Chicago: Hot or Not?
If you have managed to get through this much of your life without really thinking about whether or not Chicago sucks, it ends NOW.
To quickly bring you up to speed, Rachel Shteir wrote a review of three new books about said city in the New York Times, during which she seems to have pulled a “Go fuck yourself, San Diego” on its denizens (she has lived in Chicago for thirteen years). So much so that we are still talking about a book review which didn’t have an opinion about which moms are the angriest and most conflicted about their life choices. Here’s a relevant excerpt:
“Poor Chicago,” a friend of mine recently said. Given the number of urban apocalypses here, I couldn’t tell which problem she was referring to. Was it the Cubs never winning? The abominable weather? Meter parking costing more than anywhere else in America — up to $6.50 an hour — with the money flowing to a private company, thanks to the ex-mayor Richard M. Daley’s shortsighted 2008 deal? Or was it the fact that in 2012, of the largest American cities, Chicago had the second-highest murder rate and the second-highest combined sales tax, as well as the ninth-highest metro foreclosure rate in the country? That it’s the third-most racially segregated city and is located in the state with the most underfunded public-employee pension debt?
Michael Miner did not appreciate it, in a short and blistering piece for the Chicago Reader which managed (intriguingly!) to reference each of the following fruits: grapefruits, bananas, tomatoes, apricots, peaches, and strawberries.
Shteir (reasonably enough, once started down that road) has elected to double down on the issue of Chicago’s awfulness (“not yet Detroit,” among other phrases). It does cause one to wonder, though, if it’s just completely acceptable to talk smack about Detroit now? Are there not angry journalists in Detroit? Does it not have some redeeming qualities and people who enjoy it? People who aren’t there just to take artistic ruin-porn shots of tottering homes?
Okay, Chicagoans (or Detroiters!), what’s the scoop? What does the future hold for your fair city?