Chicago is a beautiful and amazing city.  Despite my love/hate relationship with this city, it is now, my home.  "Chicago" is what I answer, now, when someone asks me, "where are you from?" There is a local commercial that equates this city to being made up of a bunch of small towns that are all gathered into one big city.  Likening the neighborhoods to the small towns scattered about the non-city Midwest.  Having grown up in a small town in the Midwest, I would say that it is NOT a stretch to say that about the neighborhoods here.  Store clerks in our neighborhood know us by face, if not name.  We bump into families from school and our sports teams, daily.  Our involvement in sports has lead us to meet and make friends in other communities.  Which we run into, all the time, too.  A city made up of small towns, yes, I can get on board with that.

I was struck, today, by something I see all the time.  The steps leading up to the L in the Loop.  The trains listed on the risers.  The rainbow of the lines written out in plain type to make it easy to navigate.  Simple words, designating the the terminal points for each line.   What, I saw, though, was the myriad of neighborhoods the L passes through.  A shiny, silver snake that winds its way through the city.  That connects so many neighborhoods, vastly different, to one another.  Linking them all together.  Small towns.  Big city.  For a small town Indiana girl, finding comfort in a neighborhood in a big city, that is beauty. 

And those four ripped off placards above the Orange Line/Midway, well, I'm intrigued.
L stairs Taken with Samsung Galaxy S5.  Edited in PS along with Totally Rad's RadLab.  Blur intentional.