Rand McNally fabMAP of Chicago Review

I first saw Rand McNally's fabMAP in the Garden District Book Store in New Orleans (great book store, if you happen to visit New Orleans). It is a waterproof, tear-proof map that Rand McNally makes for various cities, and sells for $5.95. It covered a small area of New Orleans, so I decided not to get it. Now the other day I am in my local camera store, and I see a bin of cloth lens cleaners, selling for $5.95 each. Suddenly the cloth fabMAP doesn't seem so expensive! It can easily be folded up and stuffed into your camera bag. When I got mine, it said it was machine washable, microfiber cloth, that can even be used to clean your glasses. Imagine a cloth that you can use to clean your lenses (or your eye glasses) that also has a map of downtown Chicago (or Las Vegas Strip, Midtown Manhattan Theatre District, Washington D.C. Mall, Waikiki, Hollywood-Beverly Hills, San Francisco Golden Gate Park-Haight Ashbury, New Orleans French Quarter, Miami's South Beach, Key West, Seattle's Pike Place Market, San Antonio River Walk, Denver's 16th Street Mall or San Diego's Balboa Park). You can get them here, along with many other great Rand McNally maps and things. Search for fabmap.

Update 11-16-2008

Rand-McNally let me know that they are having a contest (see 3rd comment) where you could win a $500 gift card, or a brand new Buddy Scooter (valued at $2,000)! They want you to send them a photo or short video documenting your fabMAP adventures by December 5th, 2008. Go to iNeverGetLost.com and check it out. And if you go to their website now, the fabMAPs are all on sale for $2 (regularly $4.95), with free shipping! I'm going back for more (Midtown Manhattan, Washington D.C., New Orleans French Quarter)!!

Santa Express on the CTA

Every year, the Chicago Transit Authority (the el) dresses up one of their trains for the holidays, making for a fun photo opportunity if you're in town. Matthew Zdano (aka BrokenBat on Flickr) has captured two great photos: SantaExpress and XmasTrainTrail_1. I wished I had thought of it earlier. There is only one day left to see this train in action: Saturday, December 23 from 2 to 8:45 pm on the Orange and Brown lines. See details here.

Well, maybe other folks have also captured some fun images. Anyone else care to share? And thank you, Matthew Zdano!

Lincoln Park Zoo

The Lincoln Park Zoo is another great place to take the family. It's one of the nation's oldest zoos. And it's free! I took this photo of a squirrel with a Canon G3 camera. This sort of camera is nice because you can adjust the screen many different ways so that you're not laying on the ground trying to peer through the viewfinder. It also helped that this little fellow must have become quite used to having humans around.

Navy Pier

Navy Pier is a great place to bring the family. There are restaurants, some fancy, some casual (McDonald's). There are all sorts of little shops for you to check out. One of the hidden treasures is the Smith Museum of Stained Glass. You have to walk quite a way to find it, but it's worth the trip!

If you bring your camera up for a ride on the Ferris Wheel, you can get some interesting photos of the city. You can also find some great views from the ground!

Chicago has many great places to take pictures. For the skyline, an easy location is near the Adler Planetarium. That's where I took the photo at the top and the one on the left. Watch for current events when buildings downtown will spell out words at night using lights in the windows, like when the White Sox won the World Series in 2005! Can't wait till we see the guys on the South Side do that again!

First post on blogger

Wow, that was easy! I was thinking of buying a book and learning HTML and CSS to do this, but this only took 5 minutes to set up. Yikes! Sometimes being lazy can be such a good thing in life. I had this idea of telling the world about my favorite things in Chicago on a blog. We'll have to see what the 'world' thinks of it! Where to start... how about one of my hobbies?

Photography has been a passion of mine since I was in high school. Mom had just come home with a new Canon AE-1 Program 35mm film camera, handed me the manual and said "tell me how to work this thing!" A couple of hot air balloons were flying overhead, and she wanted to take her first picture with this fancy, new camera. Later, I got my own camera and fell in love with photography. I loved it all; taking pictures of my friends and family, taking pictures downtown Minneapolis, the anticipation of waiting for your pictures to come back from the photofinisher.

In these days of instant gratification with the modern digital cameras, not many people still hand in their film, knowing that it won't come back for at least 24 hours! Can you imagine? Today, I like to shoot both film and digital. I still think it's fun to hand in my Tri-X film to the folks at Central Camera in Chicago and wait a couple of weeks to see what develops. After asking the fellow behind the counter if they've stopped making film yet, I hand him my film and pray that they still have someone that will develop and print it for me. They really do a nice job: custom 3 1/2 x 5 glossy prints, with a white border is what I ask for. Check them out if you're ever in the loop. They've been around since 1899! If you don't have a camera, go inside and get yourself one. Then head back outside under the 'el' and find that timeless photo of Chicago you've always wanted to take!