Before I Die | The scene

Monday, March 12, 1:44pm Just 48 hours after the black matte paint was dry, a permission wall at 1101 West Granville Street in Edgewater had become a community bucket list. Passersby wrote their hopes and dreams—some poignant, others puerile—in colored chalk: marry my true love, reach nirvana, make a movie, legalize herb, have 1,000,000 kisses, be a boss, spread christianity, be blacker than i was yesterday. At least three people want to see the Cubs win a World Series before they bite the big one. One person wants to meet Bulls star Derrick Rose. Someone else simply, sadly, wrote have sex. Candy Chang’s Before I Die has been installed in a dozen cities, from Amsterdam to Almaty, since its inception a year ago on an abandoned building in the artist’s hometown of New Orleans. It will be installed locally in three other neighborhoods: Chinatown (23rd St and Wentworth Ave), Wicker Park (Milwaukee Ave at Honore St), and two Pilsen locations—an English wall (18th and Carpenter Sts) and a Spanish wall (18th and Laflin Sts). “Being able to share these things in a public forum is really inspirational,” said Lisa Whiting, 33, the owner of Sifu Design Studio & Fine Yarns. With a piece of orange chalk, she scrawled her dying wish on the wall: knit the world a scarf.