The Elephant in the Loop: Is Chicago a War Zone or a Cultural Capital?

How can I write a blog about Chicago without addressing the elephant in the Loop? In fact — it’s the reason I’m blogging about Chicago in the first place.

Is Chicago a cultural center or a dilapidated war zone?

Can you order a Chicago dog without military intervention? Maybe that depends on how you order it. Try ordering it with ketchup at your own risk.

Let’s be honest, I’m not from Chicago. I never lived there. I only visited a handful of times. So maybe my opinion means less. It should matter less than the people who live there. But it should also matter more than the people who’ve never been — the ones who get their Chicago news from the fear machine.

The people who really matter are the 2.7 million people who call it home. Have you ever met someone from Chicago? They are the most prideful people I’ve ever met. Well, Philly is neck and neck. But they are proud, rightfully so. You could spend years talking about their sports teams, forever talking about their food. But it runs much deeper. I know because I felt it, albeit for a short time.

My wife and I looked at houses. Seriously, for three hours we were going to move to Chicago. Turns out the windy city is cold and windy, a real deterrent for someone who grew up in the sweltering heat of Ho Chi Minh City. The neighborhoods are unique, each with their own flair. Plenty of park space, and we took our child to many of them. Not something often done in a war zone.

We saw diverse families, various languages, nationalities, backgrounds. That was a major draw for us —I imagine that’s a negative check for the “English only” crowd.

We got around on public transportation. We took the Blue Line from O’Hare to the Loop. The scariest part was trying to figure out how the card reader for a Ventra pass worked. But in a big, bad, scary place like Chicago, people were surprisingly helpful.

We took the train to the dreaded South Side of Chicago. Were we in the worst neighborhoods? Probably not. We went to Chinatown and Hyde Park. Is there crime in Chicago? Absolutely. But I was honestly more afraid going into a diner in Jackson, Mississippi than I was in Chicago.

I spoke to a friend today who said something profound. He said that he used to think empathy was the dividing line in society, but now he realizes it’s curiosity. Empathy, he said, is just a derivative of curiosity. That will stay with me.

How can you be empathic to another person if you aren’t curious about where they come from? Curious about their culture?

This goes both ways. Of course it’s absolutely absurd that we are asking the military to police our cities. But maybe the people who believe there is a need, aren’t just people who watched one too many episodes of Cops.

I had a friend visit me not long ago. Her fear of visiting New York seemed sort of cute to me, but only because I know her so well. She might have actually watched too many movies. The 80s movies filmed in New York where everyone was standing around trash cans to keep warm — that was her image of New York — I think?

She wanted to take her kids to New York, but was too scared to go alone. She asked me and my wife to accompany them. Do I think she’ll move to New York? Zero chance. Do I think she will walk around by herself? Probably not. But she walked around Times Square briefly without me and my wife, that’s a win.

She had curiosity. She put prejudices and fears aside. She Traveled Uncomfortably.

Maybe I should start a tour company to take rural folks on city excursions. Or maybe we should do some sort of cultural exchange program. Honestly, that’s probably what we need most in this country. Let a city person live on a farm for a week in exchange for a week of Chicago dogs and Italian beef sandwiches. The end of culture wars.

I have ideas where some of the irrational fears come from. I think we all do. But what’s that saying — “You only know what you know?” It certainly doesn’t help that people with such large megaphones are terrifying the most impressionable among us. What drives fear? The unknown?

Let’s be real, much of this comes down to racism. While my wife and I are thrilled to hear multiple languages spoken at a park, many of these people would be repulsed by it. They aren’t afraid of getting hit by a stray bullet in a bad neighborhood, they are afraid of hearing someone speak Spanish.

If you aren’t curious to learn about others, how can you care about others?

Are the people who want the National Guard in Chicago really concerned for the people of Chicago? Do they really want to to help others? It’s pretty obvious that this is more of that whole culture war thing. Those city people turned Bud Light gay.

They aren’t cheering on the military becoming Batman. They are cheering on the military occupying a city and people who they view as different, as other, as the enemy.

How do we get people to care about each other? Share a meal. Share a conversation. Take your paranoid Uncle Gary to Chicago, show him that he’s safe on a train. Buy him an Italian beef, buy him two. Show him that it’s okay to put pickles on a hot dog. Will it change him? I doubt it, but undoubtedly at the same time.

Travel Uncomfortably.