There’s a wreck of a vacant lot on the south side of North Avenue just west of the Kennedy Expressway. The pavement is broken, but this summer drivers were parking their cars there anyway. Sitting on the lot’s eastern edge was a small booth with a sliding door and the word “PARK” in big black letters. If drivers had opened the door and pulled out a booklet from a dispenser, they would have realized they were in a work of art.
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The booth was initially placed between two planters in front of the gallery’s State Street building. Though it was obviously out of place on the sidewalk, passersby didn’t seem to notice. “The booth has its own air of authority–no one questions it,” Stratman says. “People assume it’s an official structure.” It did attract graffiti in Bridgeport, and then it moved to Pilsen, where someone painted over the graffiti. Stratman thinks this was done by a city graffiti blaster who also assumed the booth was some sort of official structure.
That lot even had towing-company signs, but as far as Stratman knows no one has ever been towed because of her booth. “I’m shocked that the booth hasn’t been towed itself,” she says. “I put it up with the understanding that it might disappear. Other times I’ve put the booth in a place where there’s no room for anyone to park. In Pilsen it was by an alley.”
“Parking lots are the great empty spaces of our urban landscape. These booths still inform the space and have as much authority as those huge downtown buildings do.”
