Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category
Tall Bike Love T-Shirt
It’s winter right now, but after printing this new t-shirt I cannot wait to get outside and start cruising around the city on my bike. Biking Chicago is the idea behind our newest t-shirt, Tall Bike Love. My bike however is much smaller than this one and I give it up to the people who can ride these bikes. I’ve always wondering how people can hop up and off these kind of bikes. Luckily for me, a few summers ago a nice guy riding a tall bike was kind enough to stop in his tracks and show me just exactly how to dismount his bike. I never got to properly thank him for schooling me on how to do so, please consider this my official thank you to him.
The Tall Bike Love is this idea that our friend George Gonzalez came up with during one of our exhilarating brainstorms. Having a mutual love for biking and a few experiences with tall bikes ourselves, we thought this was a great idea. The designer who created this image for us is Brian Duffy, who enjoys dining, indie rock, and Tina Fey(thats pretty awesome if you ask me). The organization Brian chose to receive 10% of the sales is Maryville Academy.
While researching tall bikes in Chicago I came across this web site called Rat Patrol that goes into how Chicago actually has a rooted history in the tall bike. I also found this video from a tall bike ride through Hollywood California. If anyone has some video of something like this happening in Chicago please pass it along.
Tall Bike Ride – Hollywood from iain paterson on Vimeo.
Esperanza Community Services
The Esperanza Community Services is a fantastic organization located in West Town that provides services to people who have developmental disabilities, emotional disturbances, behavior disorders, autism and other forms of cognitive challenges.
Here is excerpt their site:
The phenomenal person who founded Esperanza and gave our participants hope for a better future was a Mexican-American mother and visionary named Guadalupe Reyes. Her son, Bobby, contracted spinal meningitis and was diagnosed with a developmental disability at a young age. At the time, the lack of services and understanding for people with special needs compelled most to institutionalize their children, but Mrs. Reyes refused to do so.
Instead, she spent years teaching him herself. Whereas doctors warned her that Bobby would never walk or talk; she taught him to do so with the help of her family. He loved watching the Cubs and loved to sing. He was even able to experience the same activities as other children with some modifications. However, all of these accomplishments were not enough for the Reyes family; Bobby longed to go to school like the other neighborhood kids.
Guadalupe began knocking on doors and ultimately formed a parent group. At the same time, governmental reforms were taking place. In 1968, Illinois passed legislation that established community-based programs for children with developmental disabilities. This regulation provided Guadalupe Reyes and the other families the incentive to launch a program for their special needs children.
In September of 1969, with the help of Dr. Ogletree, a professor from Chicago State University, the doors of Esperanza School opened in a small church basement in the Pilsen neighborhood. Families and educators joined together to teach special needs children using the Waldorf method of therapeutic education. This approach looks at the whole child from a development perspective helping to bring abilities of each child to their fullest expression through arts.
10% of our Tamale! Tamale! t-shirt profits go to Esperanza Community Services so they can continue to help those in need and to reach their goals.
Please stop by their web site or visit them at:
www.esperanzacommunityservices.org
520 North Marshfield Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622-6731
(312) 243-6097
Hello.
Proudly sporting my new Scared Panda shirt
Hi, my name is Kate. I’m part of the Scared Panda team and thought I should introduce myself. I moved to Chicago about two years ago and absolutely fell in love with the city. I love the buildings, the people, the music, the parks. But most of all, I love the food (you’ll be hearing more about my food adventures in future posts, or you can check out some of the posts I’ve written for Gapers Block). I’m particularly excited about the Tamale! Tamale! shirt because I love, really love, those tamales – partly because they are delicious, but also because how happy Claudio’s presence makes everyone. When he enters a bar, everyone cheers, he offers smiles to every single person and the atmosphere in the place tends to get a little more energetic. Because no one ever knows where he’ll show up on a particular night, you get the sense that you won some contest when he enters the bar YOU chose to go to that night. You’re one of the chosen ones.
Happy Tamale searching, folks. If you happen to run into Claudio, let him know we’ve got a t-shirt for him.