader, www.chicagoreader.com.]

On a recent Wednesday evening, with hours of summer daylight left, dozens of people were out enjoying the Bloomingdale line, a dormant railroad right-of-way that runs 2.7 miles across the northwest side, 15 feet above its namesake street. They strolled, they jogged, they cycled, and they exercised their dogs, oblivious not only to the carpet of glass, weeds, and garbage but to the law: the Bloomingdale line is private property, and everyone on it was trespassing.

Of course not all trespassers are created equal. "During the day joggers and bicyclists are fine," says Bucktown resident Joan Fox, whose house abuts the line. "But when the sun goes down the violence goes up."

Fox and her neighbors say traffic on the line, both harmless and not, has skyrocketed since the city and advocacy groups began promoting its conversion into the Bloomingdale Trail, a long, skinny 12-acre park. "Until this year there were a handful of people up there a week," she says. "Now it's more like 50 people a day."

Bike wheel left on Bloomingdale line

So who's responsible for keeping them out? The right-of-way still belongs to Canadian Pacific Railway, but the railroad has agreed to sell it to the city for a dollar and is eager to seal the deal. Chicago Department of Transportation spokesman Brian Steele, however, says the city probably won't take possession until a preliminary design process is completed, more than 18 months from now. Meanwhile, trail security has become a hot potato.

The idea for the conversion was first documented in a 1997 update of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning's regional trails plan, which noted the line's potential as a greenway. The last train came through in 2000, and in 2002 the city began planning an elevated multiuse trail to run from Ashland to Ridgeway (three blocks west of Central Park), connecting Bucktown, Wicker Park, Humboldt Park, and Logan Square. In 2003 advocates formed Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail to promote the concept and prevent the railroad embankment from being leveled and the land sold to developers. The following year the Chicago Plan Commission approved the trail as part of a plan to remedy the shortage of open space in Logan Square, which has the city's second-worst parkland-to-people ratio.

Soon after that, the national nonprofit Trust for Public Land came on board to help manage the project and facilitate the purchase of four parcels of land for trail access points, at a cost of $1.2 million. In 2008 buildings were razed at Milwaukee and Leavitt and at Albany, making it easy to walk up the embankment at Leavitt and clearing space for the half-acre Albany/Whipple Park, which opened last fall near an existing trail up to the rail bed.

CAPS meeting at Albany/Whipple park this summer

Although the abandoned line has seen its share of visitors in the past decade—from partying gang members to homeless people searching for a place to sleep—Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail board president Ben Helphand admits these recent developments, along with awareness-raising events like "Walk/Bike/Run the Bloomingdale Trail" in late June, have encouraged new waves of residents to "venture up there."

In November 2008, the city issued a request for proposals for the preliminary design and engineering for the trail. According to CDOT's Brian Steele, 23 firms applied and five were selected for further screening. In mid-July the city announced its choice: Arup, a London-based multinational firm whose projects include the Sydney Opera House, the "Water Cube" aquatics center for the Beijing Olympics, and the LEED Platinum-certified California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Arup's nine subconsultants would include Chicago's Ross Barney Architects, which worked on the Wacker Drive reconstruction and Chicago Riverwalk, and Brooklyn's Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, a landscape design firm that worked on New York's High Line, a park similar in concept to the Bloomingdale Trail.

CDOT has secured about $3 million in state and federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement funds lined up for the design process, which Steele says will include significant community input via charettes organized by CDOT and the Trust for Public Land. Steele says it's premature to estimate construction costs, but Andrew Vesselinovitch, Chicago urban parks director at the Trust for Public Land, puts the figure at around $70 million. Helphand's hoping for completion by 2016—just in time for the Olympics, should Chicago win its bid for the games.

The Bloomingdale Trail is often compared to the high-profile High Line, which in June opened a half-mile stretch of its planned 1.5-mile conversion of an old elevated rail line on Manhattan's lower west side. The new space features native plants and shade trees, sleek surfaces, an undulating planked walkway, and lots of seating, including reclining wooden deck chairs for contemplating the unique city views. It's already had half a million visitors.

It came into existence relatively quickly: the Friends of the High Line began lobbying for the conversion in 1999, and construction began in 2006. Still, Helphand says he's satisfied with Chicago's progress. "The High Line and the Bloomingdale are very different beasts," he adds. "You think Bucktown's a wealthy neighborhood? Go to Chelsea." Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg and her husband, media mogul Barry Diller, alone donated $15 million to the $150 million project. "And remember, our trail is twice as long. As far as I know it will be the world's longest elevated greenway."

