Nothin' but Blue Skies by Edward McClelland

Author:Edward McClelland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2013-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

10.

“We’re All Going to End Up in Chicago”

“What did Chicago do right?” a woman from Cleveland once asked me.

In the 1990s, Chicago was the only Midwestern industrial city to gain population—and not just for that decade, but for any decade since the middle of the twentieth century. In 1950, Chicago was the second-largest city in the United States, while Cleveland was sixth. By 2010, Chicago was third, but Cleveland was forty-fifth. A young man who arrived in Chicago in the mid-1980s to work as a community organizer among laid-off steelworkers left in 2008 as president-elect of the United States and the representative of a new type of global citizen. Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan father and an American mother, had lived in Honolulu, Jakarta, Los Angeles, and New York, but rose to world power in Chicago. Three years later, Oprah Winfrey, one of the richest, most famous women on the planet, filmed her last talk show at the United Center, a sports arena built for the crowds who wanted to watch Michael Jordan, the most world-renowned athlete since Muhammad Ali, play basketball. In its search for America’s best pizza, GQ magazine named a storefront pizzeria in Chicago. Chicago’s Steppenwolf theater, founded in a church basement by actor Gary Sinise, premiered the play August: Osage County, which went on to Broadway and a Pulitzer Prize for its author, Tracy Letts.

Donald Trump built a tower surmounted by a $9 million penthouse in the Loop. Two decades before, the Loop had been a bustling business district by day, but its after-five attractions consisted of block after sketchy block of Italian beef stands, adult bookstores, and dank taverns. The surrounding area is now the fastest-growing neighborhood in Chicago, and two-thirds of its residents have college degrees.

Why, then, did Chicago not fulfill the obituary written for it in 1980? Why did it become an Alpha World City, in the same league as Paris, Mumbai, Shanghai, Frankfurt, and Sydney, while Cleveland became the Mistake on the Lake, and Detroit became the destination for European art photographers documenting urban decay?

The woman’s real question was, “How can Cleveland imitate Chicago’s success?” I had hoped to provide an answer in this chapter, but the answer is “Cleveland can’t.” Neither can Detroit or Milwaukee or Buffalo or Indianapolis. There can be only one Midwestern metropolis. Chicago’s success is not only inimitable, it comes at the expense of every other city in the region.

The North Side of Chicago is such a refuge for young economic migrants from my home state that its nickname is “Michago.” At a now-defunct bar called the Gin Mill, a green neon sign flashed “WELCOME TO EAST LANSING” at twenty-two-year-olds who’d used up four years of eligibility in their frat houses but wanted to keep partying. In 2000, a quarter of Michigan State graduates left the state. By 2010, half were leaving, and the city with the most recent graduates was not East Lansing or Detroit but Chicago. Michigan’s universities once educated auto executives, engineers, and governors.

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