Go (to) Chicago!

The trip to Chicago was a success! It is a fantastic place, very large. Chicago is geographically much smaller than New York City, with about 1/7th the population, but it felt much bigger in a way. I think it's because in NYC all of the buildings are 20 stories tall with their facades right at the sidewalk. It has the effect of making you feel like you're in a maze, with no concept of how far the maze stretches in any direction. In Chicago, especially downtown, the buildings have great variation in height and distance from the street. Many street corners have 10 or 15 feet of sidewalk before the steps to a building, and that building may only be 5 stories tall. This lets you see past the building to other buildings behind it and the ones behind those. Instead of a maze, you feel like you are in a valley of a drastically hilly area.

Speaking of changing your perspective, it's also notable that viewing the city from the Empire State Building in NYC is very different than from the Sears Tower in Chicago. From the ESB you feel like you are standing among giants, 1000 feet in the air looking accross at the skyscrapers of downtown. From the Sears Tower (and an extra 500 feet up) you are looking down at the tops of skyscrapers. Even the John Hancock Center, itself almost as tall as the Empire State, gives a deferrential shrug to the Sears Tower. Looking out from the "Skydeck" we were sometimes inside, sometimes above, the clouds. On a clear day you can apparently see 4 states, but you can't see where Chicago ends.

The "L," or the elevated train system, is also really cool. A very Gotham City vibe, even though I'm pretty sure that in the DC world Gotham is analogous to NYC and Metropolis is moreso Chicago. The main difference, also apparent in the palpable representations, is that Metropolis/Chicago is much cleaner. (And the Superman/Batman difference, of course, though currently lacking in real-life.)

Diverging from the physical city, Chicago has some of the friendlier inhabitants of the big cities I've been to. From the people who you accidentally bump into on the street to the bartenders at the overly-crowded (but still hilarious) Second City to the security guards at Sears Tower (Alex: "Hi, we're tourists!"), people were generally very nice to our band of strangers. We were lucky enough to be visiting when the White Sox were in the World Series for the first time in a century. The city invited us into the excitement by lighting up the buildings downtown with "GO SOX" and "SOX PRIDE," and a bar crowd that exploded in cheering and high-fives all around whenever they scored. My favorites, though, were the panhandlers who thanked us when we denied them money. ("Any spare change?" / "Sorry man." / "Hey, thank you.") I realize that they probably don't get treated like human beings very often, so for someone to look them in the eye and apologize they might feel some gratitude. As simple as it seems, it's a lot nicer than being screamed at or called a racist (*ahem* Cleveland. That's a story for another time.)

I could see myself living in a place like Chicago. It would be a good place for grad school, a good place to have a family, a good place for an alien baby to be raised by an All-American family to become the city's protector and a national symbol.