#Chicago

From Toronto now Chicago. Not far on the map from Toronto but over an hours flight. Pearson and O'Hare are each massive airports but pretty easily negotiated. US Border Security the usual charmers. 

I have always wanted to have a look at Chicago - the windy city on the shores of Lake Michigan. Why the interest? Well I suppose because it has been so much in popular culture - gangsters - cops - prohibition stuff - TV series like ER and The Good Wife - films like The Untouchables, Blues Brothers and The Fugitive. I subsequently found out that Gotham City of Batman films used Chicago as a backset. 

Sport is huge - Cubs & White Sox's Baseball Teams - Chicago Bulls (Michael Jordan) and Sky - Basketball - Bears - American Football and  Blackhawks - Ice Hockey. Every bar has sport on a TV. Basketball is huge.

Chicago is a massive business centre with household name companies based there - Boeing and McDonalds to name but two.

Overall Chicago is regularly in the news.

What did I make of Chicago ? Well to start with I was in downtown Chicago. I did a 5 hour walking tour and the guide who was passionate about the city he was brought up in complained that Chicago has an unfair reputation for crime. He insisted Chicago was safe and that crime was restricted to the SW suburbs which historically was a badly neglected area. No doubt he was right but preconceptions or not Chicago felt edgy and real.

Something to understand about Chicago. It is miles from the Atlantic Ocean but its historic wealth was created as one of the world's most active ports. Chicago exported beef and timber all over the world from its heartland position - through the Great Lakes. 

Chicago can be smart and cosmopolitan with many fantastic buildings. The Great fire of Chicago is regularly referred to. Chicago was pretty much destroyed in 1871 and was subsequently rebuilt. The heyday might have been the 1920/30's when the Art Deco skyscrapers where built - but Chicago has continued to build many show stopper buildings including the Sears tower which was the tallest building in the world for 25 years. Some of the cityscape views are fantastic. Chicago is a very rich city with many extremely wealthy corporate benefactors.

There is so many sights I could refer to but rather than droning on I am going to choose Millenium Park. It is a truly world class place. It is a huge park area reclaimed from Lake Michigan. The original reclamation was achieved by dumping the debris of the great fire - debris from an area 4 miles by 2 miles. For a century the land was mainly used as shunting and train interchange yard. The new whole and massive beautiful park has been built over a major and vital train interchange. A huge feat of engineering. The project went massively over budget but was rescued by donations from the city corporates and raised over half a billion dollars. They imported hundreds of mature trees and set out a great park. What makes it special and standout is the huge investment in sculptures/installations. One is a magnificent stage for free concerts another is two huge walled cubes which change portraits and periodically spurt water from the mouth. The most remarkable is the Cloud Gate now referred to - to the artists dismay as the "bean". In a short time according to Google it has become the third most photographed subject in America or is it the world. What is it? A 110 ton polished chrome lump of metal. It is mesmerising. Stunning. It makes you smile and laugh at the range of distorted images. It is brilliant !

Back to the edginess. One factor is the street car - railway that runs a L a loop around Chicago. It is apparently loved by the Chicago citizens and massivelyused as the primarymeans of commuting. It is thunderously noisy at times. It was built for their great exhibition in 1893. The track is suspended on massive cast iron legs. It is very intrusive- but atmospheric. While I was there I witnessed a car being stopped and two guys being searched hands in the air - guns evident - true American cop style - like a film set. I also witnessed a 3 vehicle collision at a 4 way junction. Debris everywhere - a loud shouting match between some involved. Intense. And then the loudest most penetrating sirens and horns from all directions as cops and ambulances descended. A real event.

The final thing- food. Our guide wanted to show us the real Chicago food. A hot dog with green sauce mustard and pickles - my favourite. A deep crust pizza filled with chopped beef and cheese and a beef sandwich with everything. All were tasty but a dieticians  nightmare. About a million calories a pop  I would guess.

I was there for St Patrick's day and Chicago has a massive Irish contingent. The main celebration was the weekend before I arrived. I was a bit disappointed until our guide described a weekend of drunken carnage. They dye the Chicago river green using vegetable dye - evident when I was there. I wonder how the fish feel about that?!

I am glad I spent some time in Chicago. Fond memories but I won't be rushing back there. Too full on for me.

Down town Chicago scenes

The street overhead railway. Many a car chase underneath.

City Hall of Blues Brothers and Gotham City

Pictures of the fantastic Bean

Chicago special. Hot dog with pickles.

Where I stood to take this photo Al Capone stood to mow down a rival mobster coming out the church.

