what's good : chicago

Beyond Blues Brothers, pizza wars, and The Bear

Last weekend I was in Chicago for the fourth time in two years but because I’ve been working during each visit, I still haven’t seen as much as I would like to. We have walked to the Willis [formerly Sears] Tower and admired (from the sidewalk) its once-tallest top shrouded in the clouds of an April afternoon; I did quickly yet reverently wander the Harold Washington Library; we took a misty afternoon architecture tour by boat from Navy Pier along the winding Chicago River; we ate a divine birthday dinner at Cindy’s Rooftop and also devoured divinely greasy doublecheezborgers at the Billy Goat Tavern & Grill. Yet someday I must get to the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, and Art Institute + their Thorne Miniature Rooms; the Poetry Foundation building, American Writers Museum, and everything Lorraine Hansberry; I must eat at a Giordano’s & Ricobene’s to compare to Pizano’s & Lou Malnati’s¹, and go speakeasy drinking at Nine Bar, Dorian’s, and The Violet Hour…there is so so much to do in Second City. Here are a few things I’ve loved.

Three times we have rented flats in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood, the start of Chicago’s South Side. Speaking of places I’ve seen + those I still need to see, this area was home to Ida B. Wells-Barnett² as well as other Walk of Fame honorees Louis Armstrong, Nat “King” Cole, Bessie Armstrong, and today’s poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

In poetry: There are plenty of poems about this city focusing on work ethic or rough times or the wind though none, to me, capture the everyday-ness of people like Gwendolyn Brooks does. From her collection A Street in Bronzeville, written in 1945 when Brooks was just 28, “a song in the front yard” spoke to me when I first read it in college. Even a small town “good” white girl like me felt the insolent shrug of that opening line: I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life. And yet, reading on, I understood that when someone like me says I wanted to be a bad woman, too,/And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace/And strut down the streets with paint on my face, it hits society at large differently than if I were a young black woman making those statements; I had (have) the privilege to play with ideas about “being bad” without really changing the course of my life, or worrying how people would treat me. The girl in Brooks’s poem has to justify her thinking, trying to convince herself: But I think it’s fine. Honest, I do. She already knows that she isn’t supposed to tempt the fates with such considerations; she can’t let herself get “sick of a rose.”

Every time my husband & I stay in Bronzeville - go shopping at their Jewel-Osco, order catfish takeout, walk to a bus stop - we feel the wary, wondering eyes of the real residents. We might be the kind of white people who come to the neighborhood only because we want a peek at the back/Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows, the kind of people who clutch at stereotypes and project pity and judge those who do some wonderful things/…have some wonderful fun in metaphorical back yards, but I hope they end up knowing better.

a song in the front yard by Gwendolyn Brooks 

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.   
A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now   
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.   
I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.   
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae   
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace   
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

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In food: Speaking of catfish takeout, we break our travel rule of going only to new places whenever we revisit Chicago. Dock’s is close to the places we’ve rented in Bronzeville and, as we found after our first order two years ago, stays hot + delicious after a 15-minute walk. We were so hungry after working all day and discovered this place on the way to the nearest grocery store; it was open late and sounded like a good, simple meal. While waiting for our order in the restaurant, we noticed that nobody came to eat in but instead dozens of customers popped in & out with takeout; we discovered why after attempting to eat our catfish fillets immediately - they were blisteringly hot. We ate a handful of [also quite hot] fries then rewrapped the bag to take back to our place and enjoy it all in comfort. Dock’s also sells tasty desserts: Bean pie and a tangy banana pudding, but be sure to order the smaller dinner so you can eat everything in one sitting without getting a stomachache.

Last year we had the good luck to meet up with friends from home while they were also visiting Chicago. My friend had “Eat late night pie at a 24-hour diner” on her Life List³ so we all trekked over to Griddle 24 on a chilly April evening after dinner together. It was an honor to be included in such a tasty quest, and to get that coconut cream pie in my belly.

Think outside the pizza and weirdly condimented hot dog box.

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In books: I had the delightful fortune of being in on an author talk with Robbie Couch a couple of years ago for his second novel Blaine for the Win, a fun + smart YA story about being true to oneself, set in Chicago; I loved the characters & plot but also enjoy being able to basically follow their movements through the city. I immediately ordered his next book, If I See You Again Tomorrow, and was completely awed. Set again in Chicago with a sci-fi/speculative fiction twist, the protagonist faces typical adolescent turmoil while also having to relive each monotonous day for nearly a year, until he somehow meets someone new. Again, I loved finding favorite Windy City landmarks in the storyline, but the way Couch brought these teens to life is what kept me obsessed to the point of having to finish the book in two days.

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1. I’ve actually only eaten the lasagna [#scandalous] at Lou’s but will gladly go back to try their deep dish pizza.

2. I dashed down Martin Luther King Drive at dusk one evening to admire the home where she lived for years after publishing A Red Record, helping to organize the NAACP, the National Association of Colored Women, a black women’s suffrage club, and a kindergarten for black children. I have not yet set my eyes on the monument created for her.

3. She calls it her “Lifetime List” - a bit different from me but both of us agree that saying “Bucket List” is a too-grim way of racing Death to check off tasks instead of making intentional plans and joyfully doing the things we want.