What, when, where, who, is... Chicago?
[published 2004/2005]
It's easy to trumpet Chicago's glories. It's easy to trumpet
the glories of most major metropolitan areas with close to ten million
people: human endeavor on that scale produces amazing results. One way
Chicago's story is special, though, is that it went from zero to sixty --
that is to say, from several thousand people to several million -- in
barely over a century.
People from out of town say strange things about this city. Two of my
(least) favorites: 1) "It's like a little New York." 2) "Chicago
has beaches?" Within these two phrases are perhaps contained the
essence of misconception about and misunderstanding of Chicago. One, that
it is trying to be or manages only to be something other than its innate
self -- that it aspires to or mirrors in lesser relief an identity outside
its own. Two, that it is landlocked and prairie-blown to the point of
total provinciality. Add to this the constant tagline of Chicago's alleged
inferiority complex, and you have its half-baked stereotype -- courtesy
of its (jealous?) and confused coastal counterparts and the media fiction
they broadcast.
Let's recall that Chicago is "Windy" not because of the weather
but because of its wealth of ideas and powerful can-do spirit. And let's
remember also that the "Second City" designation may refer more
to its phoenix-like tendency to rise up and surprise the world than to
any ranking of population, cultural importance, or batting order in terms
of innovation. The reality is that many residents of this sturdy metropolis
don't waste time thinking about how it stacks up to anything -- because
they know they wouldn't care to live anywhere else. Aside from a preened
cadre of intellectuals and a music-video-hyped glut of young suburbanites,
Chicagoans don't tend to participate quite as much in the in-vogue repartee
of the moment about what is most fashionable, what is ideologically and
politically de rigeur in the high culture of the hour, what is
quintessential in the studio-concoted "America" of the moment.
And they stand taller for it.
Chicago has its own media fiction, however, especially when it comes to
the impression the city lends to its visitors: namely that there is no
city to speak of beyond the Loop, North Michigan Avenue, a strictly defined
Hyde Park, some lakefront museums and distractions, a couple ballparks,
a patch of Oak Park, a university in Evanston, and a few neighborhoods
out there somewhere if you can get to them. For the tourist, the other
two hundred suburbs apparently do not exist, there is no Chicago a mile
west of the Lake, and the trains only go to the airports. And maybe that's
just how locals like it.
There are at least two Chicagos, the one we put on display and the one
we live in - and they seem in no danger of meeting any time soon. No doubt,
the city's fantastic sites, the majority of which we inherited from the
Victorian golden age and the rest of which were bequeathed to us by academic
architects using the built environment as their artistic canvas, are captivating
to say the least -- but in many cases they are the pedestal on which we
put the idea of our city, and they capture it like an ideal rendering
of a Greek god. They are pilgrimage sites to visit over the course the
year or many years. Awed in their presence as we might be by Hollywood
celebrities or Olympic athletes, we are generally content to stand back
from these marvels, enjoy them at a distance, and experience their offerings
infrequently and intensely as though we are tourists in our own city.
Our day-to-day lives, however, often consist mainly of visits to neighborhood
groceries and restaurants; local parks; shops and entertainment within
walking or quick expressway driving distance. A summer festival or sports
event is a much-valued excursion, marking the calendar with something
to remember.
This is one "real" Chicago. Its public works are
certainly another. In the last ten years especially, the city's government
has worked tirelessly towards creating a new legacy -- revitalizing Chicago's
"City in a Garden" motto and adding to its cultural monuments,
crowned most recently by the many-splendored Millennium Park. It may be
the first time since before the devastating days of the 1930s that Chicago
can once again legitimately claim the world-class status which it unquestionably
deserved at the time of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. But the finest
threads in the tapesty are not the gold and silver of Chicago's luxurious
ornamentation. They are the vibrant, primary colors of its stock and trade:
the people who live here. Creative minds may come from around the world
to make their mark here, but it is the people living here that realize
those dreams on a nuts-and-bolts level. And for every person, there is
a new theme, a new thought, a new place: a new Chicago.
WildOnions.org celebrates that every one of the more than 400 residential
communities in the Chicago area brings its own particular ingredients
to the table -- and the old water tower in Western Springs, or the new
beach on Round Lake, or the Japanese mall in Arlington Heights, or the
fifty-odd outdoor sculptures in Skokie, or the Irish crafts shop in Glen
Ellyn, or the forest preserve near Hickory Hills, or the footpaths of
North Park University, or the German mural in Lincoln Square, or the Austin
Town Hall, or the basilica in Sauganash, or the haunting Stockyards gate,
or the churches of Roseland, or even some often-forgotten stretches of
Lake Shore Drive and uncelebrated pockets of the Loop and the cultural
jewels that they conceal -- these make up at least as much of the meaning of the city as the Impressionist masterpieces at the Art Institute or
the spires on the Hancock Building. And WildOnions wants to give them
just as much attention.
WildOnions.org functions as a guidebook, photoessay collection,
and portal to the world of the city and the far reaches of the region.
The Wild Onion Quarterly will offer a companion online journal to the
site at large, where WildOnions staffers, promising authors, and longtime
Chicago afficionados will meet to discuss their experiences and some of
the most prevalent questions facing the region, in essay form. The journal
will be published online four times a year, with the first issue to be
released in February of 2005.
Whether you are a first-time visitor to this incredible
region or a fifty-year resident, we hope you enjoy sampling the panoply
of the whole of Chicagoland, and of its many fascinating and beautiful
places. In the boulevards and alleys of this sprawling network of settlements,
and here at WildOnions.org from the comfort of your computer, you may
seek out the unique: in sights, in dining, in shopping, in life's basics
-- not just in your own neck of the woods, wherever in the area you are
lodging or living, but in dozens of corners of town you may not have even
known existed. Enjoy it all, while today is here! Because tomorrow will
bring a new world of experience, and it is never the same city two days
in a row.
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