- CTA rendering of Irving Park station
The station house of the Irving Park stop on the CTA’s Brown Line opens onto the northern sidewalk of Irving Park Road via two sets of double doors. Departing passengers headed east leave by the doors to the left, those headed west by the doors to the right. Irving Park is my stop, and as I exit with the hordes returning to their homes at day’s end I think about the hordes—perhaps obsessively. At some point it occurred to me that those doors could be monitored to separate the people passing through them into two groups: most people, and a smaller group distinguished by significantly greater intelligence, creativity, and abstract thinking ability.
Perhaps my proposed study of the swinging doors at the Irving Park Brown Line el stop would be similarly compromised—though I can’t see how. After all, a door is a door—social, psychological, and economic differences melt away when it comes to walking through a door. Moreover, subjects put to the test by the doors would have no idea they were being tested. They’d simply be performing what they might call a mindless action. But that action would reveal everything.
