When Chicago Was More Than the Second City

I've long wanted to visit more of America, and the last few years living in the US have given me the chance to see parts that I wouldn't get to when I was flying over from London. Some of it, like Portland or the more mountainy bits of California, have been for pleasure, but work trips have let me get acquainted with the likes of Las Vegas (where I went for CES for four years), Fort Worth and now Chicago.

My company is based in Bloomington, Illinois, and I got the word two weeks ago that they wanted me out there for a meeting. I weighed up my options and quickly decided that I wanted to add a couple of days in Chicago, which is about 140 miles away. I got a rental car, and the company was happy that it would cost them less to send me home on Sunday (i.e. yesterday) rather than the Thursday after the meeting ended, so I was set.

And things improved when my girlfriend agreed to fly out to meet me the day I drove up from Bloomington, marking our first long weekend away together (cue "Awwwws"). She managed to get on the same flight as me, and even booked herself into the seat beside mine, which made the whole trip even nicer.

As for the city itself: I planned on one major sight per day, and while we missed the Field Museum, Wrigley Field and Shedd Aquarium, we did get to tour the river on a cruise that focused specifically on the architecture, plus we hit the American Writers' Museum and the Art Institute, so I think it's fair to say we caught a bunch of things that are relevant to my interests. We even went to the viewing deck at Hancock Tower, overlooking Lake Michigan and downtown, where we spent a romantic evening watching the sun go down and the city lights come on.

Top of the World, Ma

My girlfriend laughed at me the first morning on the bus up to the Architecture Center, when I said I was already feeling good about the place, and could kind of see myself living there. I've since moderated that since a friend who lives there explained how brutal the winters have been, but even she agrees that it's a great city, if only they would put it somewhere more temperate.

Mostly I was just excited to be in a big city again, especially one with so much history. Between paintings, music and architecture, as well as politics and business, so much of what we associate with the idea of America comes from Chicago, more so than from New York or Los Angeles. I've heard more than one person (on and off TV) poke fun at the regard Chicagoans have for their city, and the self-regard on the gift shop shelves can be a little overblown, but it is nice to think of a third pole to the US, separate from the two giant cities on either coast.

More than that, being in Chicago reminds you of a time, not even that long ago, when the US considered a lot of cities important: Detroit, St. Louis and so forth. And of a time when New York was just this scruffy, dirty, dangerous city over on the East Coast, rather than the gilded playland that shows like Sex and the City are at pains to present.

View from the start of the river tour

On the drive back to O'Hare yesterday I kept thinking about Sufjan Stevens's Illinois album, which at its best talks about the human stories dotted around the entire state, referencing cultural signifiers like Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln and even Superman and John Wayne Gacy. It's not the best album, because it was his attempt to keep up with his (quickly abandoned) idea of doing an album for all 50 states, but in its best moments I do recognize what I've seen of the city.

I guess I'm affected by the city because it hearkens back to times when America was still confident and good at making things, and when you could make it big in pretty much any big city. This is a feeling I also get when I read Bill Bryson's books about America, for instance his memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, which talks about growing up in Iowa in the 1950s. Now Iowa is kind of the butt of jokes, but here on the coasts we forget at our peril that people do live there - maybe if we hadn't bypassed the middle of America by flying over it and shifting our manufacturing out of cities like Detroit, we wouldn't be in the mess we're currently in.

The Seer's Tower and modernist architecture in front

I think the city's tallest tower is a good example. When it was the Sears Tower, and the world's tallest office building, it represented a strain of American business that employed a good chunk of the workforce. Now it's the Willis Tower, and Sears-Roebuck has pretty much torn itself apart through dire mismanagement. But the tower itself is still the daily destination for around 12,000 workers every day - representing how just because a place is no longer the center of the business world people still live and work there.

Illinois is obviously not as down-at-heel as cities like Ohio and Michigan (or at least parts thereof), which were more reliant on heavy industry. It's been helped along by its more service-oriented economy, I suppose, and its continuing cultural capital comes from being the first stepping stone for a lot of Saturday Night Live comedians... as well as housing works like Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.

In any case, I'd like to go back and see more of it - potentially arriving on Amtrak, the way people used to get there before flying was commonplace, and you had to stop there on trips between the coasts. My friend who lives there talked about how it's a city of neighborhoods, and I think it'd be fun to find out more about those places, too.

And maybe spend another romantic evening with my honey up at the top of the city? That sounds pretty good, too.