In the meantime, though, it's a liability for whoever has to keep it secure. Canadian Pacific has its own security people, who you'll occasionally see driving SUVs along the rail bed, but at a recent public meeting a rail cop said they have only five officers covering three states.

John Escalante, who came on in June as commander of the 14th District, says the police don't generally arrest trespassers on the line—though they will detain suspected gang members and contact Canadian Pacific to see if they want to press charges. (The district is apparently pretty busy this year; on August 3 the Sun-Times reported that it's experienced double-digit percentage increases in murders, robberies, and assaults and batteries with weapons.)

"The biggest problem is the public perception that there is a trail here when there isn't," says Canadian Pacific spokesman Jeff Johnson. "It's a rail line. Anyone who's up there, whether they're walking, jogging, or doing vandalism, is trespassing."


Joan Fox says her house, which comes as close as two inches to the trail, has been hit by rocks and Roman candles fired from the trail, and taggers have defaced the back wall three times this year, leaving graffiti below her three-year-old son's window. "That makes me really nervous," she says. A group of eight or nine "squatters" often camps out near the house, she says, smoking, drinking, and playing music, although she doesn't think they're to blame for the vandalism. "They urinate by my son's bedroom window and I can hear them snoring," she says. "I call the police and they're usually very responsive but sometimes after an hour I have to go out at 10 PM and ask them to move. They've been cool about it but it could have been a lot worse."

Fox and her husband, Rodney Mann, recently put in a privacy fence and a security camera and will be installing bars on their son's window. She also got permission from Canadian Pacific to add barbed wire to the top of an existing chain-link fence at her own expense, but has opted not to spend the money. "I don't understand why either the city or the railroad can't secure this," she says. "It's not my property. I don't want to spend a whole lot more on this."


One of Fox's neighbors, who didn't want her name used, says she had a baseball smash through a plate glass window from the trail and had to replace it at a cost of $800. Another neighbor, also speaking on condition of anonymity, says young men hanging out on the line have dropped rocks on her kids playing in the alley below. In June and July, Fox and her neighbors say, there were three break-ins in homes abutting the Bloomingdale line within a two-block stretch near the intersection of Hoyne and Churchill; in mid-July burglars broke into a home while the residents slept, stole a wallet and keys, and then drove off in their car.

Escalante says he vaguely remembers that incident but doesn't think there's much evidence that people are using the trail to break into houses. "There doesn't seem to be an inordinate amount of burglaries happening along the Bloomingdale line," he says.

The development of trails like the proposed Bloomingdale project, notes a FAQ on the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail site, "has actually reduced crime. The use of lighting, guardrails, webcams, bicycle police, and emergency telephones will ensure safety." Fox and her neighbors believe it, but want a solution for the interim. "It will be safer when the trail is finished, but it was also safer two years ago when no one was up there," says Fox. "I'm wondering what we're going to do in the next seven years before it's built."


Fox says she and about 15 neighbors sent a letter to 32nd Ward alderman Scott Waguespack on May 31 requesting action to secure the Bloomingdale line. On July 7 Waguespack held a closed meeting to discuss the issue with representatives from other affected wards, the railroad, the 14th District police, CDOT, Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail, and the Trust for Public Land.

"I've supported the trail from day one," says Waguespack. "But we're getting a ton of people up on the line. Someone even bolted a nice wooden ladder to a wall at Ashland near Walsh Park." (Last week pieces of a steep wooden staircase remained bolted to the wall, but a pile of lumber was on the ground. On one of the boards someone had written in Sharpie, "Seriously, please don't take this!?! We are trying to make this a public access way. Don't take it!")



At the July 7 meeting, says Jeff Johnson, a representative of Canadian Pacific said the railroad could tear up the tracks and grade the rail bed in the near future to create a simple dirt path. The city has rejected the idea. In an e-mail to 35th Ward alderman Rey Colón, CDOT's Brian Steele explained: "The Canadian Pacific, wanting to rush the City into relieving it of its responsibilities to maintain a facility it and predecessor railroads used commercially for decades, made a vague suggestion at a recent meeting that they would 'throw a strip of asphalt up there,' not including any necessary structural repairs, railings, ADA compliant access ramps, bridge reconstruction, lighting, protection for adjacent landowners, or environmental remediation.

