Cultural Reuse

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Everyday Re-Use in Chicago's Alleys:
A Photo-essay

A work in progress: For additional information contact Prof Andrew Causey, Columbia College Chicago acausey@colum.edu

This is an on-going work in progress that hopes to document some of the ways that Chicagoans on the north side of the city inventively confront their everyday needs and desires by re-using cultural products in ways for which they were not intended. The sorts of re-use depicted here are rarely found in what Erving Goffman (1959) would call the "front regions" of the neighborhoods: places such as street-facing gardens, building facades, or areas visible from public sidewalks. Rather, the everyday acts of re-use that I am seeking out to document are those that are more likely found in side yards, garages, and gangways; because many of Chicago's buildings back onto paved and public alleys, such creative acts of re-use are easily spotted by any casual walker.

Backyard gardens show the inventive re-use of plumbing pipe, electrical wire, and plaster wall lathing for the support of vegetable vines.

Here, a flower bed is built up using cast-off gutter pipe.

Some very inventive acts of re-use are found when people are forced to create stop-gap measures: plumber's putty is used to fill up bullet holes in a window; a tin-can is used to extend a gutter pipe; a gutted computer is used to hold open a door.

When the alleys are too tight for two cars to pass easily, inhabitants find ways to protect vulnerable corners: old boilers and water heaters are filled with concrete and set into the pavement; in one case, an old wooden porch column is used for this purpose.

Here, masonry bricks and trash timber are used to anchor plastic webbing in order to prevent squirrels from entering the garden.

Broken or damaged tools are commonly used as planters or as armatures for potted plant display. Sometimes, new items (such as trash barrels or industrial plumbing pipe) are used as planters.

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