The American year is divided into several commercially-minded long weekends that essentially serve as reminders to the public here of what they are meant to buy for the next month. This week is Labor Day weekend, and that heralds the end of summer, coming of Fall and beginning of the school year. All in all it’s a pretty fatalistic weekend. From the TV ads this means you should run out and buy a backpack and a dishwasher (often from the same store).
I used the long weekend to go to Chicago, which still uses the unfortunate title of “Paris of the Prairies” but is actually a really fun city. I’ve been here a few times before and it’s always been a surprise to me how beautiful it is. My only images of Chicago before I got here were the movies ‘Some Like it Hot’ (Bitterly cold, snowy, lots of jazz) and My Best Friend’s Wedding (rich white people on boats) but like any city the reality is so much more exciting in person. It’s a two-hour flight from New York and you can tell you are not near a coast, the minute you land. There is something so quintessentially American about the place, despite its diversity. The people are larger, the drawl is apparent, no one is wearing black and they wear socks beneath Jesus sandals with the same lack of irony that inspires their love of fanny packs (also, they have managed to print the American flag on everything). But above all this, they are nice. Frighteningly so.
'American Gothic' at the Art Institute of Chicago
There is a grit to the place that you can still sense, despite extensive re-branding
Take my flight for instance. Domestic airlines in the US aren’t a great experience, and my own plane had been delayed several times because of rain already. Still, once boarded, people were smiley, chatty and happy. I found I had made three friends in just my row. On the trains in the city, strangers will randomly interject into your conversation with an aside or a suggestion, and no one seems to mind this. If someone makes eye contact with you for more than three seconds on a New York subway, you should run away fast because it usually means they want to stab you. Not here. Here it means they want to wish you a good day.
The city has an old and historic downtown neighborhood called the Loop which boasts beautiful, soaring buildings and the kind of gothic architecture that confirms it was the model for Batman’s Gotham City (movies and comics both). Indeed, I was told as much by the announcer of an Architectural cruise that I took which floated down the Chicago river and pointed out all the fascinating stories behind the buildings that line it. The river runs right through the city and around it are some of the world’s first tallest buildings, largest buildings (one has its own zip code) and oldest buildings. It really is a lot of fun to do touristy things sometimes. I learnt so much, like that the Kennedy’s owned most of downtown Chicago, the Mob is still a thing here, and most of the river was full-blown toxic until scarcely two decades ago. There is a grit to the place that you can still sense, despite extensive re-branding, in vast subterranean tunnels and roads from before the city burned to the ground a hundred years ago; or even the above-ground subway as it snakes through between tall buildings or grassy parks.
The Tribune Tower in Chicago - typical of the cit2y's Gohic architectural charm
Art is, of course, a huge part of Chicago and the fact that it has major museums and art schools is the result of deliberate attempts to make the city internationally relevant in the 20th century. The Art Institute of Chicago really is one of the best museums in the world, plump with some of the most famous paintings and sculptures, many of which you can’t name but know your entire life from sightings on posters and pop culture shows. For instance, you can see ‘American Gothic’, the painting with the farmer couple staring dolefully at the viewer, which hangs a few steps away from Nighthawks, showing a well-lit old school diner seen from afar. The building itself, a spectacular neoclassical purpose-built structure smack dab in the middle of downtown, is sprawling and elegant, surrounded by wonderfully Zen gardens, and when I went it was playing host to a wedding.
Actually I’ve seen over two dozen brides this weekend, all dressed in white and having their wedding pictures taken in the end of the summer sun in magical public gardens. The effect is, like most weddings, charming and sickening in equal measure.
There is a part of me that still gets excited in September like I used to at the beginning of a new school year, probably the same part of me that gets really nervous on Sunday night because I can’t stop thinking of it as Homework night. I sense opportunity, renewal and mystery, even amidst the shock that summer went by so very quickly, and it’s nice to mark the change with a little trip. Even if it does call itself the Paris of the Prairies.