"Such a facility would be unsafe, fail the Park District's land acquisition standards, and be unsustainable as it would leave the City with immediate repairs and no resources to maintain 37 bridges and 37 embankment segments that are nearly a century old. It was not a serious or acceptable offer, nor does the city's rejection reflect anything more than properly serving the public interest as it pursues this project with the goal of achieving the best long-term results."

On July 28, to address rumors about the offer, Colón posted a statement based on
Steele's e-mail on a Logan Square community forum. Of all the projects recommended by the Logan Square Open Space Plan, he added, "the Bloomingdale Trail is the grandest, most compelling and due to its magnitude, the most costly. It is going to take time."

Colón did tell me a week later that he's interested in cheaper, quicker ways to build the trail than the current projections allow. "I'm not an engineer but I do see people using the line right now," he said. "I'd like to know, could we start with ten million dollars and get the trail up to an acceptable level of safety and then sort of pay as we go to improve it?" He also told me he and Waguespack discussed this possibility while cycling together on the boulevards during the Active Transportation Alliance's Open Streets event on August 1.

On July 23, Waguespack hosted a public meeting on security at the Bucktown-Wicker Park Library. Helphand and TPL's Andrew Vesselinovitch made a presentation on the conversion plans. Raymond Valadez, chief of staff for First Ward alderman Manny Flores, attended, as did Escalante, a few other Chicago police officers, and some Canadian Pacific rail cops. About 60 Bucktown residents showed up, and most seemed fired up about trail-related crime. Photos were circulated: pictures of an encampment, the staircase at Ashland, cases and cans of beer, and even the half-burned corpse of an upright piano.


During the Q & A one man demanded, "All of you who are promoting the trail as such a great thing need to step up and secure this." Another suggested the possibility of tearing down the rail line and building an at-grade path: "It'd be safer and cheaper." A third suggested the residents pool their money to install secure fencing along the trail, or else consider filing a lawsuit against Canadian Pacific. "The railroad's weighing the consequences of having to spend money on security versus the cost of [potential] litigation," responded Waguespack.

"That was productive," said the alderman the next day. "We got a sense of what the residents of the ward would like to see and I think we're all on the same page. They've accepted that the trail is going to open but they want to see it secured."
In early August, according to Waguespack's chief of staff, Paul Sajovec, the city fenced off vacant lots at Kimball and at Milwaukee and Leavitt, making access more difficult. "There was a big run-around from various city departments about who was going to step up and put in the fence," he adds. "The city owns the lot, so it's their responsibility to secure it."

The lot on the east side of Milwaukee north of the line is indeed fenced, with green tarp (already defaced) on it to block the view and a locked gate. But on the south side of the line, there's a door-size gap between the end of a wrought-iron fence and the beginning of a concrete wall, and beyond that a path leading up the embankment. The small piece of property on the south side of the line still belongs to the railroad, according to Vesselinovitch.

In the wee hours of August 11, several bicycles, including a chopper with a mutilated Barbie tied onto its elongated fork, were locked to the fence and nearby sign poles, and several twentysomethings were walking down the path, carrying fixed-gear bikes and doing an a cappella rendition of Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart."


I could hear more voices coming from the rail line, so I clambered up to investigate. Two young women and a young man were drinking cans of High Life and the women were playfully chucking rocks at each other. I asked if I could interview them for the story and they agreed to speak anonymously. I asked if they knew it was illegal to be there, and they said they did. The women soon wandered off, but the guy, who was wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt featuring the face of Bob Ross, host of public TV's The Joy of Painting, said he and his friends often came up to party and have never had any trouble from the police.

"A couple weeks ago there were about 15 of us up here and we heard a scream," he said. "A cop showed up and said someone got their purse snatched nearby and asked if we saw anybody. He was pretty chill. I think he realized we were just hanging out and not causing any trouble."

Although he occasionally encounters "assholes" on the line, he said, he enjoys using the Bloomingdale line in its primitive state. "I kind of like that it's not a trail yet. It's nice to have a part of the city where you can drink out in the open without worrying about getting busted."

As if to prove his point, as we walked together back down to the street, two police officers were confronting three men who had been drinking on the sidewalk, ordering them to pour out their beers. When two of the men, one of them a small guy with gray hair and beard, protested and cursed at the cops, the officers pushed them against the fence and forced them to empty their bottles over the side.

As the third man retreated across the street, the first two struggled and kept swearing. The officers handcuffed them to the fence. When the gray-haired one ignored an order to "sit your ass down," the officers hit him repeatedly on the legs with their night sticks.

