I love this city.
I love. This. City.
No, not Naperville. It's a nice safe little burg to grow up in, sure, but I don't know if one can love Naperville any more than the way one loves the lock on the front door. Sure, you're glad you have it. Sure, it keeps you safe. But there's nothing particularly exciting about that lock. It's just a thing that's on your door.
But Chicago? I love this city.
Whenever I'm in a car or on a train going into the city, no matter what time of year or day it is, that first view of the skyline never fails to take my breath away. The concentrated little clump of skyscrapers is beautiful on the bluest of blue-sky days, or slowly drifting out of the drab gray fog, or sparkling in window-lights and street-lamps at night. The shining glass giants and the solid landmark skyscrapers and the public art that never fails to fall short of really quite odd. (There's a giant eye by Robert Morris College right now. I smile every time I see it.) I love crossing under the El tracks when there's a train roaring and rattling overhead, momentarily drowning out any conversation. I love looking into the windows along the sidewalks, seeing all the different businesses and all the different people in them. I love how gross the city is in places-- the weird smell, the puddles of dubious origin, the construction zones that have been under construction ever since I can remember. I love the columns on the old buildings, the plate glass on the new ones, the haphazardly-placed scaffolding on the sidewalks. I love the shiny, artsy metal that attracts tourists in Millennium Park. But more than the buildings, I love the people.
Yes, there are jerks in Chicago. There's the crotchety old gay men who stretch out on the steps of the concert pavilion and yell at you for trying to get around them to your seat. There's the lady who steps right in front of you as you're trying to get on an escalator. There's any number of Chicagoans who are crazy or stupid or just plain rude. (We try to keep them shut up in City Hall as much as possible.) But for every one of them, there's dozens of the old women who joke with you on the elevator about how EVER do you carry that string bass, or the man passing by who goes out of his way to hold the door because you're carrying a LOT of stuff, or the girl behind the counter at Starbucks who makes a tray of free drink samples for her regular customers because "you've GOT to try this hot chocolate, it's got SO many calories but it's just SO good!". There's the middle-aged man on rollerblades doing a split down the sidewalk, or the tough-looking guy holding his girlfriend's coat-wearing Dacschund, or the nerdy guy in the park who offers to sing you a song on his ukulele. There are cops on Segways; that alone is reason to smile.
Above all, I love that our city really IS a city. It's not just a collection of people; it's neighborhoods and it's streets and it's like one big small town. We're a city of losers; when our Bears or our Bulls or our Cubs or yes, even our Sox more often than not flop miserably or peter out after a strong start or lose in the final disappointing game of a championship, we all sigh the same sigh and go back to hoping for the next year, even though we know it'll probably be the same as the last year. When some major tragedy befalls Chicago, when our streets aren't safe or somebody important dies or yet another political scandal shakes up City Hall and surprises nobody, we're all angry together. But when we triumph-- and we do triumph-- we celebrate en masse. We were the ones who filled Grant Park that chilly November night and watched history happen. We were the ones dancing in the shower of confetti in 2005 for our Sox, and then for our Blackhawks just shy of five years later. We were the ones who packed the lawn a few weeks ago to watch a larger-than-life Italian conductor usher in arguably the most exciting era of classical our city has seen since Burnham built Symphony Center. And we'll celebrate even more in the years to come; because no matter who our mayor is, no matter what happens to the economy, no matter how much we gripe about the weather or the construction or the politicians, Chicago is a great city, and we're just getting better.
I'm not going to deny that we have problems. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't break my heart and every true Chicagoan's every time we see another one of our young people dead on the streets, or another public school failing because we're too corrupt to fund them right, or another politician ignoring what the people put him in office to do in the first place. I'm not going to say I don't feel sick every time I see a political attack ad and think of what the politician promoting it is going to do to our home, whether in raised taxes or cut services or good old fashioned corruption. We're a city imperfect as its politicians, as its workers, as its nation, as its people. It's both our downfall and our greatest strength.
New York may have its all-American fantasy, Paris its high art, Los Angeles its movie-star sheen. But Chicago? Our weather is harsh, our streets are congested, our industries and our origins are plain. But we have our buildings, our minds, our people who root for our city like we root for our teams-- perennially, come rain or sleet or snow or sideways hail or all of the above, which has been known to happen on occasion. Keep your cardboard fantasies, your crumbling plaster statues, your silicone starlets. We have grit, we have pride, we have heart.
And we love this city because of it.
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