# No, really, I \*like\* Chicago! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 26, 2005, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800 "2005-08-26T21:44:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/21 "2005-08-27T13:12:45Z")
> [@pace](#): > > Chicago IS one of the greatest cities in the world! After moving from deep South to Chi-town nearly 17 yrs ago, each time I’d return to visit one of my great aunts in Louisiana, she’d always ask me, “sweetie, how many times have you been shot?” haha! bless her heart! I lived on the northshore and she always seemed a little bit disappointed when I’d respond, “I’ve never been shot.” My fucking brother calls it Shit-cago. And he was born and raised here. He moved to Boulder (the city with no soul) 25 years ago, and never misses an opportunity to diss the city of his birth. Fuck 'em. We have culture, history, affordability, diversity, a lake so big it might as well be an ocean, architecture, excellent transportation, skyscrapers, two major airports, and boonies less than an hour away. You just can’t beat it. Except the winters are really starting to wear on me. Sigh. But the weather gives us all something to bitch about. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/22 "2005-08-27T14:16:45Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > “But THE WEATHER!” > > A little snow won’t hurt me. I’m happy to put up with it to live someplace exciting and fun. Hell, DC gets more snow on average than Chicago and we’re supposed to be _southern_! ---
**Author:** ![Hanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b3f665/32.png) [@Hanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hanna)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/23 "2005-08-27T14:53:18Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Good lord, besides the weather, what is there to dislike? The traffic? I’m not from Chicago, I live closer to the Twin Cities. I absolutely hate driving in or around Chicago. It seriously scares me. The last time I drove through I timed it so I’d pass through at 4:30 AM. :o Other than that, Chicago rocks! I spent a lot of time there as a young un. ---
**Author:** ![Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kolak_of_twilo/32/73_2.png) [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/24 "2005-08-27T15:29:20Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Oh, and why the hell have the rest of you boosters not been to ChiDopes? :mad: There’s one coming up as soon as somebody else plans it because the last one I planned collected a total of eight–EIGHT!–people, charming and delightful as they may be. I mean, for the first time I was home **hours** before my wife expected me! Hey **dropzone** , observe my join date. I promise, next one I’ll be there if possible. We’ll see to it your wife sends out a search party for you this time. :: returns to silly dance and stupid singing :: I love Chi-ca-go, oh yes I love it, I love the winter, I love the summer too. Yeah, yeah whoo-hoo-hoooooo! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/25 "2005-08-27T15:49:25Z")
Hey, if you gonna to sing 'bout Chicago, ya gotta do it [Sinatra-style](http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Frank-Sinatra/My-Kind-of-Town.html)! ---
**Author:** ![SanibelMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2005, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/26 "2005-08-27T16:32:09Z")
I got the same shit after moving to St. Louis from Florida for college. “Why would you come to St. Louis? I’d rather be in Florida!” Dude, try entertaining yourself as a high-school student in Lee County for four years and get back to me. I love Chicago and my fiancée has made me promise to live at least two years in Chicago at some point. A guy I work with is a new grad student at my university and came here after working on Kauai for the summer as a reporter. He said about three weeks in, the chief of police got mad at him and everyone stopped talking to him. That’s probably more a small-community thing than a Hawaii thing, but still, he didn’t have any fun and he’s very happy to be in St. Louis. ---
**Author:** ![Watcher\_of\_the\_Skies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/45deac/32.png) [@Watcher\_of\_the\_Skies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Watcher_of_the_Skies)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/27 "2005-08-29T06:00:17Z")
I’ve been to Chicago twice and loved it. Last was in summer '04 and the [Millennium Park](http://www.millenniumpark.org/) had just opened with that cool glass block/live face/fountain sculpture, chrome orb sculpture, and Frank Gehry outdoor music stage. The huge amount of interesting architecture, the Art Institute, the hot dogs, the steaks, the blues, I could go on and on. Great city. Also the fact that [Steve Goodman’s ashes](http://www.pastemagazine.com/action/article?article_id=1892) are buried under home plate at Wrigley Field is just the coolest thing ever. Philadelphia has had the same problem of self-perception - there used to be a slogan, “Philadelphia is not as bad as Philadelphians say it is.” ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/28 "2005-08-29T13:31:30Z")
> [@Happy Lendervedder](#): > > Plus, you can’t throw a rock in Chicago without hitting a restaurant. How great is that? > What would you hit if you threw a rock in Petaluma? Um…probably someone I went to high school with. God, it’s nice to be able to run my errands and not run into one single person I know. I don’t really mean to totally dis my hometown. It’s not a bad place. It’s safe, has good schools, it’s in the Bay Area so you’re close to many cultural attractions, blah blah blah. But come on! Chicago is one of the great cities of the world! It’s not even a contest to be a contest. I’m a little baffled at peoples’ obsession with weather. There are some climates I’d prefer not to live in, like, say, the desert. Not a fan of the desert. But if there was some totally awesome city that I just loved that happened to be in the desert, hell, I’d move there. The weather isn’t that big a deal to me. I can’t say that Chicago’s climate is my absolute ideal (I’m really originally from San Francisco and I like cool and foggy best), but meh. I just can’t be that concerned about it. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/29 "2005-08-29T13:33:47Z")
