My Flickr year in photos
So it turns out that, for 2020, Flickr did something similar to Livejournal's Year in Review - what they're calling #MyFlickrYear. And I must say - I'm surprised whatever algorithm Flickr was using picked that as the most popular image.
For a bit of context, I took it back in April, when I visited Beverly, the Chicago Far South Side neighborhood that has kind of become a de facto center of the city's South Side Irish community (though, thanks to some deliberate efforts back in the 70s, it has a larger African-American population than most majority-white neighborhoods in the city).
I bring this up because the city started to impose some COVID-19 related restrictions around the St. Patrick's day weekend, so Beverly bars and stores were caught in a surreal St. Patrick's Day time warp. So it was an interesting visit. And the "Support Our Police" sign wasn't quite as loaded as it would almost two months later - Beverly is famous for supporting law enforcement even amid some of the city's past controversies over police brutality (though not as much as the neighboring Mt. Greenwood, which is home to a decent chunk of the city's police officers and firefighters), and this sign wasn't out of the ordinary back then.
Now, if I wanted to pick the photo I'd like the most this year... I would have plenty of candidates.
The surreal view of Edgewater on the third week of Illinois' atay-at-home order, on what would normally be a busy late afternoon.
Or Austin (Chicago) residents and volunteers from various city and suburban organizations doing a community clean-up three days after the city's South and West sides were rocked by looting in the wake of the killing of George Floyd
Or a gorgeous summer sunset over Edgewater's Hollywood Beach
Or back to back shot of the painting of the mural in Kenosha - and the end result
Or another gorgeous sunset - this time in Ogden Dunes, Indiana
Each of those images got more views than the one Flickr picked, is all I'm saying.