About six months ago Tim said, “I want to go to Chicago.”
“Alright,” I said.
He got online and researched the flights. Round trip fares were reasonably priced in April and so he booked plane tickets for two. I made reservations for us to stay at a charming Airbnb just West of downtown in a little neighborhood called the Ukrainian Village.
We went to Chicago.
I had never been to the Midwest before, save for this one time I had to spend an overnight layover at an airport hotel in Minneapolis.
I had landed in Minnesota well after midnight. A shuttle that had promised to pick me up from the airport and deliver me to my hotel, never showed. A hailed cab missed the exit for my hotel and charged me full price of the unintended detour.
At the hotel, an absent front desk person made it impossible to retire to my room and collapse in exhaustion onto the queen bed I had reserved. A night janitor helped me to find the missing desk person. They had been smoking cigarettes behind the hotel. He was irritated that I had interpreted his 20 minute smoke break to be checked-in and chose only to communicate to me in unintelligible grunts.
Even though I had paid a queen bedroom rate, I was given a room with a single twin bed. The sheets were torn. I slept on top of the quilt, blanketed by a short bath towel. Through the thin walls, I could hear a snoozy guest rumble, loud, nasal snores.
All. Night. Long.
I woke up early the next morning to catch a shuttle back to the airport and the hotel concierge asked me if I would be interested in taking a slab of butter in my complimentary cup of lukewarm coffee.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“It’s like cream,” he explained. “But thicker.”
I declined, and probably disgustedly.
To be fair, my five-and-a-half midnight hours in Minnesota had been hellish and it only continued to be so at the airport.
In the terminal long lines spiraled endlessly for breakfast cheese curds and sugar glazed Cinnabons. Women with squared, acrylic nails and fluffy bangs asked customers, “Would you like butter with your coffee, ma’am? Or just cream?”
Waiting to board my ultra-delayed Sun Country flight at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport, I frustratedly updated my Facebook status to read, “Minneapolis is grown men wearing graphic tees tucked into jeans with a belt. Minneapolis is cholesterol casserole. Minneapolis is fake hair clip-ins. Minneapolis is a lot of things, and none of them are attractive.”
My guess is that, as far as the authentic Midwest goes, the description probably isn’t all that wrong. In fact, when you think about the Midwest, I dare you to not think of the words, “deep fried” or “Jell-O salad”.
So when Tim told me that he wanted to visit Chicago, I had imagined it to be just that. A place of feathered blowouts and saturated fats. A land of milk and cookies (unless, of course, Mormon Utah has already claimed the title). Like, I thought we might get there, and the place was going to feel, hokey or, like, kind of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives-y.
I was so, so wrong (thank God) about Chicago.
Actually, The Windy City is quiet the opposite of hokey and a weekend exploring the city defied any and all preconceived notions (based partly on personal experience and partly on rampant Midwest stereotypes) of it being humdrum.
For starters, the city is huge.
And sophisticatedly tall.
Tall, tall, tall.
And not just because the Willis Tower, the tallest building in the United States, looms on the Northwest corner Jackson and Franklin, but because Chicago is a miles long stretch of impossibly high and pointy buildings rising up from ultra-flat suburbs. It’s skyline is a panorama of gloss widows, steel frames and tall spires rooted in neighborhoods of aging brownstones with rickety wood porches.
At the bottom of the Willis, Tim looked up and felt dizzy.
Inside the tall towers, I imagined prestigious lawyers were meeting with high profile clients to prepare for upcoming depositions. Book publishers were making final edits before sending novel transcripts off to print and accountants were calculating interest rates and tallying cash flow. At a hipster coffee shop at the bottom of the tall towers, Tim and I drank cappuccinos that were made with steamed milk, not melted butter.
For dinner, we didn’t eat deep dish. I wanted to, but I worried that maybe if we were to order a cheese pie at Giodorno’s or Lou Malnati’s or some other “Chicago Deep Dish Original” institution, then we might look around and find that we were sitting in a dining room filled with tourists, not locals.
Instead, we opted for thin crust. It was a good decision.
At Parlor Pizza Bar in Wicker Park I ordered a Burrata Be Kidding Me pie for Tim and I to share. Good lord, what a fucking delicious pizza (and not unlike one that I make myself at home which is maybe why I loved it so much).
The pizza was creamy burrata and stringy mozzarella melted onto a buttery, chewy crust. Overtop, a piled-high, peppery, arugula salad dressed in preserved lemon vinaigrette tasted bright and tart. To finish, the pizza was drizzled with earthy white truffle oil, just in case it wasn’t rich enough already.