Oh, and traffic in Chicago is a disaster. (Unlike in every other metropolitan area, where there are no traffic jams, ever!) I don’t have a car and I don’t miss it. I’m happy with the el and bus and the occasional cab. ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/30 "2005-08-29T14:18:50Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > My fucking brother calls it Shit-cago. And he was born and raised here. He moved to Boulder (the city with no soul) 25 years ago, and never misses an opportunity to diss the city of his birth. Ha! After 11 years in Boulder, CO, I moved back to my hometown in da UP. At 25K people, we’re the biggest city within a hundred and fifty miles. We go to Green Bay, WI when we want to get a taste of culture. People think I’m crazy, too. Boulder is consistently rated one of the top small cities in the country. I’m so sick of it I don’t even want to go back for a visit. Sure, we get a lot of snow, the restaurants are miserable, and there’s no real entertainment to speak of. But it’s so much better than Boulder (“the city with no soul” - HA!) that I can’t even count the ways. ---
**Author:** ![the\_keek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/0ea827/32.png) [@the\_keek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_keek)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/31 "2005-08-29T16:08:04Z")
I was just talking about this with my stepdaughter last night. She moved to Chicago from Potatoville, ID about a year and a half ago. She confessed that when she left she thought she would come back after a year with a new found appreciation of home. But nope she loves it there! (I do too, I went for a visit last month). She said that while she misses her family and occasionally the wide open spaces and desert, she doesn’t want to come home, and honestly I’m am so glad she’s happy there and wants to stay. I wanted her to have all opportunities and experiences that a large city has to offer, and to see a world that is much different than the one she grew up in. ---
**Author:** ![Gozu\_Tashoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7993a0/32.png) [@Gozu\_Tashoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu_Tashoya)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/32 "2005-08-29T17:59:16Z")
Man, you think you have it bad, my best friend moved from Honolulu, HI to Duluth, MN. :eek: (In her defense, she moved there for school…but then she graduated ~2 years ago and is still there…) ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/33 "2005-08-30T01:17:43Z")
> [@KKBattousai](#): > > Man, you think you have it bad, my best friend moved from Honolulu, HI to Duluth, MN. :eek: A friend of mine (who’s also a Doper, incidentally) here in Chi is also from Honolulu. I’m sure she gets this crap even more than I do, but personally, I’d never want to live in Hawaii. You’re all stuck there, out in the middle of the ocean, on this tiny piece of land, thousands of miles from everything else. And everything is _so_ freaking expensive there! ---
**Author:** ![Gozu\_Tashoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7993a0/32.png) [@Gozu\_Tashoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu_Tashoya)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/34 "2005-08-30T21:43:39Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > A friend of mine (who’s also a Doper, incidentally) here in Chi is also from Honolulu. I’m sure she gets this crap even more than I do, but personally, I’d never want to live in Hawaii. You’re all stuck there, out in the middle of the ocean, on this tiny piece of land, thousands of miles from everything else. And everything is _so_ freaking expensive there! Perhaps, but I figure in event of nuclear missiles-flying-all-over-the-place war, Hawaii would be a fairly low-priority target (despite the numerous military bases), and quite likely to survive otherwise worldwide nuclear disaster. Plus it’s a small target, and hopefully any missiles aimed there will miss anyway. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2005, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/35 "2005-08-30T22:20:19Z")
> [@Geobabe](#): > > We got a milder version of that treatment when we moved from Miami to Atlanta. “Why would you leave Miami???” Uh, 'cause it sucks? We have met a few former South Floridians here, though, who just nod knowingly; it’s nice to be validated every once in a while. :nods knowingly: I lived in West Palm Beach for three years before moving back to Baltimore, and when people find out that I willingly left South Florida, they’re horrified. I usually end up explaining that there’s a huge difference between “Palm Beach” and “West Palm Beach” (namely drugs and crime), and that I’m not really a fan of hot weather and bugs. I like winter. I think a lot of people assume living in South Florida means you just hang out at the beach all day, sipping fruity frozen drinks and looking at hunky lifeguards. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Random](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/57b2e6/32.png) [@Random](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Random)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2005, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/36 "2005-08-31T03:39:59Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > A friend of mine (who’s also a Doper, incidentally) here in Chi is also from Honolulu. Hmmm, I wonder who that could be? > [@Kyla](#): > > I’m sure she gets this crap even more than I do, but personally, I’d never want to live in Hawaii. You’re all stuck there, out in the middle of the ocean, on this tiny piece of land, thousands of miles from everything else. Something to that. But I have friends there, who can go to Fiji, or Thailand, or Kiribati without it being a 2-days-travel-each-way kind of trip. And the Big Island kicks ass. (Actually, we have a good thing going. They stay with me when they visit Chicago, and I can stay with them when I’m on Oahu. I go there in January, and they come here in July.) > [@Kyla](#): > > And everything is _so_ freaking expensive there! That’s what Costco is for. You don’t **have** to shop at the ABC store. ---
**Author:** ![Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cab0a1/32.png) [@Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Man_With_a_Cat)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2005, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800/37 "2005-08-31T04:02:44Z")
> [@Hung Mung](#): > > I’d move to Chicago in a heartbeat. I’ve visited several times and I absolutely adore that city. I could even become a Cubs fan. No Bears, though. No Bears, but Cubs? I hear Nashville has so much to offer… The Cubs are a bandwagon. The Bears are history. And Opryland, who could leave that? Besides, we’d all just talk behind your back… The Cubbies? ::holding nose while gacking in the alley:: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-really-i-like-chicago/318800.md?page=1)