Chicago Velo is a site about Biking Chicago Neighborhoods, communities and surrounding areas. Allow me introduce myself and then we can get into it. My name is Lee Diamond and I love to ride my bike.

I love bikes in general. I love building them up, fixing broken ones, tuning them up, trying different ones, and in general geeking out on them, but most of all, I love to ride my bike. I also love beautiful architecture from the mid-century modern design of the 50s and 60s and earlier and I am passionate about Historic Preservation and I am interested in saving and documenting everything I can. I also really love Chicago. I love the diversity of the city in all ways. I appreciate the frank difference between Northside Chicago and Southside Chicago, or the West Side of Chicago. I love the different characteristics of the Chicago neighborhoods I have visited and lived in within the City of Neighborhoods. Chicago communities can barely resemble one another in some respects, but feel rooted in Chicago one and all. Amazingly enough, so do some of the collar-cities, the nearby suburbs of Chicago.

So most of all, I love to ride my bike through Chicago while digging its architecture, and that is what Chicago Velo is about.

Chicago Velo is a guide to Chicago. It is a guide to the communities in and around Chicago. It is a guide to Chicago’s hidden gems of architectural splendor, its forgotten history and its secret riches. Most of the time, these spots are not really hidden from us at all, just obscured by time and neglect, and sometimes it takes someone in-the-know to help you find it. Chicago Velo is designed to be an online experience of my regular Chicago Neighborhood Bike Tours and it allows me to constantly grow the site as my research, notes, documentation, photographs and experiences grow and I explore and learn about new areas of the city. I will take you with me while I learn and in the process, create a thorough photographic and narrative encyclopedia of Chicago’s neighborhoods, its built history and those who built it, free for all to use. Chicago Velo will contain hundreds and soon thousands of my photographs of different Chicago Neighborhoods and Chicago Community Areas. It will focus on classic, indiginous architectural designs and will acknowledge and commend the deserving yeoman workers cottage, as quick as it does a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece. Finally, Chicago Velo will do all of this from the perspective of a Chicago cyclist, what that entails, and how to be a happy, safe, and well-prepared cyclist in the world’s greatest city, Chicago.

Cheers,
Lee Diamond