For the first time in my life, I have seen urban America outside of the confines of Boston. Sure I'd been to redneck burgs in Wyoming and Utah, but I'd never seen a real city past the Mississippi. Not until this past weekend. Since I grew up outside of Boston, I was led to believe that everyone endured harsh winters and muggy summers, everyone lived in clapboard houses with rooms. People cared about three things: sex, sports and politics. So Mayor "Mumbles" Menino and Larry Bird ruled the (if you pardon the pun) roost. We were expected to take pride in our cramped Boston Garden, the dead spots on the parquet and pigeons in the rafters -- the sort of history and decay that created our home court advantage. We yearned for the past, for 1918, for Tip O'Neill and the Kennedys. The subtle racism and segregation that permeated the city should be accepted and never talked about, for we were still a city of clashing immigrants, from the Italians in North Boston to the Irish in Southie. Ethnic conflict was as sure as the Italian restaurant that seemed to be blown up every year (you could read about it in the Herald, the staunch liberal everyman's paper).
Coming from this background, I was shocked when I landed in Chicago on Thursday evening. The first thing I noticed was that the airport looked like any other American airport-- the yellowed lighting, the bathrooms with 300 urinals and the pulp bookstores. In the car I noticed that the roadside looked like a strip of New Jersey stretched and pulled. Normal sized streets were three lanes, every shop was a K-Mart, every restaurant a McDonalds. The whole city was more spacious, more planned, less quirky-- maybe even more modern. The city was cookie cutter, Levittown but larger.
Since I don't want to insult anyone from Chicago, I advise them to stop reading (No, just kidding. Keep reading, I dare you.) I can't account for the whole city, since I only spent four days there, but I can talk about two areas: Michigan Ave. and Chinatown. The first thing we did on Saturday was drive to Chinatown. Now the Chinatown that I know in Boston consists of many small, dirty restaurants and markets. You can buy 30 lotus buns at the bakery for, oh, about $3.50. While the Chicago Chinatown was still dirty and I still didn't bother communicating with the waiters, the roads still surprised me. There was actually space-- no more three foot alleyways to display the inside out ducks and 500 crabs piled inside two gallon containers. The place had breathing room. The food was the same, people still drove both Mercedes S-500s and the '87 Chevy Aries to get pig's feet and cow tongues. The arched Chinese entrance was not nearly as ornate and the shops just as often sold pirated DVDs (with a "special" section in back) than lotus fruit cutters. There was a subtle lack of history in this Chinatown as well.
The downtown was similar. Obviously the great fire left few landmarks, considering the fact that the chief historical landmark in the city is a water tower, albeit a pretty one. On the Chicago version of Monopoly, it takes the place of Boardwalk. The streets are blocked like in New York. Instead of Newbury Street in Boston you have Michigan Ave., though Chicago has a better Niketown and better sportswear (Boston has better fashion clothing, if you're looking for a $4000 suit). And the memorable images of the city are its skyscrapers-- particularly the Sears Tower. The winters are harsher, but there's not much sledding since the place is flat.
The main thing that irritated me was this flatness. It is as if someone ironed out all the wrinkles of history and made a city of meat markets and train terminals. It is too new to have quirks presumably; there are no small twisting roads that were once cobblestone and little to root for. You can't compare the Cubs fan to the Red Sox fan-- at least the Sox fan still has hope that his team will win. The Cubs fan has no hope, no real animosity toward another team. He does not constantly exist in the shadow of New York. He, like the city, has little character.
The processes of modernism did not need to ravage this city-- a fire did that instead. A certain consumerism pervades the city as well -- certainly the kids from Chicago that I went to camp with were the first to buy Converse's React Juice shoes or Reebok Pumps. Now, this is anecdotal evidence, but you can also observe the same thing in the shops around town. Maybe the people need to latch onto something desperately, since they don't have the sports of Boston. At least they have the political history of Mayor Daley and 1968.
What resides in Boston is a certain nostalgia for "the way things used to be" before the homogenization of not just milk, but society, before interstates and Blockbusters. Not all of Chicago resists this force, but I'm willing to bet that some of the town does. I probably exaggerate about what I saw, but I only am doing so to provoke some angry Illinois students here to write me back. Maybe Senator Fitzgerald (Dartmouth '82) is reading.
