They promised all kinds of apocalyptic conditions. Images of a frozen Lake Michigan were conjured up, alongside hints of snowy streets and blustery wind-chills. Chicago is, after all, the Windy City. Having been in America’s ‘Second City’ at almost the exact same time of year twenty-four months previously, and witnessed first hand the blistering cold blowing in from Canada, I resolutely agreed with those who forewarned us of the icy temperatures that were sure to meet us at Union Station.
We set off at six o’clock in the morning from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and relaxed into our Amtrak seats for a five-hour journey through Michigan and Indiana, before reaching Illinois. The hoodies, gloves, hats, scarves, parkas and duffle-coats were at the ready. Dean and I were primed for the sub-zero onslaught.
No doubt it will surprise you, therefore, to hear that global warming is alive and well in the United States of America. Away went the gloves, on came the sunglasses; in went the coats, out came the t-shirts: it was 70 degrees and sunny in balmy Chicago. Joggers and pedestrians ambled around Lakeshore Drive. Shoppers and tourists mooched up and down the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Avenue to the natives) like it was a summer’s day. American Football players limbered up on astro-turf pitches with gallons of water at the ready to ease their perspiring muscles.
Our hostel for the two-night trip to one of the great skylines of the world was located in Fullerton, a northern suburb of Chicago, popular with students and trendy twentysomethings. It was here that we met up with our two close friends (both twentysomethings; jury is out on the trendy part): Dylan Viner (whom you will recall from our New York frolics a week earlier), and Robert Gilbert (another NYC-based Habs Boy who missed out on the weekend before).
Dylan and Bobby both wanted brunch. Having checked our bags, we ventured around the nearby streets, before waltzing into a café called Orange. Excited to all be together, and chatting with enthusiasm from topics as diverse as Football Manager 2010 squad numbers and whether Dylan can take a decent penalty or not, the staff were a little perplexed by our accents, particularly when Mr. Gilbert became perhaps a little over-excited by one girl’s t-shirt. The t-shirt contained a picture of a Liger, which to the uninitiated is what you get if you put a lion and a tiger together. Suffice to say, Robert and the waitress hit it off rather well, which explains why the remaining three of us had to go to Orange for our breakfast every single day during our Chicago jaunt.
In many ways, our random musings in Orange serve as a suitable epitaph of our stay in the Windy City. After all, here were four friends of nearly two decades, mates who had grown up together in North London and enjoying each other’s company in one of the friendliest cities on the planet. Chicagoans, while busy, are always cheerful, bestowing a genuinely warm welcome on visitors. It was a happy circumstance to be in such an open and sociable city as part of a group of very close friends. The ‘Chicago welcome’ is also explained by the city’s past inferiority complex with regards to its place within the United States. Chicago has also been a centre of business and commerce, a major commercial centre with huge banks, law firms, insurance companies, and a rigorous, world-respected media. However, until recently it found itself dominated by New York, and unable to create its own identity away from the Big Apple. Now, however, Chicago stands tall (literally, in the case of two of the highest buildings in the world in the Sears Tower and the Hancock Building), towering over the Midwest, revelling in its position as the last major city in America until you hit Los Angeles.
It is doubled aided by the Obama connection. President Obama was not born in Chicago, but is synonymous with the city, having lived and worked there both as a high school student and later as a young lawyer. He served as a Congressman for Illinois before running for President and it is clear, in this most cosmopolitan and energetic of cities, that Chicagoans are immensely proud that their liberal, accepting, progressive attitude is now represented in the White House not just by a man who shares those ideas, but who literally helped form them in their own city. Today, then, Chicago embraces its label as the ‘Second City’, and points to President Obama’s Election Night Victory Speech (surely one of the great oratorical moments in all history) as the seal of this renewed optimism. “Hello Chicago!” cried Obama from the city’s lush Grant Park area. “Hello America!” bellowed the Windy City.