By the time I rode off, at 1 AM, eight police vehicles, including a paddy wagon, had appeared. All three of the men were loaded into the wagon as a small crowd of officers stood on the sidewalk chatting. The three young people I had talked to on the rail line sat on the parkway, watching in silence.

Waguespack and Manny Flores both say fences probably won't keep out the trespassers neighbors are most concerned about. "The rail line has already been used by runners, walkers, and bicyclists for a long time," Flores says. "I don't think that trying to seal it off to all users is necessarily going to be the right answer. If someone wants to use the trail for nefarious purposes, they're going to figure out some way to get around whatever barriers you put up there."


The onus for securing the line is on Canadian Pacific because it owns the land, he adds. "But the city, and the nonprofits and community organizations, and the residents that are promoting the idea of a trail, also bear some responsibility," he says. "We're all going to have to work together to improve safety."

Helphand says his organization is adding messages on its Web site and in future dispatches that say trespassing on the line could harm efforts to build the trail, but advocates for "common sense" solutions like warning signs, better fencing at access points, and more enforcement by the Canadian Pacific security force and the police.

"The way I see it, everyone has the same objective, to turn the Bloomingdale line into a trail," says Paul Sajovec, "but we have an open-ended time frame. Some constituents who are having to deal with the hassle of having it be a no-man's-land right now would like to see it razed. Canadian Pacific has over 1,700 miles of track in Chicagoland and only five people to patrol it. They're being asked to provide security for a property that's actually a drain on their bottom line. Other than liability they don't have much of an incentive to secure the trail right now."

Shortly after the July 23 meeting, Canadian Pacific's Jeff Johnson promised Waguespack's chief of staff that the railroad would install private-property signs along the Bloomingdale line and committed to securing legal grants of access for property owners to install barriers, like fences and shrubs, on Canadian Pacific property—at their own expense. "We're willing to work with them on this," he says.

Jason Rothstein's book "Carless in Chicago"

By John Greenfield

Jason Rothstein’s new book, Carless in Chicago: Live and Thrive in Chicago Without Owning a Car, will be coming out this summer on Chicago’s Lake Claremont Press.

Rothstein works at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health and is closing in on his master’s degree in the field. His book is a how-to guide for improving your health, saving money and reducing stress by ditching your car if you own one, and getting the most out of Chicago if you’re already car-free.

The book will be in stores in a few weeks. In the meantime, Rothstein’s website, www.carlessinchicago.com, which went live this week, is a great resource in itself. It includes Rothstein’s blog about car-free living, links to other green transportation blogs, agencies and organizations. There are also links to “Carless Tools” like the Chicago Bike Map, CTA Bus Tracker, RTA Goroo routefinder, and Walkscore, a site that rates the ped-friendliness of any address.

Vote With Your Feet recently met with Rothstein at Intelligentsia Coffee near Metra’s Millennium Station and asked him about how the book came to be, what it offers to both car-free newbies and black belts, and what Chicago need to do to become America’s top city for green transportation.


I think I read in some promotional materials that you used to be an “autoholic” and have since made a transition to being car-free. Can you tell me the story of how you changed from someone who drove a lot to someone who’s putting out a book on car-free transportation?

I’ve had a car since I was in college many years ago. It made sense for me to have a car then because my family was in Chicago and I was going to school in Ohio and was driving back and forth. After a while I lived and worked for a while in the Twin Cities up in Minnesota. I didn’t find the Twin Cities to be a particularly transit-friendly place to live and it certainly made a lot of sense for me to have a car there.

And I was just so used to it by the time I moved back to Chicago, about a decade ago, that it never really occurred to me to give up my car. Except that, the way Chicago is, I was already preferring mass transit, and walking when I could, and biking when I could and so-forth. And so I started thinking about what am I actually spending on my car, and what is my car costing me in other ways in terms of health and other aspects of my life.

And it actually was cost finally that drove me over the edge. It was when I was about to replace my third driver’s side mirror in less than a year because it had been smashed that I started to really think about this. But even from that point it probably took me another year to actually cut the cord. I was anxious about giving up my car. I was very worried that it would be really limiting, that I would be giving up a lot of freedom.

That was certainly one of the motivations behind writing the book. When I talked about this with other people about the possibility of giving up their car they expressed a lot of the same fears that I had had. So this book was intended in part to help them.

What were your fears?

Well, you know we have this idea in our culture that cars equal freedom and when you have a car it means you can hop in your car whenever you want, and go wherever you want and do whatever you want. It’s considered liberation on wheels, so the biggest fear is of losing that flexibility.

