Under The Hood – Part 1 (Chi)

A peek inside the inner workings of November Project Chicago

We participated in and read all of the comments from the Keep, Change, Create (“KCC”) dialogues as well as the first few dozen anonymous member surveys that you have submitted to us. First and foremost, thank you for your participation in those. If you haven’t completed the anonymous member survey, please do so this week.  November Project Chicago doesn’t work unless you show up, and understanding roadblocks that keep you and others in our community from showing up is helpful.  Second, we’ll get to the data from the survey in another post.  The focus of this post is a look inside the opaque world of co-leadership at NPCHI

Note: everything we say relates to NPCHI specifically, and our lived and observed experience.  Other NP cities may do things differently, so we’re only speaking about us and our city.

How do you choose workout locations?  We get variations of this question a lot, and it was a big topic in the KCC dialogue.  At the beginning of our co-leadership, we decided on changing Wednesday locations quarterly for a variety of reasons, primarily to have a longer-lasting presence in different neighborhoods to be more inclusive (read the full blog post for details).  Out of an abundance of caution and safety, we have maintained only one official in person workout per week, while following Phase 4 reopening guidance for Illinois.   Traditionally on Fridays we would meet at The Bean due to its proximity to many workplaces, serviced by all CTA and Metra lines and many bus lines, and adjacent to hotels where many traverbalers stay. This has been our central workout location for years. Originally Friday workouts started at 6:28am, but several years ago the park staff asked if we could be done by 7am. Hence the 6am start now. And while we’re not at the Millenium Park currently, for consistency we’ve kept the 6am start time. Unfortunately the Bean doesn’t open until 8am now, so we’re in search of a new Friday home.

First consideration:  accessibility.  Pre-COVID we changed locations quarterly, and chose Wednesday locations based on accessibility to public transportation, and in particular the 24-hour blue and red line trains.  We workout on Fridays now, so we initially wanted to stay close to the Bean to approximate being at the Chicago 0/0 axis, but we weren’t quite welcome at Lakeshore East Park.   So while we would like to use Grant Park or Buckingham Fountain for a workout location to stay near the city center, we don’t want folks to have to pay expensive downtown parking prices to get to workouts.  And there are fewer people working in the Loop currently, so much of the convenience of being downtown has been lost.

Next consideration: space.  We live on the edge of the Central time zone, which means it’s dark out for much of our workouts from November – March.  We also live in the Midwest where snow and ice are factors from approximately the same amount of time, +/- a month.  So we consider locations that are well lit for safety, and passable in the winter, with enough shoveled or salted surfaces for running/walking.  We also need a lot of space to keep folks 6’ distant from each other.  This means large fields, wide stairs/hills, or many sidewalks/paths to keep folks flowing in one direction.

Next consideration:  volume.  This has been a new challenge for us. Some parks are surrounded by homes, and we want to be respectful of the neighborhood.  Pre-COVID we could have a whisper bounce, write out exercises on a cardboard, and provide workout instructions with our indoor voices to a closely bunched together group and remain mostly quiet until 7am.  Now in a COVID-world, small, tightly packed audiences aren’t possible, which means we’re all spread out and having to yell to be heard. Even if we post the workout in advance on social media, we have to assume that not everyone is familiar with it, and we’re going to need the person standing in the back to be able to hear us. Therefore, we need to find a location where yelling “y’all good?” is appropriate.

Finally, we consider recruitment of new faces.  We like to choose a new park or a new neighborhood to recruit new faces to November Project.  The first three years were spent almost exclusively in Lakeview at the Totem Pole and downtown at the Bean.  The next 2 years were spent 1 month at a time in various parks as far north as Lakeview and as far south as Bridgeport, and downtown at the Bean.  And in the last year we went to Bucktown, Fulton River District, Old Town, Streeterville, and Cabrini-Green before moving to virtual workouts.  We know we have a lot of city to cover, and we have plans to get there.   Starting this week on Friday we’ll be meeting at the Humboldt Park Boathouse to bring November Project to the west side neighborhoods of Chicago.

When selecting a location, we also consider proximity to public restrooms (well… at least we did before Covid) and the amenities of the space itself. Specifically, locations with stairs, benches, hills, etc. etc. allow a greater variety of exercises we can complete throughout the workouts.

Anyway, this was a long winded way of saying that a lot of thought goes into our locations, but if you have a great suggestion that meets all of the criteria above, let us know!  We’d love to explore a park that’s near and dear to your heart and home

Thank you for reading. Hope to see you soon! – Nez & Kaitlyn

Share via socials: