MeghanIsMe

For the first time since I bought this parody CTA safety poster from the artist, I have it framed and hung up! I really love this piece! It's going to move to live over my computer, though, because Miriam, as much as she appreciates the concept and story behind it, thinks its visually hideous. I actually really love it when we find places our tastes clash and can talk about them because it's so unusual for it to happen and leads to funny conversations.

The story: years ago, I was working in Chicago and taking the CTA on the rare occasions I didn't bike for some reason. Someone named Bleh the Buddha was putting an array of stickers up on the Pink Line, covering up the official CTA signage that he was parodying. (The original version of this one, for example, said things like "Listen for instructions," and "Remain on the train".) This is just one example of half a dozen or so that I saw, all of which I think I have pictures of.

I loved these so much that I found him online and wrote him to ask to buy a print. I did, and when I got it in the mail, I shouldn't have been surprised to see that he sent me an actual sticker, not just a print. He signed it too.

I love this piece because I have so many good feelings connected to Chicago and my time there that this brings to mind, and because it's an anarchic reclamation of public space for public art, and because buying it supported a local artist, and because I really think it's really clever and funny.

I miss Chicago a lot, and having this up feels like a little contrarian piece of it with me.

(I got the frame plus matting from a thrift store and did a pretty lackluster job recutting it to fit. I'll do better with it one of these days. But for now, it contributes fairly to Miriam's distaste.)

Oooh! I found a writeup and interview with him! https://southsideweekly.com/bleh-the-buddha-emerging-artist/

When I took Rufus out this morning, I encountered about a quarter-inch of some kind of slush-pellets. I decided it was a CTA day. Here's the view from Evanston - Davis station this morning.

Work by a local artist, Bleh the Buddha, who I mentioned in this space before! To recap, I originally saw something of his on the Pink Line in Chicago, where it was posing as one of the ads and notices lining the car.

When I saw it, I started laughing and took a picture. The person sitting under it looked vaguely upward at where I was pointing my camera, but didn't seem to notice anything odd. Me, I loved it and started looking for more of his stuff online. I managed to find his contact info and had to buy a signed print of this piece for reasons.

I'll get a less pixelated, non-phone picture soonish.
In the meantime, I listen for Punk Buddha.

There are other Punk Buddha signs out there on the Chicago L. Here's one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/73a15i/found_on_orange_line/

And another:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/73a15i/found_on_orange_line/

I found them by Googling Punk Buddha Chicago. I *love* that the second one is bilingual. These are all faithful replicas of the styles, fonts, and layouts of the official CTA signs.

Naked Bike Ride was a ton of fun! It was a less novel experience than it was the last two years; I suppose I'm settling in. But it was a tremendous time regardless, and the experience let me kind of be more aware of what was going on around me. Another change informed by experience was my decision to stay on the right of the group through the whole ride rather than keep moving to where more observers were so that I'll know where to look for myself on videos of the event. I wasn't so excited by it all that I wanted to chase the greatest possible reaction from bystanders; instead, I opted for consistency instead. Some highlights:

Exchanging shouts and high-fiving dozens of people along the route.

Some wonderful tattoos. I was behind someone with the imagery from the Pioneer space probe plaque on his right calf. Later, there was someone with a huge goat head - just a regular-looking goat head with those strange eyes they have - across his whole back.

One rider saw my "This Machine Kills Fascists" sticker during a lull and concernedly asked "If we kill sprawl, how will we arrive at a futuristic cyberpunk dystopia?" I laughed and admitted I hadn't considered that angle. "You have to think these things through," he declared.

The expressions of people who were seeing the ride by random chance. Either stuck in a car at a blocked intersection, or having a nice dinner along the Magnificent Mile, as the swarm of cyclists rolled by. I saw more dropped jaws and eyes popping out of their sockets than I can count.

Comments from onlookers. I heard "There are *so* many naked people here right now," and "I've never seen so many naked people." One of my favorites was a guy yelling, partly at me just as I rolled by, "You guys are the FUCKING! SHIT!" Things like that really help make the night for me.

At one point there was an intoxicated cyclist who, as we were getting back on the bikes after the rest stop, tumbled slowly over onto the ground directly in front of me and just laid there with a big smile on his face. I checked to see if he was ok and a nearby guy said he was his brother and would take care of him. "Ok," I heard the brother say as I pedaled on, "let's get your clothes back on now."

Prior to the start, I posed for the official photographer, holding my sticker-bedecked panniers and angling my helmet to show my genderqueer colors. The sky was drizzling as the hundreds of mostly undressed people congregated around the start area, and someone had built a large fire. I spent a while standing in front of it, though I wasn't as chatty as I would have liked to have been.

There was one rider costumed like Doctor Manhattan. Naked, with blue body paint and a rubber full-head mask. I wouldn't have wanted to ride in it, but it was nifty.

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To get there, I pedaled down from Evanston along the channel path, across Lawrence, and down the Lakefront Path. I took the same route home. Combined with the ride itself, I rode about fifty-two miles.

I would not make the choice to ride home at the same time, in the same conditions, on the same route again. I left the West Loop at 12:30 or so. It was drizzling and foggy. The Lakefront Path was surprisingly quiet and contemplative. The Northshore Channel Path, however, was dark, isolated, and unnerving. Fog, rain, and water on my glasses made my vision quite limited, and if I hadn't been getting to know that path recently, I would not have felt comfortable, or even safe, on it. And that's not even taking into account the worries I had about encountering people in the darkness who I would not want to be alone in the dark at one-thirty in the morning with.

But I made it home safely, got into dry clothes, took a preventative Advil (that was definitely a good idea) and got to bed. My left wrist was quite painful by the end of the night, but I think that's due to a lot of one-handed riding while waving and hi-fiving. My legs felt like I could jump right back on a bike for another fifty miles. Apparently my aerobic conditioning is pretty good!

Fitbit says it was about a 4000 calorie day. I'm hungry!