You will have gathered, therefore, that it was good to be in Chicago, and soon the four of us were busying ourselves in the city’s main downtown areas. We enjoyed a stroll along the banks of Lake Michigan, basking in the glow of the November sun, and felt the purchase of some cookies on Navy Pier was a suitable reward for our pedaconferencing. The Habs Boys enjoyed another walk up and down the Magnificent Mile, including a chance to enjoy Chicago’s famed shops, before returning to our hostel to prepare for a big night on the town.
What followed was not a big night on the town, although it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Dean serenaded us with Harrison Hope songs on his guitar. Bobby took the lead in the stroll to and from different bars. Dylan brushed up on his darts skills, while I took on camera duty for a while. Although not the latest night out of our lives, it was still fun to enjoy a meal and a few drinks with close friends, before getting in a reasonable night’s sleep ahead of a busy Saturday.
The day started earlier for me than anyone else as I set an alarm to wake up and watch Tottenham Hotspur play Sunderland, live in America on ESPN 2. It proved to be a worthwhile decision, as I enjoyed the 2-0 victory, and a particularly lively discussion with an obviously inebriated Irishman who, like many from Ireland, had something of a soft spot for Spurs captain Robbie Keane. From here we made our way into town using the ‘loop’, Chicago’s version of our underground system. The city was on sparkling form, as the low sun glittered off of the skyscrapers and glass building structures, providing the most perfect of lights for Dean and Dylan, in particular, to put their photography skills to the test. The Trump Tower, the Illinois River, Lake Michigan, the Sears Tower and the top end of Michigan Avenue were all gobbled up by their camerawork, while Bobby and I did what actors do, and generally pouted our way through a series of headshots. This culminated in a trip to The Bean in Millennium Park. The Bean does exactly what it says on the tin, except it is huge. It is, quite literally, a giant bean, sitting in the middle of the park, and made of curved mirror, so that the light and people’s reflections bend in a variety of directions and angles. We filmed ourselves performing Bohemian Rhapsody, much to the amusement of some other tourists, before continuing our walking tour of Chicago by strolling through the rest of the park and then heading for the Water Tower complex, home to American institutions like Abercrombie and The Cheesecake Factory and, more importantly for us, the lift system to take us to the top of the Hancock Building.
The view at the top of the Hancock is simply breathtaking, particularly in the early evening, where the lights of Chicago appear to engulf the number of stars in the sky, where you can see streetlights blend into the distance and fields beyond, stretching out further than you and I can possibly fathom. If you go to Chicago and you do not go up the Hancock and gaze out on this beautiful city, looking out past the nearby Sears Tower over lakes, parks, airports, roads, rivers, freeways and farmland, then you simply have not been to this city.
Alas for us, it took about five different elevator rides to get to the observation deck. It was worth it for the view, and the feeling that Chicago is perfectly positioned for such a skyline, both literally and metaphorically. Literally, because it is a skyline to rival New York. Metaphorically because Chicago’s position at the tip of America on the shore of Lake Michigan affords it a unique opportunity to act a crossroads for the whole country. Look east to New England and the start of the American Revolution and ideology. Look South down towards a time of trouble in America’s past, of civil strife and even war, and the progress that has been made since. Look West to the land of the pioneers, the hands that built America, that conquered this nation’s mountains and valleys, and built railways and roads that disappear over the horizon towards the dreams of California and the swells of the Pacific. That is why people should visit Chicago. Especially with close friends.
We then found ourselves in the entirely un-British environs of an NBA match-up between the Chicago Bulls (“Go Bulls!”) and the Charlotte Bobcats, at the United Centre, which is a twenty-minute cab ride from downtown. It was great to sample a live American sporting occasion, featuring all the stalwarts you would expect: a rousing rendition of the national anthem, busty cheerleaders, fast food coupons, inexplicable music played in the middle of the action, and fat people shouting at the court. We entered into the spirit of the occasion by singing, cheering and chanting as best we could, while maintaining a suitably British attitude of slight sheepishness, confused as we were by the extravagant nature of the proceedings. Basketball slogans were juxtaposed against traditional English football chants. Indeed, our berating of the referee, a skill honed on streets like Loftus Road and Tottenham High Road, aroused fairly angry glances from the locals. It was irreverent, irrational, irrepressibly ridiculous fun, and the Bulls managed to win the game in the final quarter. I suppose this makes me a Bulls fan, but I am yet to be emotionally attached to any American sport, other than perhaps my brief foray into Baseball when in New York. “Let’s go Yankees!” will remain one of the defining sentences of our American adventure.
