Becoming Chicago
I thought living here made me a Chicagoan. Not everyone agrees
Think you’re a Chicagoan? Post your qualifications below, and my wife will tell you if you are.
As a kid, I believed that lake Point Tower was sinking into Lake Michigan. Whenever we passed the building, lurking alone by the water like a black-tinted Godzilla, my father told me so. “In a few years, the bottom floors will be underwater,” he said, and every year we visited the city, Lake Point Tower looked a little shorter. I imagined a lower-floor resident banging on his windows for help from various lake creatures, and I thought: I want to be that guy. To my adolescent eyes, Chicago was a majestically weird place, one where residents blamed cows and goats for civic misfortunes, so bizarre phenomena like sinking skyscrapers seemed reasonable. And awesome. Someday, I vowed, I would be a Chicagoan.
My wife says I will never be one. “You could live in Lake Point Tower the rest of your life and get Mayor Daley’s face tattooed on your butt,” says Sarah, a Hyde Park native. “And it wouldn’t matter, because you didn’t grow up here.” This draconian standard excludes vast numbers of us, including Chicago’s five biggest celebrities—Capone, Jordan, Obama, Ditka, and Winfrey—all of whom moved here in their twenties. Per Sarah, none of the above will ever “understand” the city in the way that, say, Mike Royko (or even R. Kelly) could. “Michael Jordan became who he is as a basketball player here,” she says. “But not as a person. Chicago is not in his soul.”
This can’t be right. In my innocence, I assumed I would become a Chicagoan simply by moving here. Of course, the complicated answer is somewhere in between, an existential conundrum that only deepened when I began to ask everyone I knew: Am I a Chicagoan? They usually responded with a question of their own, which, if answered correctly, granted me entry. Like:
» “How long have you lived here?” Twelve years. “After ten, you’re grandfathered in. Unless you’re from Wisconsin—then it’s 15.”
» “What do the four stars on the Chicago flag represent?” The fire, Fort Dearborn . . . uh . . . deep-dish pizza . . . “Stop. Just stop. Please.”
» “Have you shifted your sports allegiance to Chicago teams?” Long ago. “Do you expect your teams to fail?” Always. “You qualify.”
» “Have you ever been lost in another city and said, ‘You know, this doesn’t happen in Chicago because our streets have the grid system’?” Yes. I’m really irritating about it. “You’re totally a Chicagoan.”
» “Have you voted?” Yes. “How many times?” You mean in the last election, or altogether? “Well played. That is correct.”
» “If you give a tourist directions, how accurate are they?” Once, I told a woman outside Water Tower Place that the Field Museum was only “two or three” blocks away. “I cannot in good conscience call you a Chicagoan.”
» “How do you feel about the kids banging on buckets with sticks on Michigan Avenue?” May they spend eternity eviscerated by leprosy-oozing horned demons. “You’re a Chicagoan.”
» “Do you consider Chicago, its teams, its people, and everything about the city an underdog?” No. “Are you hyperalert to perceived slights against Chicago?” No. “Then you’re not part of the city. You’re just in the city.”
So all this invites the question: What the hell am I? Born in Texas, raised in Kansas, educated in Colorado, with parents residing in Albuquerque and family spread from Seattle to Palm Beach, I no longer know where to call home. If I’m not a Chicagoan, then I’m nothing. “You’re nothing,” my wife said, patting my hand. “But don’t feel bad. So are, like, 90 percent of the people here. Besides, we can’t afford to live in Lake Point Tower anyway.”
illustration: hanna melin/agoodson.com
This article appears in the August 2009 issue of Chicago Magazine.
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Reader Comments:
You're wife's perspective is baloney. When you're a Chicagoan, you know. Period. Whether you're born here or not.
I wrote about this very thing on my blog, Chicago Carless, last year. As I wrote then:
"Sometimes I’m simply brought to tears by the wonder of it all, here in the former Fort Dearborn. I’m not ashamed to admit it, I’m a big softie when it comes to this place. For whatever reason, I’ve come to love Chicago deeply.
For an ex-Gothamite, that’s no surprise. They say the only thing harder than getting a New Yorker to move to Chicago is getting him to leave. But now that I’m staying put, how much more mileage can I really get out of this whole ex-New Yorker thing? God knows, the thought of a New Yorker in Chicago just bugs me to fits.
I suppose it must be the Chicagoan in me."
My full post is here:
http://www.chicagocarless.com/2008/03/28/what-is-a-chicagoan/
eh, no, living in chicago does not make you a chicagoan. especially, when you don't like chicago. some of us are stuck here because of certain circumstances. i'm outta here as soon as the window opens up.
Mike Doyle isn't a Chicagoan either, so don't listen to him. Believe me, we have enough "look at me" bloggers that are home grown. We don't need New York's discarded ones too......
Your wife is spot on.
The idea that people born in Chicago understand the City in a way that non-natives never will cuts both ways. Natives will never understand what it's like to live somewhere awful and then move to Chicago and truly appreciate how great it is compared to the rest of the country. In fact, I find that many of the natives just take the city for granted. If you took out all the non-natives, it would hardly be a great City. If the in-migrants have played such a large role in making the City great, then they have every right to call themselves Chicagoans. My only qualifier for a Chicagoan would be someone who calls the City their home and plans to stay.
