The main entrance to our building is located on the 18th Street bridge, which was built over both the Chicago River and the South Loop rail yard. Our building sits directly between the water on one side and the Metra, Amtrak, and industrial tracks on the other.

Nearly every day Carl looks over one side of the bridge as a train comes towards him, then runs across the street to watch the train continue along away from him. Carl is probably about 70 years old, and he has white, unkempt hair that is often covered by a fishing hat. I sometimes worry that he’ll be hit by a car, or worse, fall off the bridge.

Carl always has a large, old camera hanging around his neck, and he’s constantly snapping photos of the trains. Since he hangs out on the bridge almost every day for hours at a time, he must have thousands of pictures—if there’s actually film in his camera.

Last summer when Cultivate first moved in, we wondered if this strange man was an artist. Maybe he’s doing some sort of long-term project that involves taking photos of the exact same scene every day, we thought. But then we started to hear him talking to himself, which made our theory less likely. Eventually he started talking to us.

Carl introduced himself and told us that he lives in Evanston. That means that every day he drives from the north suburb to the south side of Chicago to watch the same trains ride past on the same tracks. That also means he drives.

This morning Carl pointed to a chunk of land next to the train tracks where a building was recently knocked down. “They should build a roller rink there,” he told me with a big grin on his face. I laughed and told him that unfortunately I don’t own roller skates. He suddenly became quite serious and told me that he was just adlibbing. Later he told Bret that trees should be planted there.

Last summer Carl regularly sported several Obama buttons on his shirt, and he rejoiced the day after the election. But he often appears upset rather than excited about something. He was fired up about the Blagojevich scandal, and he often yells—literally yells—about how angry he is at “them,” how little “they” know, or how “they” need to leave him alone and get out of his business. The entire backseat of his car is piled a couple feet high with documents. They aren’t in neat stacks, and they certainly aren’t organized—it looks as though someone dumped out a bunch of recycle bins filled with paper into his backseat.

Carl is a complex guy: he is obsessed with trains, he is in tune with both state and national politics, his morning routine suggests he lives by patterns, and he sees people whom I do not. It’s been almost a year, and we’re still trying to figure out Carl. Hopefully we’ll get more clues sometime soon.