Vague Impressions of Chicago
Your weekly Cleveland Nostalgia Video has been preempted by my boring vacation slideshow.
I came back from Chicago with this vague feeling that I'd done something terrible, like had an affair. I mean, if someone's going to stay in the Midwest, why would they choose Cleveland over Chicago? Over the next five days I'm going to attempt to work out an answer to that question.
As I said before, my two prior experiences with Chicago were a) Doctor Who convention in 8th grade and b) driving through on my way to Montana. Jim was offered a job in Chicago right when we graduated from library school but he didn't take it because I had just started my job at Shaker. And because he had never been west of Indianapolis - I think he figured there were dragons out there. Now that one of us has actually been to that looming monster six hours to the west, perched on Lake Michigan in all of its better-than-Cleveland glory, I wonder how our lives might have turned out differently.
But in truth, it's hard to compare Cleveland and Chicago. Like Cleveland, Chicago got its first big break as a canal town. Unlike Cleveland, Chicago has been able to let go of the Glory Days of the 1830s.
Like Cleveland, Chicago is situated on a lake. Unlike Cleveland, you can actually get to it.
Like Cleveland, Chicago has a comprehensive public transit system. Unlike Cleveland, people are actually willing to use it.
Chicago and Cleveland do not look alike, not by any stretch of the imagination. Chicago is nowhere near as diced up by freeways as Cleveland. Chicago's neighborhoods flow organically into downtown. They are full of apartments and multi-family units, and not so many single family houses. Riding the train through Chicago's neighborhoods is nothing like riding RTA, it's nothing like riding NYC Transit. It's more like riding through London. The best image I could come up with in trying to describe Chicago to Jim was this: take Cleveland's downtown, make it bigger and full of people. Then take Queens and sort of mold it around this downtown area, and drop everything down next to a Great Lake.
Perhaps the most vivid contrast, however, is this one.
I left Chicago at rush hour on Friday. Hordes of people were moving with purpose. I had to do that wonderful dance where you find the hole in the crowd and weave through it. I'm really good at that.
What I'm not so good at is the dance that greeted me upon my return, at Cleveland rush hour. Actually, there IS no Cleveland rush hour. No one walks with purpose in downtown Cleveland at any time of the day. In downtown Cleveland you get stuck behind lumbering people who don't seem to have anything to do or anyplace to be. It brought to mind Ted Rall's description of Central Asia in Silk Road to Ruin: nobody's time is valuable in the Third World, least of all yours.
Tomorrow: The Megabus Experience.
I came back from Chicago with this vague feeling that I'd done something terrible, like had an affair. I mean, if someone's going to stay in the Midwest, why would they choose Cleveland over Chicago? Over the next five days I'm going to attempt to work out an answer to that question.
As I said before, my two prior experiences with Chicago were a) Doctor Who convention in 8th grade and b) driving through on my way to Montana. Jim was offered a job in Chicago right when we graduated from library school but he didn't take it because I had just started my job at Shaker. And because he had never been west of Indianapolis - I think he figured there were dragons out there. Now that one of us has actually been to that looming monster six hours to the west, perched on Lake Michigan in all of its better-than-Cleveland glory, I wonder how our lives might have turned out differently.
But in truth, it's hard to compare Cleveland and Chicago. Like Cleveland, Chicago got its first big break as a canal town. Unlike Cleveland, Chicago has been able to let go of the Glory Days of the 1830s.
Like Cleveland, Chicago is situated on a lake. Unlike Cleveland, you can actually get to it.
Like Cleveland, Chicago has a comprehensive public transit system. Unlike Cleveland, people are actually willing to use it.
Chicago and Cleveland do not look alike, not by any stretch of the imagination. Chicago is nowhere near as diced up by freeways as Cleveland. Chicago's neighborhoods flow organically into downtown. They are full of apartments and multi-family units, and not so many single family houses. Riding the train through Chicago's neighborhoods is nothing like riding RTA, it's nothing like riding NYC Transit. It's more like riding through London. The best image I could come up with in trying to describe Chicago to Jim was this: take Cleveland's downtown, make it bigger and full of people. Then take Queens and sort of mold it around this downtown area, and drop everything down next to a Great Lake.
Perhaps the most vivid contrast, however, is this one.