But when I thought about it I realized that the car was actually more of a shackle then a mechanism of freedom because it ate up money that I would rather have used for other things. It ate up anxiety in terms of leaving this big expensive hunk of metal out on the street where it could lose a driver’s-side mirror, for example. Stress from commuting, and other aspects of car ownership that are actually just not that pleasant.

What are some of the benefits you’ve experienced since you went car-free?

It’s on a couple levels. Certainly there’s a huge financial benefit, and the book does talk about that quite a bit, only because a lot of people don’t realize just how much their car costs them. A lot of the costs of cars leave our lives in these big, orderly chunks: a car payment every month; an insurance payment every six months. And so we don’t necessarily feel the sting of what that costs. It’s often a surprise to people when they really think about it and add up what they’re spending on their car.

There are other benefits as well. I wasn’t in poor health before but certainly there are health benefits to walking more, to cycling more. There are mental health benefits to stress through using mass transit. A personal benefit to me, which won’t apply to everyone but may apply to some people, is that I’ve been working part-time on a master’s degree for the last few years. Switching my commute to mass transit meant I had time to do all my reading. I don’t think I’d be finishing my masters degree today if I didn’t have that enforced two hours a day to do school work.

Can you walk us through the different sections of the book – what can people expect?

The book is really divided into two major sections. The first section is about the benefits of going carless, in terms of the financial benefits, figuring out what your car really costs you, does it make sense to go carless from that perspective. It’s about the health benefits of going carless. It also talks a little bit about our societal heath benefits of having fewer cars. That’s not a big theme in the book but I do go into that a little bit.

It talks about assembling a tool kit if you’re going to give up your car in terms of your transit passes and maps and technology. If you have a smart phone there are tools you can use to track your bus routes and things like that. There’s a little bit of a guide to navigating Chicago. Some people, particularly if they’re new to the city, don’t understand the grid system, even though it’s dead simple. So I include some helpful tips.

There’s some information about getting ready to walk more in your life, about getting ready to cycle more, how to become a first-time bike owner. And then the other section of the book covers Chicago by mass transit with the primary focus on the subway and El. And there’s a little entry for every stop on every line, talking about the surrounding neighborhood and some things of interest nearby.

One of the things I really hope is that, in addition to native Chicagoans who are already living here, I’ve talked to people who are visiting Chicago for a week and have found out they’ve never left downtown and Michigan Avenue. And it would be really gratifying to me if some of those people picked up this book and used it as a way to explore the city more thoroughly, because so much of what I love about Chicago takes place outside of downtown and the Near North. I’d like to share that with the tourists as well.

So did you actually visit every El stop in the system?

To the extent that I could. I’m from here originally and I grew up in Hyde Park. As a born and bred Chicagoan I’m quite familiar with most of the city. The scope of the project meant that I had to rely on some second-hand sources, but I did as much direct research as I could.

There’s also a section on CTA buses, how they work and the routes, and then a little bit about Metra and Pace. And there’s a section about when you do need a car. It talks about the city’s two competing car-sharing organizations, it talks about car rental and taxis and a fair amount of information about how to decide between them when only four wheels will do.

What do you hope people will get out of your book?

It depends on the audience. The people I thought about writing this book for were people who were in a position like the one I was in. You have a car, you can think abstractly about the benefits of giving up your car, but you’re not exactly sure how to go about it. Because even if you’re familiar with the transit system and familiar with other modes of transportation you may be having a hard time envisioning your life without a car and how to make that transition.

Also, I think that there are people who are carless by circumstance and maybe feel that they aren’t getting enough out of the city. These are people who don’t have a car either for financial reasons or mobility reasons or something else. Even though the book is called Carless in Chicago, there are a fair number of people who go through a life transition, they get married or have a child or something else and the question is do you need a second car? I hope that this book will help some people decide that they don’t.

And, of course as I mentioned, visitors to the city.

Can you a story about a commute or an excursion you’ve taken that involved interesting uses of different modes?

I love the water taxi. Adding it to my commute adds about 20 minutes in one direction or another but I love doing it – it’s just something I derive a tremendous amount of pleasure from so actually I take the water taxi all the time in the summer ‘cause I just love it. What I usually do is take the 147 [Outer Drive Express] bus from to the Wrigley Building and then take the water taxi to the West Loop and then grab a 38 [Ogden / Taylor] bus from there to my office at UIC.

