It had been a few weeks since I visited the plant, and quite a bit longer since I spent any amount of quality time there. As Saturday rolled around, a blizzard was supposedly in the works as well so I thought it would be a good day to accept the challenge and do it the hardest way possible. That is of course, by taking a variety of modes of public transportation and leaving myself stranded around the city for the entire day to suffer through the cold. It is only after that kind of schedule that you can appreciate a strong drink and your slippers when you do get home.
This would be the third time I had taken bus #71 to the plant. But this time I decided at the last minute to deviate from my itinerary above. When I reached the loop, rather than wait 90 minutes for the Metra Electric to take me south, I simple got on the Red Line at Jackson and took it down to 69th Street. This saved a ton of time and also allowed me to ride the bus route in it’s entirely.
I made the usual stops around the plant and found a nice score laying in the dirt outside the BP office. I don’t know if it came from inside there, as it is also possible it came from the main office as I know there was always some lab gear laying around there. However all the stuff I had seen was plastic and not worth taking – certainly no glass, and certainly no Pyrex! Somehow it is not even chipped, just filthy. I carried it in my pocket for hours until I got back to Union Station in the evening where I rinsed it a few times in the bathroom. Imagine what someone might have thought if they saw me with an erlenmeyer flask in a public bathroom!
When I got home I rinsed it vigorously a number of times. To reach the last vestiges of filth, I taped two Q-tips to a long rat tail file and reached inside. As you can see it is now looking good!
I shot about 3 minutes of video footage for an upcoming project I have been planning for a long time, hope to have that finished in a few days. As I was leaving I made an odd discovery.
When I visited in the plant after dusk earlier this summer I had trouble finding my old familiar exit through the fence out onto Torrence Ave. I always use the quench tower as my north star to locate it but in the lack of light I just couldn’t figure out where it was. I passed this off as the difficulty of doing things at night but that never made sense to me. Today was the first day I was able to look into this again and I could only reach one conclusion: someone has repaired this damaged area of fence! The questions remain: who, and why? I can only think the City of Chicago did it under duress from the community? But there are plenty of other openings in the fence further north, not to mention the driveway next to the gate house – or the gate house itself! So the time and money to repair this area doesn’t do well to secure the place. But more ridiculous than this are the two signs seen here – these are fresh and can’t be more than a few months old.
In the process of shooting video I accidentally shot a few photos when I didn’t realize my phone was not in video mode. I saved a few of them because they captured the grey day well, and here they are.
