CHICAGO — A little girl on the verge of tears suddenly forgot what had upset her when a stream of bubbles floated her way at Navy Pier.
She reached out her hands, her frown giving way to a smile as Bridget Josey blew more bubbles toward her.
Josey, 61, smiled too. She had seen this reaction before.
Josey has made it her mission to bring bubbles — and joy — to people wherever she goes. She’s becoming so well-known, people are referring to her as the “Bubble Lady.” One video of her on a bus has more than 200,000 views on Instagram.
She carries small bubble guns around the city, pulling them out at festivals and baseball games, on CTA buses, along Navy Pier — “everywhere,” she said. “I gotta keep them on me.”
“I just want to spread some joy with my bubbles,” Josey said. “If I can see a smile where I didn’t see one before, that’s a good thing.”
The whole thing started almost by accident.
Josey has always loved bubbles, since she was a kid, but she didn’t start bringing them around Chicago with any grand plan. She began playing with them with her 5-year-old grandson, and the two of them loved it so much that she started blowing bubbles on her own.
“I’m like a big kid,” Josey said. “I’m 61, but I’m still a kid at heart.”
Bridget Josey, aka the Bubble Lady, blows bubbles for strangers at Navy Pier on Aug. 28, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
After she went to the Taste of Chicago earlier this summer, Josey hopped on a crowded CTA bus and headed home. She had bubbles with her since she had been with her grandson.
“I just thought, ‘Oh, I’ll blow a few,’” Josey said. “I blew a few and then the people started screaming on the bus. It was unbelievable.”
“I thought, ‘Oh, OK, they like it. They like it as much as I do.’”
She was surprised the bus driver didn’t tell her to stop. Instead, she said, he seemed to enjoy it too.
“It kind of brought joy to people’s day and that’s kind of what started it,” she said.
The reaction stuck with her.
“From there, I wanted to do it more because I saw the people’s faces and I saw that it kind of made them happy,” she said.
Her family encouraged her to create an Instagram account so people could follow along and tag her. Josey hardly knew what Instagram was.
Her followers soon started asking for more. One commenter wrote, “I wanna be on that bus!! That shows how much we need to lean into being more whimsical and simple joy.”
Another called for a weekly bubble event: “Let’s all get the bubbles ready!!!”
Now, people ask her where she will show up next.
“Where are you going to be? When are you going to pop up? What bus are you on?” are among the questions she gets.
So she keeps showing up.
Since that first bus ride, Josey and her bubbles have popped up at the Black Women’s Expo, the Taste of Chicago, a White Sox game and Lollapalooza, where she said she ended up running into festival founder Perry Farrell. She, of course, blew bubbles his way.
It’s gotten to the point that Josey has been recognized in public, like recently at a grocery store.
“If somebody spots me, then I will bring them out immediately,” she said.
On one recent bus ride, Josey noticed some passengers who looked tired and down. She hesitated, unsure whether they wanted to be bothered.
Then the passengers, who were in the back, got off the bus and back on at the front, near Josey, and got her attention. She pulled out her bubbles and there was sudden “pure joy on the bus.”
Last week at Navy Pier, Josey carried two bubble guns as she walked along the lakefront — one shaped like Nemo from “Finding Nemo,” the other decorated like a mermaid princess.
It was her first time bringing the bubbles to the pier, one of her favorite places in the city.
She didn’t have to wait long for a reaction.
Children reached toward the bubbles as they floated past. People waved their hands through them. One little girl grabbed one of Josey’s bubble machines and tried handing it to her mother.
When Josey blew bubbles toward a group of women, one of them smiled and said, “This is so nice.”
Later, she sent a stream of bubbles toward a couple taking photos.
“That is so sweet,” a woman in the group said.
A Navy Pier worker stepped out of a ticket booth saying, “I need some of those,” and immersed himself in a cloud of bubbles, arms stretched out and eyes closed.
Bridget Josey, aka the Bubble Lady, blows bubbles at Navy Pier on Aug. 28, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
A woman visiting from Seattle with her family stopped to have her picture taken with Josey.
Josey appreciated all the reactions around her.
“I believe all the people I encounter today, they’ll have a bit more joy because my bubbles touched them,” she said.
For Josey, the bubbles have become more than a way to make strangers smile.
A visitor from Seattle smiles as Bridget Josey, aka the Bubble Lady, blows bubbles for strangers on a CTA bus near Navy Pier on Aug. 28, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
She talks about joy almost as a philosophy. She hopes the bubbles can be part of a larger message about choosing joy even when life is difficult.
“We have so much happening now in the world and if I can take them away for just minutes, I’ll do it,” Josey said.
“If you don’t like something, let’s change it. Let’s change it because think about it, we all woke up today. I’m going to be happy in this day because I don’t know if I’m going to be here tomorrow,” she said.
When she isn’t out with her bubbles, Josey works in Chicago doing records and information management for the federal government, attends church or spends time with her family in the city. Josey, who grew up on the South Side, now lives in south suburban Lansing.
She hopes the bubble project might eventually grow beyond spontaneous encounters on buses and at festivals. She has thought about bringing them to nursing homes or children’s hospitals.
And then there’s her dream.
“This might sound crazy, but I want to have a bubble event,” Josey said. “Somewhere big like this [Navy Pier] and everybody’s got a gun — about 100 people with bubble guns and all we see is bubbles.”
“Everybody’s blowing their gun and it’s a big area, and we’re all happy with our bubbles.”
Bridget Josey, aka the Bubble Lady, blows bubbles for strangers on a CTA bus near Navy Pier on Aug. 28, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Bridget Josey, aka the Bubble Lady, restocks her bubbles at Navy Pier on Aug. 28, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
