windygirl

Ah Chicago, greatest City ever - how do I love thee? 

 As someone who has lived in both the cow towns of Indiana and the postmodern blitz that is L.A. (aka Hell A), I can tell you that I’ve experienced a city or three - and there is no question that Chicago is surely one of the greatest towns on earth.

Today I went to the Taste of Chicago, an epic fest of eating, people watching, and walking around in a huge packed crowd.  Three things Chicagoans do the way Los Angelenos abuse blow and practice bulimia.  These are our citie’s treasured pasttimes, right up there with rooting for the Cubs or Sox or beating up the opposing team’s fans in an alley.

Today was a beautiful balmy summer day, as near to blissful perfection as you can imagine in your wildest fantasies.  And we imagine those plenty while the howling hounds of winter plague us for a good 6 or 9 months out of every year.  We imagine the feeling of sunkissed skin and soft breezes and bahama blue skies.  And here it was: all converging at one time - during the Taste.  It was enough to make you wanna hug strangers and get up a good round of Kumbaya. 

Sure we only have it a few months out of the year but oh, what months they are.  Summer’s favorite city is Chicago - of that I am certain.  As we say here: if the weather was good ALL year round, all the Riff Raff would live here.

Not only can you walk in the parks, but you can walk to the Beach from your office which is Downtown.  Try that in L.A. or NYC.  We have beautiful green parks and trees as well as mind blowing architecture, amazing history, a gorgeous downtown, a big gritty urban feel (sorry L.A., you never even came close) and a midwestern friendliness that cannot compare with any other city.

How I missed the sound of the El rattling overhead.  The pizza, fat and rich and dripping with olive oil and fresh garlic.  The rich plummy accents of the black kids on the train.  The Sox/Cub rivalry and the Crosstown Classic.  The “friendly confines”.  XRT.  Millenium Park.  Marshall Fields on State Street even if it IS called Macy’s now.  Rain.  Electric storms that come rolling in across the plains while you watch.  At night in my high rise, looking down at the runny neon colors and endless blinking red eyes of Wacker Drive as the traffic sludges its way along the Chicago River.  The River!   Dyed green on Saint Patrick’s Day and staying that color all year long.  The sprinting hustling water taxis and the tall slow moving majestic sailboats.  The Wrigley Building.  The bridges at night.  The way the air always has a slightly cool, freshly green and watery quality that was so dreadfully missing from the hot hellish air that blows over L.A. Chicago air comes from Canada and seems always to have blown over a dewy and freshly mown lawn, even if you are downtown surrounded by asphalt. 

Chicago moves to its own drummer.  It drinks too much (MUCH too much) but it’s not pretending to cover it up either or be something it’s not.  L.A. pretends to have perfect sobriety, sort of a stuck up Puritan at the Disco, and then goes home and hovers up a kilo and falls unconscious.  Chicago knows its a city full of drunks and doesn’t give a shit what you think.  We have enough graft and coverup in our politics anyway and we treat these indiscretions like the celeb gossip they are.  Chicago doesn’t get caught up in your dramas, your trends, your fakeness.  If each city has its own word, Chicago’s word is REAL.

Chicago exudes history, culture, beauty and charm from its very sidewalks.  L.A. exudes the smell of trash and people’s evicted furniture.  Chicago is the kind of place that will always be there for you and that will always let you come home again when you have noplace left to go.  L.A. is the kind of place that fully expects you to suck it off while feeding it compliments and then maybe (maybe) it will buy you a drink.

Today, walking through the hot tired crowds of people chewing absent-mindedly on corn dogs and grilled goat meat, wearing t-shirts that showed their (gasp!) bellies and yelling at their kids to “get the HAYL over here, Laquisha!” I was very deeply happy.  I was home.  I had been away much much too long.

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