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Wrigley Rooftops Visit Chicago
CHICAGO is in
many ways the nation's last great city. Sarah
Bernhardt called it "the pulse of America"
and, though long eclipsed by Los Angeles as the
nation's second most populous city after New York,
Chicago really does have it all, with less of
the hassle and infrastructural problems of its
coastal rivals.
Founded
in the early 1800s, Chicago grew up with the country,
serving as the main connection between the established
east coast cities and the wide open Wild West
frontier.
This position on the sharp edge between civilization
and wilderness made the city into a crucible of
innovation. Many aspects of modern life, from
skyscrapers to suburbia, had their start, and
perhaps their finest expression, here on the shores
of Lake Michigan.
Despite burning to the ground
in the legendary fire of 1871, Chicago boomed
thereafter, doubling in population every decade
and reaching two million around 1900, swollen
by Irish and eastern European immigrants.
In the early years of the twentieth century, it
cemented a reputation as a place of apparently
limitless opportunity, with jobs aplenty for those
willing to work.
The attraction was strongest among Deep South
blacks: from 1900 to 1920 African Americans poured
in, with more than 75,000 arriving during the
war years of 1916–18 alone.
Long hours, poor pay and squalid working conditions
were the catalysts that made Chicago the cradle
of American trade unions.
By around 1900 most workers were organized under
the American Federation of Labor, and the 1894
Pullman strike saw black and white workers unite
for almost the first time in the US.
As hostilities intensified, the city's workers
became the driving force behind the left-wing
"Wobblies."
Chicago has also long been an important center
for black organization – both the Reverend
Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH (People United
to Save Humanity) and the more militant Nation
of Islam, founded by Elijah Mohammed in the 1940s,
have their national headquarters on the city's
South Side.
During the Roaring Twenties, Chicago's
self-image as a no-holds-barred free market was
pushed to the limit by a new breed of entrepreneur.
Criminal syndicates, ruthlessly and brazenly run
by the likes of gangsters like Al Capone and Bugsy
Moran, took advantage of
Prohibition to sell bootleg alcohol.
Shootouts in the street between sharp-suited,
Tommy-gun-wielding mobsters were not as common
as legend would have it, but the backroom dealing
and iron-handed control they pioneered was later
perfected by politicians such as former mayor
Richard Daley – father of the present mayor
– who ran Chicago single-handedly from the
1950s until his death in 1976.
His brutal handling of antiwar demonstrators at
the 1968 Democratic convention remains notorious.
These days, the tourist authorities play down
the mobster era; few traces of the hoodlum years
exist, and those that do owe more to Hollywood
than contemporary Chicago.
Today, Chicago's towering skyline
– the city has one of the world's best collections
of modern architecture, from Frank Lloyd Wright
houses to the 110-story Sears Tower – dominates
the pancake-flat prairies for hundreds of miles
around. Chicago's status as the cultural and financial
heart of middle America is beyond question.
The Loop downtown holds the head offices of many
major US companies and some of the nation's most
important commodity markets, which together handle
the buying and selling of one-third of the world's
agricultural and industrial products.
For visitors, Chicago offers the
Art Institute of Chicago and a wide range of excellent
museums (many of which have one day of free admission
per week), restaurants, sports and highbrow cultural
activities. However, its strongest suit is live
music, with a phenomenal array of jazz and blues
clubs packed into the back rooms of its amiable
bars and cafés.
The rock scene is also one of the healthiest in
the country with a prolific number of bands having
come out of the city in the 1990s, including Smashing
Pumpkins, Material Issue, Veruca Salt and Wilco.
And almost everything is noticeably less expensive
than in other US cities – eating out, for
example, costs much less than in New York or LA,
but is every bit as good.
Though locals might deny it, the city has a surprisingly
low-key and generally welcoming population –
Chicagoans on the whole are proud of their city
and usually keen to point out its best features.
Two great ways to get a real feel for the city
are to head out to the Wrigley Rooftops and have a Chicago Cubs rooftop party on
a sunny summer afternoon, or take a cruise boat under the bridges
of the Chicago River at sunset.
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