Chicagoland

I don't live in a city. I live in a land. Chicagoland is a sprawling, sparkling, self-sufficient island, a super-magnet that sucks in the majority of the money, mind power, and twenty-something population from surrounding states. It would have nothing to do with the rest of its state; the rest of the Midwest may as well not exist, except as a friend's vacation home on some charming little lake somewhere. It has everything one would expect from a small country, perhaps more. Jewel of the "third coast," perpetual "second city," first place any of us here would want to live, this is my ode to you.

My back story. I was one of those twenty-somethings caught in Chicago's magnetic pull, immigrating after college from the far-off land of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is considered by some Chicagoans to be just another suburb of their city. I had no idea, till I got down here, how living in a city of this size could make you forget there's a world outside its borders. Paradoxically, Chicago offers a sampling of every cultural experience one could hope for in America while making it seem unnecessary to ever partake in those cultures firsthand. Like all the great cities of the world, one could spend a lifetime exploring it without ever being privy to all its mysteries.

To begin with, the city proper is immense--and most of its geography is densely populated, wholly walkable, culturally rich--urban by the strictest of standards, a far cry from the morasses of freeway and strip mall masquerading as cities across the U.S. Chef and travel writer Anthony Bourdain says there are only two true cities in the U.S.--New York and Chicago*. There's no denying which one comes first in most people's minds. But Chicagoans embrace their second city status with the self-deprecating humor of the Midwest, because most of us wouldn't want to live anyplace else, least of all New York.

Chicago has style. When I was in middle school in Wisconsin, I had to buy the "Chicago Manual of Style," which lays out grammar rules the way Chicago defines them. The city has its own brand of blues, its own style of hot dog, its own school of architecture and economics, its own type of pizza. The latter is overrated, in my opinion, but God forbid a Chicagoan would eat New York style pizza.

Maybe the reason we're so particular is there's no one to challenge our supremacy for miles. In the same way that someone living in the middle of Oklahoma has no need to learn a foreign language because he or she is sandwiched between hundreds of miles of English speakers in all directions, Chicago has suburbs upon suburbs, surrounded by exurbs that are ringed by their own suburbs, whose residents would all define themselves as Chicagoans. I'm not so sure someone living an hour and a half outside of town lives in the same city as me, but heck, we're connected by train and he probably knows how to make a Chicago-style dog, too.

The idea of the endless city was particularly foreign to me, coming from Milwaukee. Drive an hour from downtown Milwaukee and you're amongst rolling hills and picturesque farms. Drive an hour from the Loop, and if traffic's bad enough, you might still be in Oak Park. It actually takes the same amount of time to travel, by public transit, from Rogers Park to Hyde Park, as it takes to travel from Union Station, by bus, to the Amtrak Station in Milwaukee.

So I've applied for my dual citizenship, and the good people of Chicagoland have been nothing but welcoming, as long as they can throw in a dig about Wisconsin every now and then so I remember my place. I now humbly begin my exploration of this enchanting land, hoping for the ability to describe, as clearly as I see it, all the arresting drama and hard-earned beauty of the city I now call home.

*No Reservations. Episode no. 5 of season 5, first broadcast 2 February 2009 by the Travel Channel. Directed by Christopher Collins and written by Anthony Bourdain? ... My attempt at Chicago style citation.