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On the Metra I see the allotments at Peterson and Ridge are becoming quite strange.

Driving up Clark I find a part of Chicago where façade ennui hasn’t taken over.

I have to help someone set up their website in Andersonville a place where one enters amon goeth like but leaves puravida.

An outing of nostalgia, where I don’t hold out as much hope as the walk through Bucktown for while I won’t run into any urban pioneers afraid that I’ll take their basketball hoop, the area isn’t renown for serendipity - streets too straight, alleys too neat, shops too tidy. It is more out of curiosity and to walk Clark Street north of Devon that I go at all.

Going against what went well in the Bucktown outing, I take Joãozão. Don’t expect to photograph anything moving. Andersonville seems more rural than urban.

The first half of the walk – up Ravenswood from the station - was as predicted, a walk nothing really caught my fancy to stop, wondered what would have been if I had taken a more residential street. The alleys seemed promising due to their age more than the mismatching of styles. I was just barely on time so I kept moving.

Then I forgot where Hermitage was, west of the tracks or east – thought east but when I saw Ashland I began to panic. This doesn’t happen to me, I don’t get lost in a grid in my old neighbourhood.

Headed west of the tracks and again as I approached Damen knew it couldn’t be this way. The address would put it in the middle of a cemetery.

Asked bike messagers
-Is Hermitage this way?
-Armitage is four miles south
-not Armitage, Hermitage
-don’t know we are from the south side.

I try again this time some workers
-Is Hermitage this way?
-Armitage? And he begins to point.
-no Hermitage
-kak?
-Hermitage kak ermitage
-not Armitage.
-ah don’t know.

Finally found a couple of cops doing what a couple of cops do talking to each other from their respective machines and asked.

The supposed real purpose of the trip was a washout. Incompatibility problems P.C v. Mac. My programmes wouldn’t work etc. To save face showed her how to use blogger toshare images.

After a respectable amount of time I left and continued my trek northward to the Rogers Park station.

This part of the journey lived somewhat up to what I was looking for. The allotments were more than I expected. I wanted a snap of this deck set up where to people had left out two deck chairs a table and a couple of brollys, to overlook the vegs, there was even a bit of indoor outdoor carpeting.

Being there however I was more intrigued by the differentiation of the spaces, and how paths were made to get to the allotments that were in the back near the railway embankment – it seems this is the place carpeting goes to die. Two Asian women were working in theirs, one picking some vegs, the other watering, both in their world ignoring everything outside.

I tried to photograph, the irrigation systems and what people had left to make their place like their garden. Was astounded by the trust as with the patio set they could be taken at anytime – but this may be due to my world’s greatest art school cynicism where trust only goes as far as making sure you scan your i.d. when you enter the building.

Clark Street was too crowded and things already open. Driving it was on a Sunday when the shops were closed and I didn’t have to bother with people wondering why I was aiming Joãozão at their building. The image that stood out was the made bed in a loading dock with the owner’s possessions in a shopping cart nearby a block from the police station. Some thing was made of the trip as at Lunt with time to spare I started to explore alleys again and made images that while formal dealt with the social also – hoops, excavated lots, shopping carts filled with possessions, closed taverns, toys, barking dogs.