We ended our evening with some further visits to Chicago alcohol establishments, having polished off one of the finest meat-eating experiences of our lives. It was about the only time during the whole weekend that all four of us were silent (even when we slept, a certain someone’s snoring kept up the decibel level), as Messrs Gilbert, Jacobs, Viner and Samuelson took on the task of working through two 48-ounce Porterhouse steaks at the Chicago Chop House. It was, as both my Dad and apparently Dean’s Dad would say, like melted butter. Perfection.
We finished off our trip to Chicago by enjoying another suburb: Wicker Park. Boutique shops and independent-run coffee houses dominated the main street, and we all enjoyed talking to the patrons about what they were selling, building up a decent knowledge of Illinois fashion (for example, it was good to find out that it is possible to buy items of clothing in this state that do not simply have the orange University of Illinois tag emblazed on it somewhere). Sunday was spent chatting, relaxing and mooching. We had talked up a lads weekend of drunken debauchery, and found instead a few days of light-hearted frolics in a great part of the world, reconnecting as old friends should, talking about anything and anyone, reminiscing about times past and looking forward to many more happy adventures together in the future. Our final heart-to-heart, in a Wicker Park coffee-house, was symptomatic of this. Only with close school friends is it possible to discuss everything from the North London social scene, to whether the English version of The Office is better than the American one, with a little bit of football, music, film and women thrown in for good measure. You can take the boy out of Habs, as Dylan said recently, but you cannot take Habs out of the boy.
While Mr. Viner and Mr. Gilbert prepared to fly back to New York, Dean and I made arrangements to pick up our hire car for the next stage of our American adventure. Planes and trains were the order of the day until we reached Illinois. From now on, it is all about the automobile, as the romantic, folkloric, magical South beckons.
We set off at six o’clock in the morning from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and relaxed into our Amtrak seats for a five-hour journey through Michigan and Indiana, before reaching Illinois. The hoodies, gloves, hats, scarves, parkas and duffle-coats were at the ready. Dean and I were primed for the sub-zero onslaught.
No doubt it will surprise you, therefore, to hear that global warming is alive and well in the United States of America. Away went the gloves, on came the sunglasses; in went the coats, out came the t-shirts: it was 70 degrees and sunny in balmy Chicago. Joggers and pedestrians ambled around Lakeshore Drive. Shoppers and tourists mooched up and down the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Avenue to the natives) like it was a summer’s day. American Football players limbered up on astro-turf pitches with gallons of water at the ready to ease their perspiring muscles.
Our hostel for the two-night trip to one of the great skylines of the world was located in Fullerton, a northern suburb of Chicago, popular with students and trendy twentysomethings. It was here that we met up with our two close friends (both twentysomethings; jury is out on the trendy part): Dylan Viner (whom you will recall from our New York frolics a week earlier), and Robert Gilbert (another NYC-based Habs Boy who missed out on the weekend before).
Dylan and Bobby both wanted brunch. Having checked our bags, we ventured around the nearby streets, before waltzing into a café called Orange. Excited to all be together, and chatting with enthusiasm from topics as diverse as Football Manager 2010 squad numbers and whether Dylan can take a decent penalty or not, the staff were a little perplexed by our accents, particularly when Mr. Gilbert became perhaps a little over-excited by one girl’s t-shirt. The t-shirt contained a picture of a Liger, which to the uninitiated is what you get if you put a lion and a tiger together. Suffice to say, Robert and the waitress hit it off rather well, which explains why the remaining three of us had to go to Orange for our breakfast every single day during our Chicago jaunt.