Another example. As I describe in the book, I’m not a capital “C” cyclist but I enjoy cycling and I like to do it. I don’t have great facilities for cleaning up in the summer heat if I bike to work, so a great thing I like to do is take my bike to work on the bus and then ride home, which is kind of a perfect compromise because I get the benefits of the cycling but also can show up for that 9 am meeting without having to spend a lot of time cleaning up or worrying about what my meeting-mates think of the sweat running down my face.

What are some surprising tips that people who are already car-free might get out of your book?

There are a few things. For one thing, over the last few years the technology component has changed so much that it’s been hard for some people to keep up, in terms of the number of tools available to get schedules and check routes. That’s really changed not only how people use transit but how people make decisions about transit.

I’m often surprised by how little people know about car sharing. They think it might be too expensive or they think it would be too burdensome. They know about it but they assume it isn’t for them without necessarily understanding how it works.

The one that really surprises me is how few people know about commuter benefits, transit benefits. A lot of organizations, particularly larger companies and public employers offer employees to buy transit passes and tickets with pre-tax dollars through a paycheck deduction and it makes a huge difference in terms of what these things cost.

Jason, if you agree that Chicago has the potential to be America’s foremost city for green transportation, that is the big city that’s easiest to get around without a car by various modes, what are the challenges we need to overcome to achieve that status?

It’s a big question and I don’t have a comprehensive list. There are a few things that I would like to see happen in Chicago. We really have a lot of policies that encourage excess car ownership. Whenever we put up a new building, whenever people build new housing, the zoning laws that are such that you have to provide a whole bunch of parking. And that’s not the best policy if you’re really trying to discourage people from bringing more cars into the city.

I’m not sure if we have the political will to get into something like congestion pricing like they do in London or as they’ve considered doing in New York. But it would be nice to Chicago at least seriously look at some of those policies and how some kind of congestion pricing mechanism might reduce the number of cars on the road.

I would like to see the CTA get a little bit more creative about how it expands service. I’m not a transit planner, but I’d like to see things like bus rapid transit [a system of dedicated lanes for buses and kiosks where patrons pay before boarding,] which is relatively inexpensive to build. I’d like to see an expansion of inter-city rail also.

It would be nice if we just had a greater willingness to undertake large projects. We often talk big about transit projects and rail projects, but when it comes down to it there’s a certain lack of will about the funding and the disruptions that would happen to neighborhoods on a temporary basis to make such projects really succeed.

I’m hopeful that if Chicago gets the Olympics that might steer us in some of these directions. I’m sure if that’s going to happen or not but it would be nice if that was at least one more impetus.

And then there’s the other problem of how do we pay for all of it. And that’s a big question and I don’t have any easy answers. Certainly I’d like to see the state fix how it funds mass transit in Illinois but the state has larger funding issues to deal with right now before we can tackle this specifically.

Going Dutch at the ThinkBike symposium

By John Greenfield

[This piece also runs in New City, www.newcity.com.]

On a balmy Wednesday morning, bike racks outside the Thompson Center are clogged with cycles. The drum-shaped building is nicknamed the “Tom Tom” by messengers who chill in the plaza while waiting for work. But today a cleaner-cut crowd has pedaled here in suits and skirts for the ThinkBike symposium, “a Dutch boost to Chicago’s bike-ability.” Naturally, the collection of cycles includes elegant Dutch city bikes and hardworking bakfiets (“box bike”) cargo vehicles.

The workshops, sponsored by the Dutch Consulate General and Active Transportation Alliance, bring bike transportation specialists from the Netherlands together with their Chicago counterparts to brainstorm ways to make our city the Amsterdam of the Midwest. Rather than legalizing pot and prostitution, the goal is to bump our city’s measly one-percent bicycle mode share closer to the utopian standards of Holland, where 27 percent of all trips are made on two wheels, and there are more cycles than citizens.

The visitors from the Netherlands are stylishly dressed in sports jackets and Beatle boots, and most of them are freakishly tall. In the afternoon these flying Dutchmen will pedal their fietsen around town with local politicians, transportation planners and bike advocates, discussing ways to create safer, more appealing streets for cycling.

Active Transportation Alliance's Adolfo Hernandez

Emcee Geoffrey Baer, host of WTTW’s November 29 special “Biking the Boulevards,” kicks off the session with a discussion of our town’s rich bike history. “In the 1890s Chicago was the bicycle manufacturing capital of America,” he says. “Two-thirds of American bicycles were made in the region.” It turns out Richard J. Daley wasn’t the first mayor to push pedaling here – in the 1897 mayoral campaign Carter H. Harrison II coasted to victory with the campaign slogan “Not a Champion Cyclist; But the Cyclist’s Champion.”

