Chicago Sun Time: In front of Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate in Millennium Park | photo illustration by Peter Funch 
Feast on This: Historian Tim Samuelson lunches at the Carson Pirie Scott building. | photograph by Saverio Truglia In the bottom of the ninth inning of the 2005 World Series, as the long-suffering Chicago White Sox were about to win their first championship in 88 years, play-by-play announcer Joe Buck waxed eloquent about Chicago's South Side, where the Sox play. He described it as "a collection of neighborhoods...Irish neighborhoods. Italian neighborhoods. Polish. Lithuanian. Firemen. Policemen. Schoolteachers. Stockyard workers." Stockyard workers? The last stockyard closed in 1971. Irish, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian? The South Side has long been predominantly African-American, and most of its immigrants now are Mexican. Yet that is how many view the city, through a lens dominated by the past. If you travel abroad and tell people you're from Chicago, they'll often pull their hands out of imaginary holsters and start shooting. To them, the city is still Al Capone's town, which it was -- nearly a century ago.
The real Chicago isn't so easy to keep up with. It's constantly reinventing itself. Jumpy. Agitated. Impatient. It's as if the place is trembling. Move aside. Don't linger. And if you're going to dawdle, get out of the way. But what any Chicagoan will also tell you is that the past is very much present. It doesn't go away. It shouldn't. In fact, that's Chicago's lure and its beauty: its ability to take what was and figure out what could be.
Consider Millennium Park. The city's spectacular growth in the late 19th century was in large part because of the railroads. Chicago, centrally located, could ship anywhere and receive anything. But 100 years later, the railroads here had become near relics; the dozens of Illinois Central Railroad tracks that converged downtown, an eyesore. So what did Chicago do? It covered some 25 acres of tracks and commuter lines with a massive platform, one so sturdy that it could build a park on it. It made the park's centerpiece a band shell, designed by Frank Gehry, that feels simultaneously whimsical (it resembles a tangled ribbon tossed by the Lake Michigan breeze) and brawny (that ribbon is made of steel, a call to the city's past as a center of industrial might). Some 100 years ago, Daniel Burnham, who oversaw the construction of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and drew a layout for the city that included putting everyone within walking distance of a park, declared, "Make no little plans."
And so Chicago does not. FAST COMPANY has named it U.S. City of the Year, recognizing not its past but its present -- and its future -- as a place where there's room to stretch. Chicago has given America social investing and the stories of Stuart Dybek and Aleksander Hemon. It has been greening itself since long before it became trendy, and it has been dancing, too -- this is the home of house music, Wilco, and Lupe Fiasco. Here, in the birthplace of the American skyscraper, Santiago Calatrava is redefining the form with his Spire, while at the Art Institute, Renzo Piano is building a $300 million addition. The economy is growing faster than New York's or L.A.'s. And one of Chicago's own, who arrived in the 1980s and, in the tradition of the great rabble-rouser Saul Alinsky, took a job community organizing, has made a shockingly viable run for president, despite everyone telling him he was too inexperienced. Early in his campaign, Barack Obama told supporters, "I try to explain to people, I may be skinny but I'm tough. I'm from Chicago."
Aware of all the writers who have come before -- Carl Sandburg, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Mike Royko, Studs Terkel -- I have no pretensions of having the last word on Chicago. Nor can I hope to capture in such a short space the contradictions of this place. Wright, who launched his career here, once wrote, "There is an open and raw beauty about that city that seems either to kill or endow one with the spirit of life." I've written plenty on the former and so here want to dwell on the latter. Every time I set forth in this scrappy place, I'm reminded why, despite my roots as a New Yorker, I've chosen Chicago as home: Alongside the failed and the fragile, it's a city of romance and optimism.
The people, of course, give a place its soul. So I visited with several Chicagoans who personify this city. They took me places that seemed at once to stay in place and move forward. Chicago is, after all, ever in motion, pulling from the past while pushing at the future.
Not long ago, a delegation from the International Olympic Committee was being bused around town, and its guide, Tim Samuelson, the city's cultural historian and resident Boswell, sensed ennui. Or maybe it was skepticism. Regardless, given that Chicago is the U.S. nominee to host the 2016 Games, that was no good thing, especially to Samuelson, a hoarder of city artifacts -- from smoke-stained ceiling pieces from the 708 Club, the premier blues joint of the 1940s, to Eliot Ness's handcuffs -- who once told me, "My whole existence is Chicago."