I've gotta say, your wife may be right.... there's something about being raised in Chicago that's just hard to convey to you outsiders. :) J/K
I've been living in Tulsa, OK for about 5 years... people tell me they just know I'm not from around these woods. It's in the way you talk, walk, drive, think, cheer, "give directions," in how you express yourself; the passion and intensity I carry is unlike anything else witnessed out here. Haha, I guess you just know but sometimes it takes leaving a place you grew up in to help you realize exactly who you are. Enjoyed your write up,
-Miguel
Your questions are good Chicagoan checks. To be a Chicagoan; a true Chicagoan, you've got to know which alleys to run down and how to guess which fence to jump if you ever had to, outrun say, a rogue alderman looking for poll watchers. You need to have actually busted a eyeball vessel getting mad at the two Eddies. You should know what Avenue L smells like. True Chicagoans know you have to take the bus to anywhere near 22nd & California, not a cab - and why. You also know when to use the basketball court across from the hospital (and what hospital would that be, fellow Chicagoans). You also know how much sleep you're going make up goint into work from the end of the Purple Line. You're also a Chicagoan if you can't grab a quick smoke in the doorway of Cook County Hospital - and you need to know which IS the right doorway.
You know when you meet a real born and breed northsider/Chicagoan? When he refuses to say the word "Cubbie(s)!" No real northsider would say that word - unless he was brainwashed!
Royko used to hate when newscasters and others would say it. It Cubs!
Saying that someone isn't a "real" Chicagoan because they are not born and raised in this city is kind of like saying that someone isn't a real American unless they're born in the U.S. (which is pretty much a bigoted point of view any way you look at it)
I'd say the ingredients for being a true Chicagoan are listed below:
1. a good understanding of public trans
2. you never refer to chicago as "chi-city" or "chi-town" because lets face it, it sounds retarded.
3. a deep and abiding love for the city and all it has to offer.
Real Chicagoans also know who DuSable was.
TO MIKE DOYLE:
"Here in the former Fort Dearborn" What are you a middle school history teacher? Clearly not something a native would say. Besides, the old former-new-yorker-who-now-hates-new-yorkers argument, does not make you a Chicagoan.
Nice try. And nice pitch for your blog.
TO SOMEGAL:
I give you points for admitting that you are neither a Chicagoan or a fan of Chicago. I admire this. We are not a place for people who don't want to be here. City is getting too damn crowded anyway.
TO LOCALH.
Thanks. See, real Chicagoans respect real Chicagoans. That should be part of the definition.
TO ITAKETHETRAIN:
I totally hear you on the leaving town for perspective. Even just a trip to Hinsdale will help with that. And yes, I hear the idea that in-migrants (like that word usage) make the city great - I agree - what would Chicago be without MJ, Oprah, throngs of Poles and Mexicans? We need outsiders. But that doesn't make them Chicagoans. It does make their children Chicagoans, and it makes us all glad to have them as friends and neighbors.
TO URBANITEMIG:
Thanks. Makes it easier to convince my husband of my crazy ideas when I have people on my side! So glad to hear that you too understand that it is the little intangibles . . I think directions is a great example. My husband (the wonderful writer who wrote this, and the father of my Chicagoan children) knows this city incredibly well, walks the length of it weekly, but still, takes strange ways of getting places. He doesn't have the muscle memory that comes with going places a million times, staring out the backseat window as a kid, learning the city all over again as an adult . . .
TO CHINANOLAN98.
Dude. You put me to shame. You get some kind of gold medal for an ubber-Chicagoan. I had to spend some time on google to figure out the answers . . . don't tell my husband!
TO NORTHSIDER
Couldn't agree more. Even my two-year old Chicagoan son gives people the stink-eye when they call them the "cubbies". The same people who call them "da bears." Or my husband who calls it "dibs" when the rest of us just call it "annoying-that-the-neighbors-put-out-folding-chairs-I wonder-if-they-will-really-slash-my-tires."
TO MEGAWATTS3
I am going out on a limb to say . . . I think that you are a Chicagoan, who is trying to be sensitive to the "other." Because your list of three is great. Only a Chicagoan would use the words deep and abiding to modify love. Like it.
I think that everyone who want to be an American should be - bring us your masses, tired and huddled. America is wonderful because of all the "non" Americans. So is Chicago. Believe me, I agree that Chicago is great because of the hard-work, tears and sweat of the people who come to Chicago. But that does not make every Michigan grad with a backwards hat and a black Lab living in Lincoln Park a Chicagoan.
Our inalienable rights do not include the right to call yourself a Chicagoan.
TO BABS
DuSable. I like DuSable. I will give you that.
As my screen name indicates, I was born in Chicago (pronounced chi-caw-go). I remember my grandparents teaching me to read the Herald American newspaper. I remember summers in Brighton Park when the hot dog man would walk the neighborhood selling hot dogs for .25 and tamales for .10 from his steam cart. I remember the OLD McCormick place from before THAT fire. Until I was 19, I had only known the original Mayor Daley (I cried when he died). My first full-time job was at Continental Bank at 231 S. LaSalle St. When I got that job, my Dad took me to lunch at Berghoff's. I remember Chicago when the only things gangs did was spraypaint grafitti on garages. My grandmother started working at Woolworth's on State Street. She eventually transferred to the Archer Avenue store and retired with 25 years of service. My father was a Chicago Police officer who was awarded a Blue Star in 1967 and brought home stories of working the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the riots (he was fortunate enough to retire after 22 years of service). My children were born at Edgewater Hospital which no longer operates. There's nowhere in the world but Chicago where you have almost unlimited choices of cuisine in a 15 minute drive. Ricobene's breaded steak sandwiches rock and I still love Rainbow cones!
Chicagoborn: I'm humbled. You, without a doubt are a Chicagoan.