INTERSTATE 55: CHICAGO VALENTINE'S  by dominic robinson

I moved to Chicago in the summer, when the city was on its best behavior. The weather was warm, sidewalks were stirring, and the beaches were bustling. After work I was dropping in on friends or reading outside, and was eating dinner on my front stoop nearly every night. Chicago was an easy place to fall in love with back in August, but like the best first dates, this city has turned out to be different than it seemed.
During that summer honeymoon phase people had told me, “Just wait until winter. We’ll see how much you love Chicago then.” I probably should have taken those warnings more seriously.
 

At first, the windy Chicago winter was a breeze. The season began with colored lights, holiday parties, and fat flakes of clean snow. There was a special energy during the holidays that kept things nice and warm, no matter how cold it got. But after the clamor of New Years quieted, it kept getting colder. Now it’s so cold that leaving the house has become a chore. For even the smallest of errands it’s necessary to put on layers of clothing, a hat, gloves, a scarf, and a heavy jacket.
 

On the street, people walk briskly with their heads down, and they stand hunched over on the “L” platforms, with their backs to the wind. People seem to spend as little time outside as possible. It’s uncommon to talk to folks on the streets, and social outings require great effort for most. After several weeks of this lifestyle, it is easy to start feeling frustrated and lonely. When I do talk to people, “Winter Depression” is a common topic of conversation.
 

Lately I’ve come to question what I ever loved about this city in the first place. It sure hasn’t been a lot of fun these days. Luckily I was recently reminded that love isn’t always about fun.
 

On the eve of Valentine’s Day, Friday, February 13, I stood in the basement of a North Side apartment building, talking and drinking with a few dozen musicians, artists, and other assorted characters – all of us in our mid-to-late-twenties. It was bitter cold that night, but people had made it out to celebrate the CD release of Steve Eck, an artist and musician friend who recently moved to Chicago from New Orleans. Around eleven, people from the crowd began taking a makeshift stage that was set up at one end of the room and started playing songs they’d prepared for the event. A steady stream of music filled the room for three hours until Steve finally put things to rest with a drunken set of ballads. The mood was blithe, but it was obvious that people were there for more than a good time. People were there for the music.
 

Yet hardly anyone in that basement was from Chicago. Like many others in this town, most of us are migrants from places like St. Louis, Denver, Detroit, and New Orleans and all points between. Chicago has a knack for attracting young folks. Its lure, however, is often very different than that of other popular cities like San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, or Seattle. People don’t come here for an easier life, better weather, or natural beauty. Chicago’s magnetism is rooted in human energy. Like many before them, most of the people at the party have come to this city to pursue their passions. For over a century and a half, for reasons not quite clear, it has been a place that has harvested people’s dreams.
 

In the early 1800s, when Chicago was a swampy marshland, no rational human being would have predicted that this place might indeed become the next great American city. While Chicago was built on the promise that it would be the best possible nexus for trade between the east and west, there were other cities that were more naturally equipped to fill the role. To make it work, Chicago developers proposed ideas like turning the mouth of the Chicago River into a large port, and building a canal between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, thus connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. These were grand dreams that would be both costly and difficult to fulfill. But those developers promoted their city so fiercely and with such assuredness that eventually others came to share in their vision.
 

People and businesses started to settle. The government and private investors began to fund these and other grandiose engineering plans, and eventually all of the major railroads were running through the city. Time and again there were setbacks that threatened progress, but Chicago’s residents and investors always kept at it. Not even the Great Fire of 1871, which devoured half the city, could stop them. Within twenty years, Chicagoans had rebuilt the city into an international model of urbanity – in time for the 1893 World’s Fair.
 

Chicago is known as “The City that Works” because the people here have always made it work. It’s never been easy to do damn near anything here, but there is something about the place that attracts people that are willing to do things the hard way. Once those first Chicago migrants made the decision to turn this flat, swampy land into a boomtown, there was nothing stopping them. They instilled a special energy and built up a sense of momentum that has been carried on by every generation of Chicagoans since then.
 

Standing in the basement that night, watching people play earnestly, happily, and without constraint, it became clear that Chicago’s promise still remains. I think it is this energy that attracts people here...an energy that can make up for even the harshest of winters.

Dominic Robinson spent six years in St. Louis as a student and then as a university administrator and football coach before moving to Chicago in August of 2003. He’s currently getting his masters in Urban Studies. He likes coffee, Mexican food, and positive turnover margins. He can be reached @ wubears64@yahoo.com

 

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