I left Chicago at rush hour on Friday. Hordes of people were moving with purpose. I had to do that wonderful dance where you find the hole in the crowd and weave through it. I'm really good at that.
What I'm not so good at is the dance that greeted me upon my return, at Cleveland rush hour. Actually, there IS no Cleveland rush hour. No one walks with purpose in downtown Cleveland at any time of the day. In downtown Cleveland you get stuck behind lumbering people who don't seem to have anything to do or anyplace to be. It brought to mind Ted Rall's description of Central Asia in Silk Road to Ruin: nobody's time is valuable in the Third World, least of all yours.
Tomorrow: The Megabus Experience.
posted by Christine Borne at 3:22 PM
7 Comments:
What neighborhoods did you visit? How far from the lakefront and from tbe Loop did you go? Neighborhoods in SW and NW Chicago are very different from those along the lakefront. Also, the expressways (and public housing) were laid out with very specific goals in mind and drastically changed the fabric of many neighborhoods.
Let's see. I'm opening up the map...I was pretty disoriented the whole time I was there because the city was situated the wrong way around -- i.e., N-S around the lake rather than E-W. My friend lives in Rogers Park, which is a really delightful little neighborhood on the far north side with streets that dead-end at the lake. (Here I should mention how impressed I was that the lake looked so clean....) I think there are places on the far East Side of Cleveland like this, but we don't have anything like it over here. I mean, we have Edgewater Park, but Edgewater Park overlooks the freeway and it has more of a community feel than a neighborhoody feel, if that makes sense.
Anyway, we also went to the northern end of the brown line -- I have no idea what neighborhood this is -- to the Chicago History Museum, and to Wicker Park.
As far as freeways in Cleveland vs. Chicago, yeah, I can see that the Chicago freeways might have just devastated different neighborhoods. In Cleveland, though (and I am talking Cleveland proper), there really wasn't much that stayed un-ruined by the freeways. In Chicago it seemed like there was a lot of the city proper that wasn't sliced and diced.
If I am remembering correctly, and I am being a lousy librarian by not looking this up before I open my yap, there were generally two ways that US city mayors were looking at the freeways during the 1950s, when they were built: they could run them around the edges, or run them directly through the city. Cleveland was a "through," and it's one of the reasons why suburban flight was so extreme here.
When I look at the maps, I really don't think Chicago is any less cut up by freeways than Cleveland is. Cleveland didn't put any freeways through its built up urban core, although you could make the case that the area east from Carnegie/Broadway along Broadway/Orange Ave. etc. has been devastated and that having the Innerbelt and I77 built there didn't help that at all.
Maybe you're thinking of the West Shoreway downtown? That was built before WWII, and I think that area was pretty industrial at the time.
I think Chicago has had a lot of growth since the freeways were built, and Cleveland has not.
Keep in mind, too, that the very large freeway free area of Cleveland proper bounded by I-90 on the north, I-480 on the south , and I-77 on the west is the most devastated part of the city. Not being sliced and diced by freeways didn't help them.
My friend lives in Rogers Park, which is a really delightful little neighborhood on the far north side with streets that dead-end at the lake...I think there are places on the far East Side of Cleveland like this, but we don't have anything like it over here.
That would be Lakewood. Chicago has its independent suburbs too. Maybe they were more successful (ruthless?) at absorbing theirs than Cleveland was.
I realized just how little traffic there was in downtown Cleveland when, on a recent workday, I bicycled from my parking spot at about 22nd and Superior to the main library. It wasn't the slightest bit scary. This was the middle of a weekday and the traffic was so light that I was able to do this with ease. What the heck!?
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Listen, folks, downtown Cleveland has big problems. Nobody has been trying to hide this from you. It's a symptom, okay? We'll know we've fixed everything when it goes away.
I think that for me, visiting Chicago -- which is the first city I've been in since I moved back from New York in 2007 -- made me wonder if I want to stick around and watch things get fixed, or just live someplace where they already are. It's kind of a moot point, since we just bought a house. But I can't deny the fact that it made me feel sad, to be in a place where I felt like I could *really* live without a car, where it felt like there was vitality and (frankly) a critical mass of educated people. I'm sorry if that makes me sound like a snob, but there you go.
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