Andrew Delaplaine - Chicago: The Delaplaine 2020 Long Weekend Guide

CHICAGO

The Delaplaine

2020

Long Weekend

Guide

Andrew Delaplaine

NO BUSINESS HAS PAID A SINGLE PENNY OR GIVEN ANYTHING TO BE INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK.

Chicago Editor: Robert Vandal

Senior Editors - Renee & Sophie Delaplaine

Senior Writer - James Cubby

Copyright by Gramercy Park Press - All rights reserved.

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High on the Hog Sensible Alternatives On a Budget

Chapter 1

WHY CHICAGO?

W HAT A WONDERFUL TOWN , Chicagoland.

I couldnt believe the place when I first saw it. I was coming from New York (back in the 70s) in fine weather in early summer. It was night. I took a cab into town and walked up the Magnificent Mile in awe. Ladies and gentlemen walked down the street arm-in-arm, actually promenading.

There was grass on Michigan Avenue. Real grass. I reached down and touched it. You wouldnt find grass like that on Fifth Avenue. No, sir.

There was an electricity in the air in Chicago I noticed that very first night. And Ive always been aware of it. Theres that same sense in New York, of course, a sensation of excitement, of swiftness, of opportunity of hustle but somehow it was different here in Chicago. The pace here has slightly less of an edge to it. The people are nicer. They are polite. They are not rude, crude or rough. Maybe the word Im looking for is Normal. Its that Midwest upbringing, I tell myself, and that must be it. This may be the City of Big Shoulders, but the people inhabiting it are as nice as the farmers plowing fields 300 miles away. (Well, there are certain neighborhoods....)

That first night I spent sleeping on the floor of our branch office at the corner of Oak and Rush, which I found out later was quite an exciting corner with a fascinating history. When I woke up in the morning and looked out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw people swimming in the lake.

Swimming!

In the lake. In the 1970s!

I was aghast.

Back in New York, you wouldnt dip your toe in the Hudson River or the East River.

That was then. This is now. Now theyre harvesting oysters from beds in the East River.

I remember running down and asking a cop how people could swim in the filthy water. He explained that the river flowing into the lake had been reversed. The river flowed backwards! The water was clean.

I couldnt believe it.

But this was just the beginning of a long love affair with Chicago. Theres nothing not to like about this townexcept the freezing wind that comes off the lake in the wintertime.

A couple of years later, in February, I was having a business lunch at the top of the Hancock Tower in what is now called the Signature Room . A blizzard blew snow off the lake so hard the snow moved horizontally, not vertically. Looking over the shoulder of the person opposite me, I saw the building swaying. I didnt know if the Hancock Tower was swaying or the building I was looking at. I am not an engineer. I just knew this was no place for a Southern boy.

After lunch, my head bent down, I made my way back to my office and announced to the staff that the Editorial Department of our travel magazine (that would be me) was moving to our offices in Miami, at least for the winter months.

Ive returned dozens of times, of courseeven in Februaryand the simple truth is that whether its winter, summer, spring or fall, theres no place like this Toddlin Town.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, Im reprinting Carl Sanderss famous poem Chicago, first published I think in 1914. It captures the city like no other verse ever written.

HOG Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

Stormy, husky, brawling,

City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for

I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps

luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it

is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to

kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the

faces of women and children I have seen the marks

of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who

sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer

and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing

so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.