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Which I take as a great insight, having stood at the lakefront across the groomed sand from that incomparable skyline, noticing that Lake Michigan waves do not break and run like those at the ocean – they churn. They produce a constant howl, like a great change engine that has been running a long time in the same place, responding to no external tide. An image, once glimpsed, that seems to refract throughout Chicagoland. For every radical departure, a balancing reminder of local ways. So they’re opening chain stores in Wicker Park (Urban Outfitters), but you can still find boutiques carrying local designers (Hejfina) and a resolute original selling Catholic statuary (Botanica). In the newly hyperactive foodie Chicago, you may be served pinot noir in glasses smoked with laser-burned vanilla beans (Moto), yet around the corner find veal sweetbreads and pork belly (Blackbird) or a crammed Loop deli still schlepping lunchtime blue plate specials (Marquette Inn). But if you take the red line north, pay particularly close attention. Changed neighbourhoods will flash past the window. Still, you might yet be struck by the cathedral of Wrigley Field, light standards rising. Or by the permanence of the Wrigleyville dive bar – Friar Tuck, the L&L Tavern, many others – where they’re still watching college ball, serving Old Style and hosting pseudo-philosophical bar chat, as they have for decades. And if you’re really lucky, you might even witness a shell game tosser climb on the train at North/Clybourn and work the car to Addison. He’ll lose a few at first, joking about throwing for President Clinton while he shuffles his three cups inexpertly, losing track of the red ball amid much murmuring and crowd gathering. And right about the time you remember that the title of Nelson Algren’s most famous book about Chicago was City on the Make, he’ll start to win. He’ll touch a college kid in Boston Celtics shorts for $20. Then a young Italian American woman will lose $50, double down and lose again. “I just lost $100,” she’ll gasp on the cusp of an anxiety attack. Never a lovely so real indeed. But she should know better; she’s local. “Sic transit Gloria porko,” wrote Studs Terkel, ironic about what glory passed with the foul-smelling stockyards. But perhaps also reminding readers that the carnage of urban renewal in Chicago carries with it a kind of new glory too. The skyline will cannibalize, new spires rising by Trump and Calatrava. Neighbourhoods will turn over: Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, Pilsen. But at a downtown development, still an empty hole when I walk past, local street and gallery artists have decorated the hoardings with the phrase “You Are Beautiful” in the languages of the world. And the “o” of the “you” in the English version, I notice with a smile, is a stylized version of my familiar street-art rain cloud. Change acknowledged with a cheeky wink. |
