Somewhere over the rainbow, there is a city called Chicago.
It is a place of tall, shiny buildings and people perpetually smiling. A town of good, better and best restaurants. A destination, filled with diversions, attractions and accommodations.
This Chicago is a smallish place, only about eight miles long and no more than three miles wide at its widest part. It is bounded on the north by Irving Park Road, on the west by Ashland Avenue, on the south by 26th Street and on the east by Lake Michigan.
There are outposts, separated from the main city, that are essential parts as well of this Chicago: Hyde Park to the south, Oak Park to the west. The rest of the landscape is virtually empty.
The lake plays a prominent role in the city’s daily life. Just look at the pictures: a sun-dappled lake, a snow-covered lake, a storm-tossed lake, a brooding lake under a lowering sky.
And the skyscrapers, so lovingly photographed-the Sears Tower, the John Hancock Center, the Amoco Building, and all the others-appear as temples to some stark (but not unpleasant) municipal god.
Except for an occasional darling child or picturesque retiree, everyone’s young and footloose in this Chicago. And everyone-everyone-is having a good time, running on the lakefront, whooping it up at a blues club, dropping a bundle gladly at the Michigan Avenue shops, cheering on the Cubs who seem always to be winning.
This Chicago is a wonder of the world. It inspires descriptions of orgiastic delight.
“There she is,” gushes one travel writer, “rising suddenly like a gleaming, soaring fantasy-a luminous skyline of sheened metal, marble and glass towers topped by exotic extravaganzas of domes, turrets, obelisks and spires.”
Another enthuses: “Chicago! It’s never idle, it bustles, it bristles.”
Chicago as a fairy tale, Chicago as the Emerald City-that’s the Chicago offered to visitors in dozens of guidebooks. A place where dreams come true: Guidebook Chicago.
For Chicagoans, though, the guides represent something else, a chance to see what others think of our city.
It is a disconcerting experience.
How is it that these outsiders can find such excitement, thrills and high enjoyment in the same place where, day after day, we trudge along through the routines of life?
Why is it that so many people want to come here to visit when so many of us-two of every three-choose to live in the suburbs rather than the city proper?
“Rising up brazen and brilliant from the plains of America’s heartland, Chicago astonishes,” proclaims Richard Saul Wurman in “Chicago Access.”
Read that while squeezed up against the door of a packed Red Line subway car on a rainy Thursday during the morning rush, and you start to wonder whether your astonishment sensors have atrophied.
Or look at the sun-drenched scenes in David Maenza’s “How to Enjoy Chicago,” and you realize how much more concerned you are with how to survive Chicago.
Why is it that you notice the litter clotted along the fences of your alley, and aren’t transfixed by the wonder of the sunrise over the lake? Why don’t you take the time to gape in awe at the city’s skyline while you’re encased in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Stevenson Expressway?
And how come you cringe at so many of the “colorful” things about Guidebook Chicago-its great fire, its quaint criminals, its laughable politicians?
Criminals for fun
Consider Al Capone, a vicious, violent gang boss who, in Guidebook Chicago, is transmogrified into a sort of Robin Hood.
“One of the flashiest gang rulers, `Scarface’ defied the law and outwitted fellow mobsters until he was nailed by the federal government on, of all things, tax evasion,” note the editors of “Birnbaum’s 94 Chicago” with delight.
“It is possible to relive those `good old days’-and get to see some of Chicago’s less well-known neighborhoods-by taking a trip with Untouchable Tours (312-881-1195).”
No one yet has come up with a tour of present-day Chicago gang areas. Maybe today’s gang leaders are short on cute nicknames.
On the other hand, today’s city leaders are often high on the guidebook “things to see” list-but only if they’re breaking the law.
“Chicago has the most amusing local politics of any city in the country, hands down (or should that be hands up?),” squeals the Gault Millau “Best of Chicago” guide.
“Aldermen indicted on felonies and locked up in jail win re-election in their wards. Ballots from various precincts mysteriously appear and disappear depending on who needs the votes. Building inspectors found not to be taking bribes are singled out for great praise.
“Visitors are almost guaranteed one or two criminal indictments of public officials during even a short stay. It’s really a lot of fun.”
Unless you live in real Chicago.
Yet, for local people, it’s even more unsettling when the guidebooks stray from the Chicago-as-heaven path.
“For a good part of the year the weather is basically unfit for anything except misery,” opines the Gault Millau guide. “It turns gray and rotten in late November and pretty much stays that way until April. . . . July and August aren’t much fun either, thanks to fearsome heat waves and mind-numbing humidity.
“But for at least four months-May, June, September, October-Chicago is a great place to be.”
Oh, thanks.
In “Frommer’s Comprehensive Travel Guide: Chicago ’93-’94,” Michael Uhl spends nearly 300 pages on all the great things to do and see in Chicago. Nonetheless, he feels compelled to begin his book this way:
“A certain amount of skepticism attaches itself to Chicago. Let’s face it. Chicago just isn’t the first place you’d think of visiting as a tourist. Trade show? Convention? All right. But just for the fun of it? Not likely. Somehow the major metropolis of the heartland doesn’t trigger the special curiosity or excitement that attaches itself to so many other cities.”
Like Philadelphia? Cleveland? Kansas City? Indianapolis? Minneapolis?
Houston?
