More American Culture

More cultural photos for you from the Mid-West.  Starting off with Roosevelt Road as you'll rarely see it:

Roosevelt - Thanksgiving Day 2014

Now Roosevelt lies west of Chicago and separates the 'villages' of Oak Park and Berwyn.  It's a major route and usually is chockers, with cars coming at you from all angles.  About 100yards down the road on the left is everyone's favourite, Wal-Mart.  Usually we can't resist a last-minute visit to Wal-Mart to pick up some cheap crap for presents - well, it's not really crap and it's not that cheap to be honest, but they do a decent line in printed t-shirts and the like.

This is how Roosevelt looked early Thanksgiving Morning in 2014 - deserted!  Very weird.

Another road for you now - the Eisenhower Expressway, or Interstate-290 if you prefer.  It cuts right through Oak Park and will take you downtown Chicago to the east or you can just keep driving west until you fall asleep, probably somewhere past Iowa.

Eisenhower Expressway, 2014

Just to the left of the road lies the railway line between O'Hare airport and Chicago Loop, where it is known as the Elevated, or simply the 'L'.  Unlike most major cities it sits above the ground - it's an iconic piece of Chicago, and very noisy, which you'll know from the Blues Brothers film, of course.  All the bridges over the expressway have these massive fences, as you can see above - to deter people throwing things onto the traffic, I guess (and jumpers too, maybe?).  There are signs telling you that you are not allowed to stop on the bridges - advice which I ignored just long enough to take this photograph.

Here's another street scene, snapped as the car stopped at traffic lights.  No turn on red at this junction, as you can see :)

Somewhere west of Chicago Loop, 2015