I didn't expect to enjoy the bike ride home tonight more than I usually savor galloping over potholes on Chicago Avenue, standing up on my Trek like a jockey.
See what people loved and hated at Looptopia 2008! Check out videos, pics and commentary from citizen journalists.
They form faster here than in their original habitat.
Since excavation began 70 years ago, water found the crevices leading from the Chicago streets to this subterranean cavern 40 feet below.
The schizophrenic seasons produce ample precipitation that seeps down, absorbing minerals from the clay surface layer, then from the concrete foundation, and then from the steel beams, as it descends.
Mineral-laden, it drips into the dark and dirty space, falling from the t-bone intersection of the steel beams and the concave concrete ceiling, to splat onto the dingy red paint peeling platform, where fast feet shuffle through the potential puddle, leaving nothing but a wet spot.
But with every drip, an excess of minerals is left behind at the t-bone. And the succession of minerals deposits over the past few decades has created tiny white and tan colored stalactites, hardly noticeable amidst the tan stain speckled ceiling and rusty, peeling white paint.
Where stalactites hang above utility boxes, fist-shaped mounds of the same white and tan mineral deposits – stalagmites – have been able to form, undisturbed in this urban cave, the State Street Subway.
“Everything down here is brown and dripping, there’s all sorts of things dripping,” said Charlie Crawford, a 26-year-old computer systems salesman waiting for the Northbound Red Line at the Harrison Street stop.
He looked up at a stalactite.
“I thought it was hobo spit,” said Crawford, who at one time alternately thought they were icicles.
His guesses – however wrong – do accurately describe how these little guys appear to commuters, who probably only notice when a drop slides down the stalactite onto the tops of their heads.
At just an inch or two in length, the urban stalactite seems less than grandiose compared to its meters-long cousin magnificently hanging in ancient caves.
But it has a boasting point: It takes 100 years for a cave stalactite to grow a centimeter; here in the subway, the forms have grown to at least three centimeters in 70 years.
“There is not a huge difference between the urban stalactite and its cave-dwelling cousins,” said Martin Short, a University of Arizona in Tucson professor, who studied cave stalactites to create a mathematical formula for their shape.
It’s fair to say the equation could be applied to urban stalactites, since they both form the same way, Short said.
“I would guess that the urban water has a much higher concentration of cement dissolved in it than the cave water has of calcium carbonate, thereby leading to quicker growth in the city,” he said.
The great stalagmite/stalactites caves of Colorado are familiar to Crawford, who, when he was 19, first saw the specimen most people would imagine: huge chandelier formations protruding down like spikes and towering up from the ground like the sculptures children create by dropping wet sand out from inside their squeezing fists.
He recently graduated from DePaul University with an economics degree and the daily school commute made him quite familiar with the subway stalactite scene as well.
“I guess this is earth’s way of finding the city,” he said.
Indeed, mineral rich water finds even the newer subway stops like Jackson Street, where stalactites grow silently, remaining incognito even in the bright, clean, shiny tiled station.
Andre always has a smile for the fast-walking Chicagoans who pace by the corner of Division Street and Dearborn Street in the affluent Gold Coast.
He sells StreetWise newspapers in front of the Walgreen’s there but no one describes him as a beggar. He goes beyond the usual script, “How about a paper to support the homeless,” calling a majority of passerby by their first names, exchanging Chicago Cubs’ commentary with super-fans and even playing (successful) matchmaker to young singles.
“Since I’ve been with StreetWise I’ve had more good days than bad,” said Andre, who came to the company after being released from the penitentiary in 1984.
Andre, 44, said he became involved with the wrong crowd, and began stealing to buy drugs and alcohol, which led to him being homeless. He was jailed for being on drugs and drinking on trains.
When he was released, he saw a man making money selling StreetWise, a weekly nonprofit newspaper, and asked him how he could sell papers, too.
He said life is up and down right now.
“I’m doing what I have to do as head of the household,” Andre said.
He said this corner allows him to be around positive people—the residents and employees in the Gold Coast he sees nearly every day.
“These people make me feel like I’m somebody,” he said. “People tell me they’re looking forward to seeing me.”
Tony Battiste, a maintenance manager for a building in the area, has known Andre for over a year.
"It lifts my spirits to see him,” Battiste said. “He’s always in good spirits even though there’s been plenty of reasons to be angry.”
Joshua Kay, a local purchasing agent, said he sees Andre twice a day as he walks to and from work.
“He’s always really nice and friendly,” Kay said. “He remembers me.”
And Robert Molina, who moved to the area from Washington, D.C., last year, said Andre is the antithesis of the type of homeless people he was used to dealing with on the East Coast.
“It’s like you can have faith in humans again,” Molina said. “He knows people by their names. He’s out here working instead of begging.”
People like Molina consider Andre a
friend, and Andre feels the same way.
“When I’m depressed, it makes me think people care,” Andre said.
But while Andre’s smile lines have multiplied during his past five years at this corner, so have his number of gray hairs.
He has to choose between putting food on the table and paying the gas, which was $400 this month because he has not paid for two months. He didn’t pay for December because he wanted to use the money to buy Christmas presents.
Depending on the weather, Andre sells papers 3 to 6 days a week. He buys them from Streetwise for 35 cents each and sells them for a dollar. But people give him different amounts of money, so he can make $20 on an average day or $100 on a good day.
Andre also works once in a while at the Catholic Charities warehouse at 39th Street and Damen Avenue, but the employment isn’t reliable.
“Sometimes I show up and they say there’s no work,” he said. “And that’s a two dollar [CTA fare] wasted.”
Yet, he somehow has to feed his family and pay rent for their house on the South Side.
He has three biological children, twin girls named Cinnamon and Ceila, 23, and a son named Eric, 8, and his girlfriend’s two sons, Antoine, 10, and Jerry, 12, whom he considers his own.
“I can’t show no favoritism,” he said. “Their daddy’s aren’t there.”
His twins, along with his three sisters and parents live in Las Vegas now. His family has flown him out to Vegas twice, but the last time they sent him money to fly out, he used it to take care of his family here in Chicago. They haven’t sent him money since.
“I’ve been out here a long time and it’s a shame,” he said. “But I’m doing the best I can … I don’t want to go home a failure.”
Andre grew up with a father who was in the Marines; he describes his childhood as good.
He never joined the military, though.
“I should have,” he said. “But you’re looking at the class clown.”
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