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Recent Comments | 11 Total
May 21, 2008 at 7:53am by Mark Zorro
What gravitates me today is not delving into what people read, nor no longer trying to simply figure out why I personally write what it is I write, but what I am looking for are those articles that get me traveling and finding based on a writers experience rather than a laundry list of go to sites, this one hit the "bulls-eye" in that regard, which is quite apt if we are talking about Chicago. By the time I finished fishing this article, I found out that the neon-strip tunnel at O'Hare airport was designed by Helmat Jahn and that the BCE building I have often starred at in arched wonder is designed by Santiago Calatrava. This article took me to new sources of music such as Lupe Fiasco, Wilco and Neko Case. I actually loved the melodic tone of HOLD ON HOLD ON, a song featured on Neko Case's website. The most fascinating character mentioned in the piece is Studs Terkel, his site at studsterkel.org, which is chock full of interesting interviews. I found it interesting that Stanley Tigerman opened up an alternative design school called ARCHEWORKS. Beyond the architects and the musicians, I discovered how little I knew about trees and that itself opens up an interesting pathway of inquiry but what this article did most was to open my eyes up to see Chicago in a new light, to go beyond the beef and the politics and begin to notice a city that I have worked in but have never done the justice of taking the time to notice it or even try to "visit it". It is not so much that Hillary Clinton once did a thesis on Saul Alinksy because that takes me back into Chicago politics that I have learned not to trust, but this article connected me to an authenticity and realistic attitude of Chicago that I have utterly failed to connect with. So I am finding that the best stuff in a great article does not come to light until we shift the focus of our own attention makeup. This is more the reason why commentary simply sucks up my time and stops me from the real juice here, which is starting to look at my world in a new way and begin to extract rather than simply accumulate. The way Alex Kowlowitz wrote this up is very helpful in that regard. What Alex did here is open up a Chicago that I have been so lazy minded to see before, yet I know it is city that should command my attention as well as it turns out, my respect, but now thanks to this article, it does.......M.
May 29, 2008 at 11:00am by Michael De'Shazer
New York is the city of the millennium. Take that Chicago. Although, you are catching up due to "Sex and the City."
June 4, 2008 at 6:18pm by Michael Burns
Ahem--Chicago?? City of the year?? Does anyone at Fast Company magazine read the papers here?? Last year, more than 500 people were indicted on various corruption charges. Our last governor just went to prison, and our current one is being investigated by the Feds. Can you say, "Rezko?"
Green roofs, sure. But "progressive?" Give me a break.
We're the poster-child for local and state corruption.
June 5, 2008 at 12:05am by thesby tolbert
why are you people biting about Chicago?Give me Chicago over any city.Look at NYC where there are rats all over the place look at what happened at the taco bell and kfc in manhatten and rat hang out.At least Chicago inspects its diners and fast food places each night and will close them down in a heartbeat if a single dropping is in that place.Our alleys are rat free .Nyc your building inspectors need to take notes and learn from Chicago and you will be rat free too.I have been to other USA cities and have seen none better than Chicago that is why people want to live here.
June 5, 2008 at 6:03pm by Natalie Rubino
New York is the city of the past; Chicago is the city of the future. It is growing and will continue to grow due to the quality of life, access to public transportation, museum culture, beauty (landscaping, green roofs and skyline, professional sports and I can go on.
October 25, 2008 at 8:26pm by j e
"Our last governor just went to prison, and our current one is being investigated by the Feds. Can you say, "Rezko?""......
Really? This city is amazing. Ever read anything about whats going on in our Midwest sister city Detroit? Stop being so negative and appreciate what we have...at least we aren't as bad as the D...corruption plus NO positive image whatsoever? Now that sucks...At least Chicago is still one of the countrys top.
October 25, 2008 at 8:28pm by j e
"Our last governor just went to prison, and our current one is being investigated by the Feds. Can you say, "Rezko?""......
Really? This city is amazing. Ever read anything about whats going on in our Midwest sister city Detroit? Stop being so negative and appreciate what we have...at least we aren't as bad as the D...corruption plus NO positive image whatsoever? Now that sucks...At least Chicago is still one of the country's top.
November 13, 2008 at 9:55am by Lou Berkman
Nice article except for one thing. Despite all the fine "green" work that Chicago seems to be doing it falls down on the basics. We still have no comprehensive (city-wide) recycling program that works. While some of the city has gotten blue bins for recyclables, the rest of us get the blue bag program where recyclables are thrown in with the regular garbage and may or may not be recycled. This is very discouraging for those of us trying to recycle correctly.
Also mass transit here is a nightmare much of the time, as is traffic. So while we have developed bike lanes and other progressive measures to lower our carbon footprint, those of us trying to get around by car or the "el" have a horrible time. It's great that we produce 500 pounds of honey on city hall (Where do you buy the stuff anyway?? I have never seen it.) Meanwhile those of us stuck in traffic trying to get from one end of the city to the other pump out tons of exhaust which more than couteracts whatever gains are made by trees and rooftop gardens.
Oh yea, a big shout out to the Hideout, which is one of the best clubs in town or anywhere in the world; I have spent hundreds of nights there.
December 17, 2008 at 12:06pm by mason Dixon
Chicago is also hosting the largest Motion Design and Film Effects conference in the world. Starts on Inauguration Day, Jan 20th. See http://MGFest.com
January 29, 2009 at 1:13pm by Hugh McGinley
How about Chicago being the #1 murder capital of the US?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/25/chicago-once-again-the-us_n_137...
or
http://current.com/items/88913927/chicago_in_the_lead_for_murder_capital...
There we go for city of the year...
February 3, 2009 at 3:39pm by Vern Masterson
Personally I don't think any city on Earth deserves this sort of award, with the possible exception of certain very small places. However, despite their overall uselessness, the gardens on top of many buildings in Chi-town sound delightful... If I worked as a government employee, I'd petition to have my office outside for about 4 months out of the year, so I could breathe the fresh air and listen to the gurgle of the wall fountain while I do my part to make Chicago a less difficult place to live.