Hans Heinsbroek, Consul General of the Netherlands, takes the podium and boasts that his country has 13,000 kilometers of bike paths, tens times more than the total length of highways, noting “The bicycle is the cleanest, most sustainable form of urban transportation.” Heinsbroek says Baer has asked him to read the guttural-sounding names of the other Dutch speakers. “Because, you know, Dutch is not a language but a throat disease.”

Hans Voerknecht, a sustainable mobility consultant, contrasts American and Dutch attitudes towards biking and driving. While most while most kids in Holland bike to school, many U.S. principals forbid their students to pedal to class. “People say the car is the symbol of American freedom,” he says. “But I don’t feel free when I’m sitting in a cage, stuck in traffic.”

Bike policy expert Arjen Jaarsma offers encouragement to Chicagoans who feel that promoting cycling is an uphill climb. He shows a graph illustrating how Dutch cycling dropped off sharply with the rise of car culture after World War II and has only recently recovered to its current levels, after lots of hard work.

Jaarma shows a YouTube video of shiny, happy people navigating the Dutch capital on two wheels and he points out that no one is wearing a helmet. “Bicycling is so normal and the infrastructure is so good there’s no need for them.” The clip features a bumping rap soundtrack: “Step on your pedals and listen to the mic / This is Amsterdam and this is my bike.”

Bridgeport: the Community of the Future

Clare Knipper by the Healthy Food

By John Greenfield

[This article also runs in the current issue of Momentum magazine, http://momentumplanet.com.]

When Blue City Cycles co-owner Clare Knipper calls Bridgeport the “Community of the Future” she’s only half kidding. Sure, this quaint, meat-and-potatoes South Side neighborhood is known for the Union Stock Yards, the Daley dynasty and the White Sox. But recently the area’s seen an influx of forward-thinking artists, activists and entrepreneurs, and it’s become an unlikely hotbed for bicycle projects and green initiatives.

Why? “It’s affordable and close to downtown,” says Knipper. “But it’s a little off the map so it draws the intrepid, people who are more in tune with bike and environmental concerns. And it’s got a lot of fun old-timey stuff.” As such, it’s a great destination for a pedal-powered daytrip.

Settled in the 1830s by Irish immigrants who dug the I & M Canal, and now home to large Chinese-, Mexican-, Italian- and Lithuanian-American populations as well, Bridgeport is bounded roughly by the Dan Ryan to the east, Pershing Road (3900 S.) to the south, the Chicago River to the north and Bubbly Creek to the west. The latter is so called because slaughterhouse workers used to dump offal into the water, causing it to bubble with gas from decomposing carcasses.

Ground zero for Bridgeport’s bike and sustainability endeavors is Bubbly Dynamics (bubblydynamics.com), named after the fetid creek, a former paint warehouse at 1048 W. 37th St. “Green developer” and cyclist John Edel completely rehabbing the derelict three-story structure, using salvaged building supplies that otherwise would have wound up in landfills. Other eco-friendly features include energy-efficient heating and ventilation systems, a green roof for storm water management, and showers and indoor parking for bike commuters.

John Edel on Bubbly's green roof

Officially called the Chicago Sustainable Manufacturing Center, the building houses a number of light industrial workshops and community-oriented businesses. “All the tenants are learning to be more sustainable by operating here,” says Edel.

Edel is currently shopping for a space for his next project, called the Plant (plantchicago.com), which will include larger manufacturing spaces, a warehouse for salvaged construction materials, and a “vertical farm” that will grow food in the air, inside the building.

Yuval Awazu of UV Metal Arts (uvmetalarts.com) moved into Bubbly five years ago. He fabricated his own sandblasting booth and powdercoating oven for painting bikes custom colors. He’s also built some unique rides: choppers, tall bikes, and a six-wheel vehicle called the “Sex Cycle.” He contributed his metal working talents to the building rehab; in exchange, Edel gives him a break on the rent. “For me and the guys who build bike frames upstairs, Bubbly is like an incubator,” says Awazu.

Yuval Awazu

Owen Lloyd, one of the five frame builders from the Bubbly Bicycle Works cooperative, agrees. Each pays only $200 a month for workbench space and shares equipment like “jigs” used to shape frames and forks, and the “surface plate,” a perfectly flat 3,000-pound slab of granite for checking alignment. “John Edel’s the reason we’re here,” says Lloyd. “If he was a regular landlord and I was paying regular rent I wouldn’t be able to do this. He’s a visionary.”

