This one was written for us folks, recongizing what we've known about Chicago far longer than most have.
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Tiresome Chicago cliches are 50 years out of date
July 24, 2005
BY RICHARD C. LONGWORTH
Chicago Sun Times
Once upon a time, there was a city called Chicago. Yeah, you remember the place. That Toddlin' Town, right? The city that works but ain't ready for reform yet? That City on the Make, that Beirut by the Lake? Why, you could write a poem about it, and they did -- City of the Big Shoulders.
Trouble is, most Chicagoans still think this way. For one thing, it's fun. There was a real swagger to the old place. You could live in Winnetka and talk out of the side of your mouth and pretend you hung with the Outfit. For another, it was a received wisdom. If everything from Nelson Algren's lyricism to Saul Bellow's romanticism painted Chicago the same way -- tough, rollicking, somber, casually crooked, loveable like Algren's woman with a broken nose -- then there had to be something to it, right?
Wrong. That Chicago died a while back, without benefit of a decent burial, and has been replaced by a new Chicago, and we're just beginning to notice.
Not that some of the old cliches don't hold true. It's not that we don't still tear down good buildings, or pay off an alderman, or brag about our local food, or call our town "a city of neighborhoods." Certainly, Chicago is the "city that works," except when it doesn't.
Well, there must be a city somewhere that doesn't do all these things -- Goteborg, Sweden, maybe -- but I've never been there.
The fact is that we've adopted a glossary of sentimental and nostalgic cliches from an earlier, smokier, bawdier era and built them into a civic consciousness that bears no relationship to the real Chicago, anno 2005.
We loved the stockyard smells, so long as we didn't live downwind, and the gangland guns, so long as they shot someone else, and the painted ladies and saloon aldermen and the truly crooked politics, and used them to create a myth that is 50 years out of date.
No wonder foreigners come here for the first time and say, "What a surprise! I never knew Chicago was like this." Some 135 years after The Fire, we should stop being a surprise, but we sure work at keeping it that way.
What's the problem? Context, that's what. Chicago's context has changed, utterly, but its self-image hasn't.
That self-image is stuck in the old industrial era, when neighborhoods really did last more than a generation, when aldermen and committeemen really did run their fiefs, when the city's ambience was more grit than green -- in short, when we deserved the oldest cliche of all, "City of the Big Shoulders."
That's all changed, but you'd never know to hear us talk.
The Industrial Era is gone. The old Machine is gone and the new one is really different. The city looks different, smells different, acts different.
Why? No mystery. We are what we do. That's true for people, and it's true for cities. Lawyers act like lawyers and druggists act like druggists. Industrial cities act like industrial cites. Post-industrial cities don't.
How we earn our living defines our character. Chicago isn't an industrial city any more. There's some industry left, of course, but it doesn't define us, as the mills and yards once did. We keep a few crooked aldermen around for light relief and some low-lifes get city contracts they have no business getting. But crime today is a subplot, not the story. Maybe the mob once ran Chicago, as it seems to run Russia now. But we're a normal place now, like France or Hungary, with a substratum of corruption that, let's face it, really doesn't affect most of us very directly.
OK, so the old image is out of date. But that begs the question.
"Post-industrial" says what we aren't. So what are we?
We are what we do. And we're a global city now, one of two or three in America -- one of 15 or 20 in the world -- that run the world's business in this new global age. Indian lawyers and Chinese consultants define us, not Polish steelworkers. Mexican cooks in Thai restaurants provide our night life, not Irish barkeeps in neighborhood saloons.
Our local logo is a syphilitic capo dead a half century, but the real clout lies with the universities, with doctors from Nigeria and Iraq, with consultants from around the world, with a glorious symphony and great theater.
The Park District defines Chicago now more than the Police Department does. Terry Nichols Clark wrote a book called Trees and Real Violins. His point is that Daley II, unlike his father, will be remembered for the trees he planted and the parks he created, while those guys you see with violin cases are Chicago Symphony musicians about to fly off on a world tour, not hitmen headed for a Clark Street garage.
Daley, like his father, tolerates casual corruption that tarnishes his success in refashioning Chicago for the global age. There's no excuse for all the scandals -- Hired Trucks, the bogus minority contracts, the Millennium Park restaurant contract, the city towing boondoggle, the immortal Duff family. These scandals, among other things, eat into Daley's political capital at home, eroding his ability to run a global city.
The outside world, when it notices, really doesn't care. Instead, it's dazzled. "This magical, beautiful city, perhaps the most beautiful city in America," crooned the Atlantic Monthly.
We are what we do. We're a different town now -- a better town in many ways, I'd argue, if not so colorful. We keep the scamsters around, like Sue the Dinosaur, as relics of a more primitive past. Meanwhile, the city grows, moves, thrusts, makes money, tears down and builds up, shoving the poor out of the way (again, show me a city that doesn't). Not a city to idolize -- life here is too unfair for that -- but a city to recognize, for what it really is.
We run the world. Isn't that enough?
Maybe not. The old Chicago, with its Studs Lonigan neighborhoods and gangland glitz, fashioned a myth that conquered the world. If the old Chicago is dead, the myth lives on, fading into the past. We need a new myth.
It's still unique, this secret Oz. Its people are unique, a layering of Mexicans and Koreans on top of Slavs and Irish. Its history is unique: what other town created May Day and Saul Alinsky, then invented Milton Friedman and, yes, the global economy itself.
The problem is, we haven't fashioned a new myth. History and economics have reshaped us into something new, while we wax nostalgic about another, vanished city. That's not accurate, nor useful. Just cute.
And really, folks, Chicago ain't ready for "cute" yet.
Richard C. Longworth is executive director of the Global Chicago Center at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.> |
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