Found It!

Found objects have seemingly become a big part of indie art and culture. FOUND magazine, which has its roots in Chicago, is dedicated to reprinting objects found by everyday people: birthday cards, drawings, photos, angrily scrawled notes left on windshield wipers. What I like most about this magazine and its website is that its about being alive and the trace materials we leave behind for other people to find. Our emotions, our thoughts, our daily lives can be picked up and glimpsed into by strangers who happen upon our to-do-lists scrawled on receipts.

Here are a few of my favorites on the website, from Chicago and beyond (click on the more link for info on how they were found and how it affected the person who found them):



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(Ed. note: This reminds me of the day before we moved to our new home in Kansas City. My parents made me mad and I hid underneath an exercise machine and blankets. I eventually fell asleep and my parents were frantic, thinking I ran away until I woke up hours later.)


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I could go on and on...

Back Stateside

"New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis... Detroit is a one-trade town... St. Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation...But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities."
--Norman Mailer

I'm back from my travels in Guatemala and hope to start blogging with some regularity pretty soon.

To Serve and Protect

I haven't blogged in such a long time. There's always something fun and interesting going on in Chicago, but for some reason I didn't feel like writing about them. Lollapalooza has come and gone, fall clothes are popping up in store windows, but I will not begin my mourning for another summer gone and a winter drawing closer and closer. Not until September anyway...

On to the topic of this blog. Chicago's Police Department is notorious for corruption, racial profiling, and undue violence towards citizens, guilty and innocent alike. Come to think of it, you could probably make the same claims for police forces across the nation, albeit not as high profile as the men and women in blue of NY, LA, and the CHI.

Just today I found out someone I saw at Five Star (1424 W. Chicago—$2 Tecate and .10 wings on Wednesdays!) is 1- an undercover cop and 2- a drug dealer. Earlier this spring, I had to stop a good friend from getting his ass kicked by an undercover cop and his posse. The cop goaded him on, only to flash his badge and growl something along the lines of, "What you gonna do now?"

Today's Sun-Times has an article, sharing a few stories of cops abusing their power. The most ridiculous tale? Officer Barbara Neversof the Belmont police district. She was suspended for more than 15 months, after demanding free coffee from Starbucks on the North side between 2001 to 2004, "yelling when they refused her demands and showing her weapon."