Lloyd at Bubbly Bicycle Works

Not that Lloyd has much time for frame building these days. Along with Clare Knipper, he’s busy running Blue City Cycles (www.bluecitycycles.com) which opened at 3201 S. Halsted in March (see Momentum issue #42). This winter they’re offering a $100 winterizing tune-up package and hosting a maintenance workshop series.

John Salhus

Nearby at 32nd and Morgan, artist John Salhus operates a different kind of bike shop, refurbishing old rides in his painting studio. “For me working on bikes is like Prozac,” he explains. He also wrenches for low-income neighborhood folks who stop by. Recently Salhus built a shrine to randoneurring pioneer Paul de Vivie, the “patron saint of cyclists,” for the Day of the Dead exhibit at the nearby Museum of Mexican Fine Art.

Down the street at 3219 S. Morgan, the Co-Prosperity Sphere (coprosperity.org) is an “experimental culture center” that’s an anchor of the local arts community. The building’s home to founder Ed Marszewski’s Lumpen and Proximity magazines, as well as gallery and performance space.

The other lynchpin of the Bridgeport arts scene is the Zhou B. Arts Center (zbcenter.org), 1029 W. 35th. Founded by brothers Shan Zuo and Da Huang Zhou, this huge space houses galleries, studios and a stylish café.

Sox/35th Red Line station

A mile east on 35th is the CTA’s Sox/35th Red Line station, one of four stops that recently got high-capacity indoor bike parking. The double-decker racks at Sox/35th, with space for 42 bikes, are located in the “paid” area of the station for extra security.

If you bike to Bridgeport, a new green space called Stearns Quarry Park, 2700 S. Halsted, is a great place to take a break. Formerly a limestone quarry, then a landfill, the space has been reclaimed as an urban oasis with a fishing pond, a waterfall and a hilltop 33 feet above street level offering a breathtaking view of the Loop – perfect for a picnic.


Halsted Street, the neighborhood’s backbone, feels like the main street of a careworn small town, except nowadays the roadway is striped with bike lanes and lined with parking racks. The Pants Store, 3513 S., is a great place to buy Dickies and have them shortened into cycling knickers while you wait. Monster Island Toys, 3335 S., features an amazing collection of sci-fi and horror action figures, including a three-foot-high plastic Godzilla. Augustine’s Spiritual Goods, 3327 S., sells books on religion and philosophy, incense and scented oils.

Halsted Street

Bridgeport also boasts many historic houses of worship worth a gander. Founded in 1882 for Polish stockyard workers, St. Mary of Perpetual Help Catholic church, 1039 W. 32nd St., features soaring bell towers and a domed cupola. Reflecting the recent influx of Chinese immigrants to the neighborhood, Ling Shen Ching Tze Buddhist temple, 1035 W. 31st, is a vibrant red building with fluttering prayer flags outside and an ornate golden altar within.


Another nearby sight worth pedaling to is the Stock Yard Gate, just west of Halsted at Exchange St. (4200 S.), a massive limestone arch crowned by a steer’s head. It once marked the entrance to the huge packinghouse district, setting for Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

Ready to refuel? Next door to the defunct Ramova Theater, Ramova Grill, 3510 S. Halsted, is famous for Cincinnati-style chili. Meals at Taqueria San Jose, 3253 S. Halsted, include a side of pickled carrots, onions and jalepenos. Healthy Food Lithuanian restaurant, 3326 S. Halsted, belies its name with dishes enriched with butter, bacon and sour cream. [Sadly, the Healthy Food recently closed.]

Nana cafe

Ed’s Potsticker House, 3139 S. Halsted, serves unusual Chinese entrees, like sautéed lamb with cumin, and fried fish with cornbread. Just opened at 3267 S. Halsted, Nana is a sunny café serving organic breakfast and lunch. Bridgeport Coffee House, 3101 S. Morgan, in a beautiful corner space with a hammered tin ceiling, is a cozy place to laptop.


Thirsty? Bridgeport’s famous for corner taps and “old man bars.” Tucked away at 3200 S. Wallace, Redwood Lounge is a dive with cool retro signage outside, and redwood paneling and Christmas lights inside.

Kaplan's Liquors

The mother of Co-Prosperity Sphere’s Ed Marszewski owns Kaplan’s Liquors (AKA Maria’s), 960 W. 31st, which explains why the bar sports a creepy collection of marionettes and ventriloquist’s dummies.


Why not hop on your bike and find out why the “Community of the Future” is a great place to hang out today?