I'm learning a lot about Chicago from walking around Boston. It's kind of like learning more about someone by thinking about all the things they're not. Or by looking at their friends, and seeing how they've chosen people to compliment their own deficiencies (A man is known by the company he keeps--Aesop Fables). Could Chicago and Boston ever be best friends? Tentatively. For one, we both have disproportionally crazed fans compared to the success of our professional sports teams. Well, I don't know. I may be speaking more on Chicago for that one, since Boston seems to be doing quite well in the sports department. Your baseball team has won the world series twice in the last ten years? Okay, you must be doing something right.
Fun little aside: I was at Cook's Liquor store in Hamilton, New York. The two people who run the place are always really chatty. Unfortunately, the last time I went in, the man was less jovial than one should be, selling hard stuff, the best stuff, to the soon to be bibulous masses of the small town. Surgery, impending. Diabetes. But he is a Cubs fan. And wait, yes I know what you're thinking: "That poor man, his life nearly done with him, cut short by complications, and he's a Cubs fan, a highly engaged Cubs fan, too? How could God be so cruel?" True. But! Blustering through all the dark humor wafting between us, I said after his comment about being ready to die, for I wasn't going to let my favorite liquor salesman just bite the dust: "You can't go yet, the Cubs still haven't won it!" I bet Cubs fans outlive other fans by a few extra years, just so.
When the Cubs finally win, there will be a huge depletion of the senior population.
Most apparent to me was that Boston was tiny. Sure, it wasn't fun walking from Cambridge to the Southwest end, but it was doable. Imagine walking from the border of Evanston to the Southside, 95th street? You'd be exhausted. Sure, Google maps says it's only an 8 hour walk, but still. Boston is a tiny city. Population wise as well--600,000 something in the urban area. Tiny. For the longest time I always only had New York City as a comparison for the awkwardness that is judging the size of urban centers. In which case, comparing NYC to the Chi, Chicago is much, much smaller. I guesstimated that by size alone, Chicago is only one-fifth the size of NYC (in reading Wikipedia, however, it turns out that Chicago's area is precisely 1/2 that of New York... which leads me to wonder, why does Chicago look so small?).
But Boston... as I walked around Boston, it became apparent that Chicago is enormous, a spectacle onto itself. A triumph of steel and metal over a truly large space of what was once purely prairie (so I imagine, but that, too, might just be my over-romanticized ideal of what Illinois was without the country's third largest city bearing down and building up on the shore of Lake Michigan). Boston is a college town (albeit one composed with the students of at least 10 higher education institutions... Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern, Lesley, Berklee School of Music, Tufts, Emerson, Suffolk, and a few more Umass schools). Chicago has schools, but not nearly as high a density can be found there (we have Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul, U of C, UIC, Columbia, Malcolm X, then IDK). Boston has a river (which you can swim in), Chicago has a lake (which you can only sometimes swim in). Both have airports, but Chicago's is bigger. Boston is full of Bruins fans (which are bears, who knew?) Boston is where I am. But Chicago is home.
Fun little aside: I was at Cook's Liquor store in Hamilton, New York. The two people who run the place are always really chatty. Unfortunately, the last time I went in, the man was less jovial than one should be, selling hard stuff, the best stuff, to the soon to be bibulous masses of the small town. Surgery, impending. Diabetes. But he is a Cubs fan. And wait, yes I know what you're thinking: "That poor man, his life nearly done with him, cut short by complications, and he's a Cubs fan, a highly engaged Cubs fan, too? How could God be so cruel?" True. But! Blustering through all the dark humor wafting between us, I said after his comment about being ready to die, for I wasn't going to let my favorite liquor salesman just bite the dust: "You can't go yet, the Cubs still haven't won it!" I bet Cubs fans outlive other fans by a few extra years, just so.
When the Cubs finally win, there will be a huge depletion of the senior population.
Most apparent to me was that Boston was tiny. Sure, it wasn't fun walking from Cambridge to the Southwest end, but it was doable. Imagine walking from the border of Evanston to the Southside, 95th street? You'd be exhausted. Sure, Google maps says it's only an 8 hour walk, but still. Boston is a tiny city. Population wise as well--600,000 something in the urban area. Tiny. For the longest time I always only had New York City as a comparison for the awkwardness that is judging the size of urban centers. In which case, comparing NYC to the Chi, Chicago is much, much smaller. I guesstimated that by size alone, Chicago is only one-fifth the size of NYC (in reading Wikipedia, however, it turns out that Chicago's area is precisely 1/2 that of New York... which leads me to wonder, why does Chicago look so small?).
But Boston... as I walked around Boston, it became apparent that Chicago is enormous, a spectacle onto itself. A triumph of steel and metal over a truly large space of what was once purely prairie (so I imagine, but that, too, might just be my over-romanticized ideal of what Illinois was without the country's third largest city bearing down and building up on the shore of Lake Michigan). Boston is a college town (albeit one composed with the students of at least 10 higher education institutions... Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern, Lesley, Berklee School of Music, Tufts, Emerson, Suffolk, and a few more Umass schools). Chicago has schools, but not nearly as high a density can be found there (we have Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul, U of C, UIC, Columbia, Malcolm X, then IDK). Boston has a river (which you can swim in), Chicago has a lake (which you can only sometimes swim in). Both have airports, but Chicago's is bigger. Boston is full of Bruins fans (which are bears, who knew?) Boston is where I am. But Chicago is home.
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