The money belt caution
Still, once your chauvinism calms down, you have to acknowledge that the weather in Chicago is hard to deal with. It’s so extreme, so changeable, so messy. And, in your heart of hearts, you know you’ve always wondered why anyone would come here as a tourist. After all, Chicago isn’t Paris or Rome or even New Orleans.
You realize that Guidebook Chicago is a substitute for the actual Chicago because there’s no way to find the real place in a visit of a couple of days or even a couple of weeks.
The joys of real Chicago-planting flowers into the deep black dirt of your own back yard, watching your daughter play hopscotch with a cluster of kids on the sidewalk in front, bumping into friends at the local Certified, going for a walk through the neighborhood you call home-these aren’t available to the tourist.
And you really can’t complain about the almost de rigueur warnings about safety in the guidebooks. You know why they’re needed.
“Depending on where you travel in Chicago, and what time of day it is, you are very unlikely to be a victim of a mugging or other violent crime,” Uhl tells the out-of-towner.
Then he quickly adds a caution about using the subway in off hours, and goes on, “There is no magic antidote to street crime; sometimes in a big city, you can simply be in the right place at the wrong time. (That’s reassuring.) . . . Wear a moneybelt and keep a close eye on your possessions.”
Such alerts are nothing new. More than a century ago, the writer of “Chicago: An Instructive and Entertaining History of a Wonderful City With a Useful Stranger’s Guide,” included such Cautions to Travelers as:
“Always make a bargain beforehand. . . . Never repose confidence in strangers. . . . Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Keep your feet from stumbling and your ways from guile.”
It was a different era, though.
This 1888 guide featured 11 pages of church listings, categorized by denomination and type. For example, under the heading Baptist, there were subcategories of English, Danish, German, Swedish, Missions and Free Will.
No restaurants were listed. And less than a page of Places of Amusement, including Kohl & Middleton’s South Side Dime Museum at 150 Clark, and Stanhope & Epstean’s New Dime Museum at 111 Randolph.
By contrast, the latest edition of “Chicago Official Visitors Guide,” published by the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, has 23 pages of restaurants, 7 pages of nightclubs, 10 pages of stores and 8 pages of things to do.
Not one church is mentioned, except for the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Unity Temple, listed under Museums/Attractions in Oak Park.
Odd geography
The restaurant listings in the official guide are a reminder of the odd geography of Guidebook Chicago.
In all, 359 dining places are noted. Of these, 292 are in the city, mostly clustered along the North Side lakefront, and 67 are in the suburbs. Look at other guides, and you’ll find the same 4-1 predominance of city places to suburban locations.
Yet, 4.5 million people, many of them relatively well-to-do, live in the suburbs. Do they have only 67 choices when they want good food? What do they eat when they can’t get into these places? Gruel?
Dining, however, is one area in which the guidebooks are willing to acknowledge the existence of the suburbs. In most other cases, the suburbs merit only a passing reference-or no reference at all.
In his 282-page guide, “Chicago,” Jack Schnedler, the former Chicago Sun-Times travel editor, devotes 10 pages to the areas beyond the city’s borders in a section titled “Skimming the Suburbs.”
His map of greater Chicago goes as far west as central Kane County, but includes nothing of Lake or McHenry Counties and nothing of the city or suburbs south of about 119th Street.
The latest issue of “Where Chicago” magazine, offered free to most hotel guests in the city, has a map of the metropolitan region with nothing south of 63rd Street.
It’s even worse in the one in the Gault Millau guide: nothing south of 35th Street.
For city neighborhoods, the situation is more complex because neighborhoods-and the hint of a “real city” experience-are all the rage now in the guides.
“The heart and soul of this formidable metropolis, however, are defined by the vibrant neighborhoods that together make up one of the world’s most interesting and gracious cities,” intones Lisa Yetenekian in the Chicago Hilton and Towers in-room, hard-cover guidebook.
However, only certain areas qualify.
Pilsen is sometimes part of Guidebook Chicago, and sometimes not. Wicker Park, Pullman, Evanston (never mind that it’s a suburb), Chinatown, Ravenswood, Ukrainian Village, Rogers Park, Little Italy-all might be included, or not.
The rest of the city, the part dominated by bungalows and mortgages, the part unquaint in its meat and potatoes way-well, forget it.
Even the ponderous 541-page AIA Guide to Chicago, which lists 1,657 significant buildings, monuments and other points of interest in the city, could find none in 34 of the city’s 77 neighborhoods.
But don’t get angry if you live in the no-man’s land around Guidebook Chicago. It’s frustrating to be overlooked, but it has its up-side.
It means you can go about your daily life without the intrusion of tourists crowding the McDonald’s counter or filling stools at the local bar.
It means that you won’t get tour buses coming down your streets with driver-guides intoning erroneous information about your neighborhood.
Best of all, it means that, in Guidebook Chicago, you’re an out-of-towner.
When you go to the Loop, you can play the tourist. You can use the guides like any visitor to learn things about and do things in, not the real Chicago, but the fairy-tale city.
And you don’t have to pay for a hotel room.
“Traveling is the greatest way to try exotic foods, hear foreign languages, understand different cultures, and even make new friends,” counsels Lauren Davis in her “Kidding Around Chicago” guide for children.
“Don’t worry if you didn’t get to see everything; remember, you can always come back to that great, second to none, midwestern metropolis, your kind of town-Chicago!”
As Dorothy said, there’s no place like home.