We ate the whole damn thing. And then we ate more.
In Lincoln Park I bought two Firecakes, or donuts, I suppose. One Tahitian vanilla bean and one raspberry filled. Crystally sugar formed a mustache on my upper lip and seedy, berry jam oozed down my chin. On Division Street, Tim and I smacked on salty samoas and garlicky naan bread at an Indian joint called Pub Royale. The naan, sprinkled with black sesame seeds, was nutty and aromatic.
Tim ate a Chicago style hot dog- a steamed, sesame bun stuffed with an all-beef frankfurter and then loaded with slices of tomatoes, onions, relish, celery salt, mustard and a pickle spear. I ate the pickle part.
At Mindy’s Hot Chocolate I sipped on a cup of thick, melted chocolate that was served with a giant homemade marshmallow and at all the drive bars, Tim drank Old Style Lager beers.
Between bites, we walked and walked and walked. In my opinion, we earned every calorie we consumed on the trip. Over the three days that Tim and I were in Chicago, we walked 32.3 miles. Were we to do it all over again, I’d probably treat myself to another Firecake, or seven.
In all the miles we walked in Chicago, the neighborhoods outside of the industrial center were my favorite to explore and in our traverse across the city I kept telling Tim, “Chicago is so Boston.”
That’s not in the slightest to say that Chicago doesn’t have its own, unique identity, because it absolutely does. What I am saying is that the bricky suburbs and old buildings of Chicago’s suburbs seemed very East coast to me. In the Ukrainian Village, where our Airbnb was located, long, flat roads were lined with pretty, brownstone flats like the ones I used to admire on Beacon Street in Boston. On our visit in the early days of Spring, blushy blossoms started to bloom in cherry trees and home gardens. Chipping paint on the side of old buildings that had once spelled out the name of a dry cleaner in loopy cursive made the city feel antique and genuine.
The city also felt remarkably untouched by gentrification. Independent coffee shops served black cups to morning regulars and cashiers in corner markets sold cigarettes and stacked deli sandwiches for neighbors. Little boutiques selling candles and cards were punctuated by local restaurants boasting taps that poured local brews.
Perhaps what was most impressive to me about the city was how clean Chicago was, despite it feeling old and timeworn. Strolling hand in hand with Tim through Lake Michigan’s waterfront Millennium Park, I remember pointing out how immaculately unpolluted it was. We even looked for lost litter that we might throw away and our efforts were fruitless (Take notes Seattle).
We did all the Chicago “things”.
In front of Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” (or, as it’s more commonly known, the “Giant Bean”), Tim and I posed for about 400 pictures.
In Lincoln Park, we took in sweeping views of Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline from North Avenue Beach. When the sun peeked through the clouds, the water of the ocean-like lake was emeraldy green and sparklingly clear.
Downtown, we ambled along the Chicago River Walk. We skipped a trip to the top of Willis Tower. Instead, we opted to ride an elevator up to the Signature Room, located on the 96th floor of the John Hancock building, where we sipped on beers at a table that was situated right next to the glass.
We spent a magnificent afternoon at Art Institute Chicago.
The museum’s permanent collection is simply spectacular. Around each corner, a masterpiece is displayed.
Thanks to Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, we all know to keep our eyes peeled for Chagall’s stained glass windows and Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, but at Art Institute Chicago, there is so, so much more to enjoy. I saw Picassos and Braques and Matisses. Hoppers and O’Keefes and Magrittes. I saw Rodins and Degas and Warhols and de Koonings, Caillbots, Monets, Manets. Johns’, Morisots, Kandinskys, Pollocks. Chagalls and Renoirs. Gaugins. Cézannes. Studying Whistler’s Mother, I remembered that I had seen her when I was living in Paris and then I took a selfie with a Lichtenstein.
As per usual, our trip was too short.
Had we more time, I would of liked to have spent the afternoon having tea at The Allis in The Soho Hotel or perhaps at The Natural History Museum examining bones. I imagine that in the Summer, Chicago is the place to be. Swimmers will splash in the lake and frothy brews will be gulped on rooftop bars. Decked out in red, white and blue, loyal fans will cheer on the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
With no shortage of things to see and do and eat and drink, there’s no doubt I’ll be back for another visit sometime.
And I think next time I make the trip, I’ll treat myself to a slice of deep dish pizza, after all.
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