bound to the city life

[acequeenking]

Illinois Gothic

You, weary traveler, pull over at a local pizza joint; you’re not sure where, one of the many small towns that comes from cornfields and into cornfields it returns, just like every other small town in this long, unrelentingly long state. You order and eagerly bring it to your car, figuring you can eat a couple slices while you drive. You pull out the first piece. It is a square.

You at long last make it to Chicago. You decide to try to order the local specialty, figuring that now that you have at long last you have made it back to civilization, your pizza  will be sliced into slices. It is, but the pizza is instead a sort of inside-out pie, with tomatoes on the top and cheese buried inside.

A friendly local invites you to dinner. “Wanna go with?” He asks, his too-bright teeth gleaming against the snow (for no matter when you have decided to travel, there is at least a 50% chance of snow, and 100% chance of construction). You wait politely for the end of his sentence. There is not one. There will never be. You are stuck, dangling on a participle.

You need to go to Des Plains. You do not know how to ask for directions because the name remains unpronounceable.

You visit Illinois in November. It is snowing. You vow next year you will wait until at least spring, in order to avoid this. You come in April. It is still snowing, but now the highway is under construction.

You turn on the radio for traffic directions. It only spews out nonsense phrases like “fifteen to the Dan Ryan, the Kennedy is A-OK.” You wait, patiently, for traffic to come on the station, but all it does it keep repeating the same nonsense syllables over and over again.

You ask where, exactly, northern Illinois ends, and downstate begins. You are caught in a whirlwind vortex of sure yet vociferously different opinions as each town in Illinois descends upon you, offering answers. “South of I-80,” Joliet whispers. “South of the start of I-80.” Crystal Lake adds, nodding. “Dude, it’s totally around like, Bloomington or something?” Streator says. “Who cares?” Chicago shrugs. “I’m not sure,” Springfield says, “But I know you all are spending too much money out of my god damned tax money trying to figure it out.” You attempt to get out of this conversation, but you are not allowed to until they reach consensus. There is no consensus. There will never be a consensus. 

[howtobelongtochicago]

It's one of the greatest cities on the planet. My heart beats differently when I'm in Chicago. It slows down and I feel more at ease.

Jeremy Piven

[howtobelongtochicago]

"Too Hot for Hockey" is a script devised by Corrine McCarthy, a linguist at George Mason University who has studied the Chicago accent. When read aloud, "Too Hot for Hockey" forces speakers to vocalize vowels and other sounds (called "tokens" by McCarthy) that reveal how closely key sounds resemble the accent's dominant traits.

[howtobelongtochicago]

We struck the home trail now, and in a few hours were in that astonishing Chicago - a city where they are always rubbing a lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities. It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago - she outgrows her prophecies faster than she can make them. She is always a novelty, for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

[howtobelongtochicago]

I adore Chicago. It is the pulse of America.

Sarah Bernhardt

[howtobelongtochicago]

Because other cities have no idea what a snow day really is.

[howtobelongtochicago]

It's the place built out of Man's ceaseless failure to overcome himself. Out of Man's endless war against himself we build our successes as well as our failures. Making it the city of all cities most like Man himself.

Nelson Algren on Chicago

[howtobelongtochicago]

To me Chicago has to keep existing because the people I have lost lived there, because the way of life I once loved continues there, though in broken form.

Veronica Roth, Allegiant

[howtobelongtochicago]

I'd rather be a lamppost in Chicago than a millionaire in any other city.

William A. Hulbert

[howtobelongtochicago]

[howtobelongtochicago]

Chicago is a city of contradictions, of private visions haphazardly overlaid and linked together. If the city was unhappy with itself yesterday - and invariably it was - it will reinvent itself today.

Pat Colander, A Metropolis of No Little Plans

[howtobelongtochicago]

The great trains howling from track to track all night. The taut and telegraphic murmur of ten thousand city wires, drawn most cruelly against a city sky. The rush of city waters, beneath the city streets. The passionate passing of the night’s last El.

Nelson Algren

[trashhand]

[howtobelongtochicago]

[ view of Chicago from the International Space Station ]

[howtobelongtochicago]

And then when I went to Chicago, that’s when I had these outer space experiences and went to the other planets.

Sun Ra

[quinnmil]

[howtobelongtochicago]

Once you’ve come to be part of this particular patch [Chicago], you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.

Nelson Algren