In many ways, our random musings in Orange serve as a suitable epitaph of our stay in the Windy City. After all, here were four friends of nearly two decades, mates who had grown up together in North London and enjoying each other’s company in one of the friendliest cities on the planet. Chicagoans, while busy, are always cheerful, bestowing a genuinely warm welcome on visitors. It was a happy circumstance to be in such an open and sociable city as part of a group of very close friends. The ‘Chicago welcome’ is also explained by the city’s past inferiority complex with regards to its place within the United States. Chicago has also been a centre of business and commerce, a major commercial centre with huge banks, law firms, insurance companies, and a rigorous, world-respected media. However, until recently it found itself dominated by New York, and unable to create its own identity away from the Big Apple. Now, however, Chicago stands tall (literally, in the case of two of the highest buildings in the world in the Sears Tower and the Hancock Building), towering over the Midwest, revelling in its position as the last major city in America until you hit Los Angeles.
It is doubled aided by the Obama connection. President Obama was not born in Chicago, but is synonymous with the city, having lived and worked there both as a high school student and later as a young lawyer. He served as a Congressman for Illinois before running for President and it is clear, in this most cosmopolitan and energetic of cities, that Chicagoans are immensely proud that their liberal, accepting, progressive attitude is now represented in the White House not just by a man who shares those ideas, but who literally helped form them in their own city. Today, then, Chicago embraces its label as the ‘Second City’, and points to President Obama’s Election Night Victory Speech (surely one of the great oratorical moments in all history) as the seal of this renewed optimism. “Hello Chicago!” cried Obama from the city’s lush Grant Park area. “Hello America!” bellowed the Windy City.
You will have gathered, therefore, that it was good to be in Chicago, and soon the four of us were busying ourselves in the city’s main downtown areas. We enjoyed a stroll along the banks of Lake Michigan, basking in the glow of the November sun, and felt the purchase of some cookies on Navy Pier was a suitable reward for our pedaconferencing. The Habs Boys enjoyed another walk up and down the Magnificent Mile, including a chance to enjoy Chicago’s famed shops, before returning to our hostel to prepare for a big night on the town.
What followed was not a big night on the town, although it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Dean serenaded us with Harrison Hope songs on his guitar. Bobby took the lead in the stroll to and from different bars. Dylan brushed up on his darts skills, while I took on camera duty for a while. Although not the latest night out of our lives, it was still fun to enjoy a meal and a few drinks with close friends, before getting in a reasonable night’s sleep ahead of a busy Saturday.
The day started earlier for me than anyone else as I set an alarm to wake up and watch Tottenham Hotspur play Sunderland, live in America on ESPN 2. It proved to be a worthwhile decision, as I enjoyed the 2-0 victory, and a particularly lively discussion with an obviously inebriated Irishman who, like many from Ireland, had something of a soft spot for Spurs captain Robbie Keane. From here we made our way into town using the ‘loop’, Chicago’s version of our underground system. The city was on sparkling form, as the low sun glittered off of the skyscrapers and glass building structures, providing the most perfect of lights for Dean and Dylan, in particular, to put their photography skills to the test. The Trump Tower, the Illinois River, Lake Michigan, the Sears Tower and the top end of Michigan Avenue were all gobbled up by their camerawork, while Bobby and I did what actors do, and generally pouted our way through a series of headshots. This culminated in a trip to The Bean in Millennium Park. The Bean does exactly what it says on the tin, except it is huge. It is, quite literally, a giant bean, sitting in the middle of the park, and made of curved mirror, so that the light and people’s reflections bend in a variety of directions and angles. We filmed ourselves performing Bohemian Rhapsody, much to the amusement of some other tourists, before continuing our walking tour of Chicago by strolling through the rest of the park and then heading for the Water Tower complex, home to American institutions like Abercrombie and The Cheesecake Factory and, more importantly for us, the lift system to take us to the top of the Hancock Building.
