Randolph Street: Rollin' Up The River

While photojournalist Jon Randolph lolls the days away on a fishing boat in a Canadian lake, we're presenting pix from his trips up and down US Highway 61. Here's the second batch. - The Eds.

"Raccoon," Minnesota

"Celose" (note the sign in the window), Minnesota

"Merchant," Minnesota

"Country Kitchen," Iowa

"Yard Sale," Tennessee

"Mirror," Duluth, Minnesota

This is a personal look at mid-America that I shot between 1976 and 1985. At the times I shot these pix, the approximately 1700 miles of US Highway 61 roughly followed the Mississippi River from New orleans to Minneapolis, then jutted northeast to Duluth and then along the western edge of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay, Ontario.

This is the second installment - part three will run next Friday. There's a lot to look at. - JR

Visit The Third City every day for new posts, treats, surprises, words and pictures. We'll be moving soon! Our new home will be thethirdcity.net. We're building the site right now - knowing us and our meager technological talents, it'll actually be up sometime around the turn of the next century. Anyway, we'll keep you up to date. - The Eds.

Big Mike: This Depression Ain't So Great

Visual and spoken word artists have joined forces for an exhibit on depression (the skull-jockey variety, not the economic kind) in the Dole Gallery at the Lakeside Legacy Arts Park in Crystal Lake, Illinois. The show, "Snap Out Of It... Don't You Hate It When They Say That?" which runs through May 15th, features deeply personal ruminations on the illness, which some 20 million Americans grapple with.

May is Mental Health Month in McHenry County. Lakeside Legacy Arts Park this month also features "Voice - Adolescent Allies," in the Sage Gallery, featuring works by teens exploring relationship power dynamics and sexual violence.

Here are images of some of the works from "Snap Out Of It."

"Social Phobia," acrylic on canvas, 2009,

by Sophia Anastasiou-Wasik

"I Would If I Could," computer graphics, 2009,

by Karen Roszkowski

"Addiction" (left) and "Obsession," both mixed media on Masonite, 2009, by Sophia Anastasiou-Wasik

"I'm Falling," prose poem performance, 2009, by Michael G. Glab

In case you're looking for this week's installment of Randolph Street, photojournalist Jon Randolph is missing in action today. To the best of our knowledge, he had pressing social and convivial responsibilities last night which kept him from his cozy bed until the wee hours. We trust he has an ample supply of aspirin on hand for when he greets the day.

Check in with us tomorrow. Hopefully, good old Jon will have rejoined the living by then. Come to The Third City every day for top-notch writing and terrific pictures.

Randolph Street: The World In Chicago

Photojournalist Jon Randolph owns Fridays on The Third City. Today, he offers us peeks at Chicagoans who've come from all over the globe.

Fatima Mohammed, a Somali, at Ronan Park.

A kid on a carousel at a Neighborhood Boys and Girls Club carnival, Irving Park Road and Campbell Avenue.

A worker in the meat market district, 853 W. Fulton St.

A man at El Pinguino ice cream company, 3244 W. Lawrence Ave.

A Little Leaguer at Horner Park,

Irving Park Road and California Ave.

Join us tomorrow for more hot air from the keyboard of Big Mike Glab. Look for a Letter From Milo the day after. Benny Jay opens the week Monday with more gas. And, of course, Randolph Street will be back next Friday. The Third City is here for your reading pleasure every day.

Randolph Street: This Business Is Full Of Hot Air

Photojournalist Jon Randolph takes us into a firm that boasts it has more than a million balloons in its warehouse. MK Brody Company has been selling novelties and party tchochkes since 1911. The company moved to the wholesale market district west of the Loop in 1960, when the area was a gritty, tough spot populated by men walking around wearing blood-soaked aprons.

The district, surrounding the CTA Green Line elevated tracks between Halsted Street and Ogden Avenue, still is home to meat, seafood, and floral wholesalers,

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but chic restaurants and clubs now dot the landscape there. And, of course, the area was granted its holy imprimatur when Oprah Winfrey opened her Harpo Studios on Washington Boulevard.

Brody sells everything from champagne glasses to breast cancer awareness pink ribbons to hand fans with Barack Obama's image emblazoned on them. But after the company bought out the giant 800-4-Balloons outfit in 2005, its business, well, soared.

See you here next Friday for another glimpse of Chicago brought to us by Jon Randolph. See you here tomorrow for more of Benny Jay, Big Mike Glab, and those all-too-rare Letters From Milo.

Randolph Street: The Bronzeville Age

Our man with the unflinching lens, photojournalist Jon Randolph, took his camera to Bronzeville recently. An historic old Chicago neighborhood just south of McCormick Place and extending down to the old blues, doo-wop, and commercial mecca of 47th Street and beyond, Bronzeville is being rediscovered these days.

The Mahogany dress shop

260 E. 35th St.

Illinois Institute of Technology

Campus Center

3201 S. State St.

One Stop Foods

4301 S. Lake Park Ave.

The Negro League Cafe

301 E. 43rd St.

The Mahogany dress shop, again

108 E. 35th St.

The arbiters of all that is hot and cool in this town may be rediscovering Bronzeville as if it somehow went away for a few years. But, as Randolph's pix illustrate, this community has never stopped being vibrant.

Once dubbed "The Black Metropolis," Bronzeville is home, in addition to IIT with its remarkable Mies van der Rohe architecture, the Illinois College of Optometry, VanderCook College of Music, Shimer College, and Wendell Phillips Academy. 

Back in the 1930s, newspaper editor James Gentry popularized the new name because it accurately described the skin color of its inhabitants.

Be here next Friday for more Randolph Street. The Third City is here everyday for your reading and dawdling pleasure.

Randolph Street: Sunday Morning Glory

Fridays are for Randolph Street on The Third Word. Sundays are for a higher calling at the Bethel AME Church, 4440 S. Michigan Ave. Photojournalist Jon Randolph shot these pix on April 1, 2007.

Jon Randolph's lens is a window to Chicago. Join us every Friday for Randolph Street. We're here every day for the lives, loves, and characters of The Third City.