The stage in Millenium Park

Beef sandwich 

Deep crust pizza

Chicago River dyed green for St Patrick's Day.

Some more info from Wiki.

Chicago (/ʃɪˈkɑːɡoʊ/ (listen) shih-KAH-goh, locally also /ʃɪˈkɔːɡoʊ/ shih-KAW-goh^[5]), officially the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and the third-most populous city in the United States, following New York City and Los Angeles. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census,^[6] it is also the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the fifth most populous city in North America. Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the U.S., while a small portion of the city's O'Hare Airport also extends into DuPage County. Chicago is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area, defined as either the U.S. Census Bureau's metropolitan statistical area (9.6 million people) or the combined statistical area (almost 10 million residents), often called Chicagoland. It is one of the 40 largest urban areas in the world.

Located on the shores of freshwater Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century;^[7] by 1860, Chicago was the youngest U.S. city to exceed a population of 100,000.^[8] Even after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless,^[9] Chicago's population grew to 503,000 by 1880 — and then doubled to more than a million within the decade.^[8] The construction boom accelerated population growth throughout the following decades, and by 1900, less than 30 years after the great fire, Chicago was the fifth-largest city in the world.^[10] Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and zoning standards, including new construction styles (including the Chicago School of architecture), the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.^[11][12]

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It is the site of the creation of the first standardized futures contracts, issued by the Chicago Board of Trade, which today is part of the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone.^[13] O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports according to tracked data by the Airports Council International.^[14] The region also has the largest number of federal highways and is the nation's railroad hub.^[15] The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018.^[16] The economy of Chicago is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.^[17] It is home to several Fortune 500 companies, including Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie, Allstate, Archer Daniels Midland, Boeing, Caterpillar, Conagra Brands, Exelon, JLL, Kraft Heinz, McDonald's, Mondelez International, Motorola Solutions, Sears, United Airlines Holdings, US Foods, and Walgreens.^[18]

Chicago's 58 million tourist visitors in 2018 set a new record,^[19][20] and Chicago has been voted the best large city in the U.S. for four years in a row by Condé Nast Traveler.^[21] The city was ranked first in the 2018 Time Out City Life Index, a global urban quality of life survey of 15,000 people in 32 cities,^{[22][23][24][25][26]} and was rated second-most beautiful city in the world (after Prague) in 2021.^[27] Landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis (Sears) Tower, Grant Park, the Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicago is also home to the Barack Obama Presidential Center being built in Hyde Park on the city's South Side.^[28][29] Chicago's culture includes the visual arts, literature, film, theatre, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, and music, particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel,^[30] and electronic dance music including house music. Of the area's many colleges and universities, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago are classified as "highest research" doctoral universities. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

Millennium Park is a public park located in the Chicago Loop, a community area of the city in Illinois, operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and managed by MB Real Estate. The park was intended to celebrate the third millennium and is a prominent civic center near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline that covers a 24.5-acre (9.9 ha) section of northwestern Grant Park. The area was previously occupied by parkland, the Illinois Central rail yards, and parking lots.^[1] The park, which is bounded by Michigan Avenue, Randolph Street, Columbus Drive and East Monroe Drive, features a variety of public art. As of 2009, Millennium Park trailed only Navy Pier as a Chicago tourist attraction and by 2017 it had become the number one tourist attraction in the Midwestern United States. In 2015, the park became the location of the city's annual Christmas tree lighting.

Planning of the park began in October 1997. Construction began in October 1998, and Millennium Park was opened in a ceremony on July 16, 2004, four years behind schedule. The three-day opening celebrations were attended by some 300,000 people and included an inaugural concert by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus. The park has received awards for its accessibility and green design.^[2] Millennium Park has free admission,^[3] and features the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain, the Lurie Garden, and various other attractions. The park is connected by the BP Pedestrian Bridge and the Nichols Bridgeway to other parts of Grant Park. Because the park sits atop a parking garage and the commuter rail Millennium Station, it is considered the world's largest rooftop garden.

Some observers consider Millennium Park the city's most important project since the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.^[3][4] It far exceeded its originally proposed budget of $150 million. The final cost of $475 million was borne by Chicago taxpayers and private donors. The city paid $270 million; private donors paid the rest,^[5] and assumed roughly half of the financial responsibility for the cost overruns.^[6] The construction delays and cost overruns were attributed to poor planning, many design changes, and cronyism. Many critics have praised the completed park.

In 2017, Millennium Park was the top tourist destination in Chicago and in the Midwest, and placed among the top ten in the United States with 25 million annual visitors.^[7]