The view at the top of the Hancock is simply breathtaking, particularly in the early evening, where the lights of Chicago appear to engulf the number of stars in the sky, where you can see streetlights blend into the distance and fields beyond, stretching out further than you and I can possibly fathom. If you go to Chicago and you do not go up the Hancock and gaze out on this beautiful city, looking out past the nearby Sears Tower over lakes, parks, airports, roads, rivers, freeways and farmland, then you simply have not been to this city.
Alas for us, it took about five different elevator rides to get to the observation deck. It was worth it for the view, and the feeling that Chicago is perfectly positioned for such a skyline, both literally and metaphorically. Literally, because it is a skyline to rival New York. Metaphorically because Chicago’s position at the tip of America on the shore of Lake Michigan affords it a unique opportunity to act a crossroads for the whole country. Look east to New England and the start of the American Revolution and ideology. Look South down towards a time of trouble in America’s past, of civil strife and even war, and the progress that has been made since. Look West to the land of the pioneers, the hands that built America, that conquered this nation’s mountains and valleys, and built railways and roads that disappear over the horizon towards the dreams of California and the swells of the Pacific. That is why people should visit Chicago. Especially with close friends.
We then found ourselves in the entirely un-British environs of an NBA match-up between the Chicago Bulls (“Go Bulls!”) and the Charlotte Bobcats, at the United Centre, which is a twenty-minute cab ride from downtown. It was great to sample a live American sporting occasion, featuring all the stalwarts you would expect: a rousing rendition of the national anthem, busty cheerleaders, fast food coupons, inexplicable music played in the middle of the action, and fat people shouting at the court. We entered into the spirit of the occasion by singing, cheering and chanting as best we could, while maintaining a suitably British attitude of slight sheepishness, confused as we were by the extravagant nature of the proceedings. Basketball slogans were juxtaposed against traditional English football chants. Indeed, our berating of the referee, a skill honed on streets like Loftus Road and Tottenham High Road, aroused fairly angry glances from the locals. It was irreverent, irrational, irrepressibly ridiculous fun, and the Bulls managed to win the game in the final quarter. I suppose this makes me a Bulls fan, but I am yet to be emotionally attached to any American sport, other than perhaps my brief foray into Baseball when in New York. “Let’s go Yankees!” will remain one of the defining sentences of our American adventure.
We ended our evening with some further visits to Chicago alcohol establishments, having polished off one of the finest meat-eating experiences of our lives. It was about the only time during the whole weekend that all four of us were silent (even when we slept, a certain someone’s snoring kept up the decibel level), as Messrs Gilbert, Jacobs, Viner and Samuelson took on the task of working through two 48-ounce Porterhouse steaks at the Chicago Chop House. It was, as both my Dad and apparently Dean’s Dad would say, like melted butter. Perfection.
We finished off our trip to Chicago by enjoying another suburb: Wicker Park. Boutique shops and independent-run coffee houses dominated the main street, and we all enjoyed talking to the patrons about what they were selling, building up a decent knowledge of Illinois fashion (for example, it was good to find out that it is possible to buy items of clothing in this state that do not simply have the orange University of Illinois tag emblazed on it somewhere). Sunday was spent chatting, relaxing and mooching. We had talked up a lads weekend of drunken debauchery, and found instead a few days of light-hearted frolics in a great part of the world, reconnecting as old friends should, talking about anything and anyone, reminiscing about times past and looking forward to many more happy adventures together in the future. Our final heart-to-heart, in a Wicker Park coffee-house, was symptomatic of this. Only with close school friends is it possible to discuss everything from the North London social scene, to whether the English version of The Office is better than the American one, with a little bit of football, music, film and women thrown in for good measure. You can take the boy out of Habs, as Dylan said recently, but you cannot take Habs out of the boy.
While Mr. Viner and Mr. Gilbert prepared to fly back to New York, Dean and I made arrangements to pick up our hire car for the next stage of our American adventure. Planes and trains were the order of the day until we reached Illinois. From now on, it is all about the automobile, as the romantic, folkloric, magical South beckons.
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