Farewell

I said goodbye to Chicago this weekend.

I moved away from that great City of Big Shoulders about five years ago, choosing to broaden my horizons by living in another city. Chicago had been all I knew as an adult, and I felt Boston would be an interesting contrast. For the three or so years I lived in Boston, I was mostly miserable. Or, rather, I was quite happy, but that had more to do with the friends and family I had living there. The city itself, I found, sucked.

I’m sorry, Boston, but you’re not really a city. You’re a community that used to be a city and now struts around like a skinny 15-year-old boy trying to prove he can take on the big boys at the biker bar. You talk about how tough and great you are, but deep down, you know you have nothing to back it up, and you’d be so screwed if you ever had to deliver on your boasting. Just look at what a dullsville affair you made of the 2004 Democratic Convention. You have no nightlife, little in the way of cuisine or culture, and despite the presence of a large population of young people and college students, you’re remarkably stodgy, prissy, close-minded, and mired in the ways of generations past. There might be a lot of new and good ideas generated in Boston, but not one of them has a chance of being implemented within your boundaries. To put things simply: you offer no fun, you offer no innovation, and you have … no … energy.

For the entire time that I lived in Boston, I rhapsodized about Chicago. The world-class theater. The straightforward, honest, tough people. The 24-hour public transit (and accompanying bars, clubs and nightlife). The plethora of great food of all types, genres, and ethnicities. The influence it has had on world culture. I dreamed about a blessed return to the only real city I’d ever known.

Then, two years ago, my fiancée (now wife) and I made the move to New York. And Chicago, as I discovered this weekend on a return visit, just can’t compare. Yes, the theater scene is just about as vibrant, in its own way, as New York’s. The food is as varied and as delightful (if not, in some cases at least, more so). Yes, you have great bars, new ideas and innovations. And Chicago is grander – cleaner, brighter, more gleaming – than New York. (Chicagoans, at least, have the sense to keep their garbage in dumpsters secreted in alleyways, instead of in leaky garbage bags on the sidewalk where all can take pleasure in the odors.)

But New York has the energy. That sense of being in the center of the universe. Walk out the door, and everyone is going places, doing something, go, go, go, go, GO. The sense is there in Chicago to a limited extent, but it’s more relaxed. In New York, it’s lead, follow, or get out my fucking way before I rip off your head and shit down the stump. And everyone has this attitude. It’s exciting, and it gives you life. And that’s why, although on paper, Chicago has just about as much to offer as New York, it’s been replaced in my heart, and I must bid it a fond farewell.

I’ll always love Chicago. I’ll always miss it. And if I have to live there – well, that would still be pretty cool. But Chicago – you’re no longer real-world representation of the dream of the Great White City in my heart.

Goodbye. Thanks for the great times and for helping me grow up. Let’s keep in touch, huh?