Chicago - A Rant

     I hate Chicago.  I hate all things Chicago.  I hate the Bears, the Cubs, the Sox, the Hawks, and the Bulls.  I hate the food.  I hate the noise.  I hate the smells.  I hate the lakes.  I hate the architecture.  Chicago is a condensed metropolis with sprawling, disconnected suburbs.  The neighborhoods make little sense, and the people follow in suit, wandering from business to business with spectacular idiocy.  Chicagoans are the droll version of New Yorkers.  They offer none of the Midwestern pleasantries and possess all of the New York crass.  They’re bitter, angry, vengeful.  About what?  I haven’t the faintest clue.  Perhaps it’s the corrupt politicians.  Perhaps it’s the city’s ultra violence.  Perhaps the skyrocketing crime rates.  The CPD's ineptitude.  The bitter winters.  The short springs and even shorter summers.  Perhaps people are so calculatedly cold because they’ve been force-fed plates of marinated beef and cheese all their lives.  Mention a vegetable to a Chicagoan and you’re likely to go missing a tooth. 

    Chicago is as inexplicable as a city can get.  Best pizza in the world?  Hardly.  Since when is casserole considered pizza?  Where’s the best Italian beef?  Everybody has their own opinion, each one prouder and more arrogant than the last.  On one occasion, after a few too many, one bar patron claimed the best Italian beef was found at a little establishment called “Bruce’s Mighty Wings.”  It took everything in my power not to cut out his tongue and use it as currency to pay my tab.  In Chicago, subjectivity is considered fact and objectivity is considered weakness.

     I spent a year in Chicago and never once did I stop feeling like a tourist.  When I moved there I was overwhelmed by the strength of my wistful dreams, but tortured by the never ending sea of its disappointments.  I had convinced myself Chicago was the answer, a mecca to cleanse my rotten heart; a heart, unbeknownst to me, that had been sentenced to death and Chicago was its executioner.  I say to hell with the Man and to hell with Chicago!  To hell with those discombobulating city streets!  To hell with those faceless strangers eating their Italian beefs and thirty dollar casserole pizzas!  To hell with it all!

    The second city was--and continues to be--a hellish reminder of a life I had no business living.  Maybe I don’t hate Chicago.  Maybe Chicago hates me.  Either way, save yourself the headache and change course for Milwaukee.