postcards from chicago

Come on, baby don't you want to go
Come on, baby don't you want to go
To the same old place
Sweet home, Chicago

I fell in love the first time my husband brought me back to visit this, his hometown. Dining in the Pump Room of the Ambassador East Hotel, they'd made poor Turk don an implausibly over-sized navy blue polyester jacket for the privilege of sitting in storied Booth One, once occupied by the likes of such luminaries as Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. Now it was occupied by the likes of us, a chronically under-dressed Turk and his new wife, the camera-toting Kid.


Dreamy eyed and smitten, I gazed at the comically attired man sitting across from me and asked him to buy me the brownstone across the street. Earlier, we'd been strolling along in this quietly upscale neighborhood, past galleries and cafes, bistros and brownstones and had seen one or two of the latter for sale. This should be our home, I told him; this was the place I was meant to be.

He reminded me that he had left this place for a reason, and that reason was the bitter winter cold. I was married to a man, he told me who, for better or for worse no longer owned a coat, nor wished to. I cheerfully informed him that I was completely open to compromise and did not have a problem with his visiting me during the summer, or even perhaps the warmer spring months if that was to be his preference.

I did not get my brownstone.


But I never stopped loving Chicago. I love everything about it. I love the art and the architecture; the food, the drink and the shopping.





I love the look and the rhythm; the sounds and smell of it. I love that everywhere you glance is something to catch and hold the eye. I like that the prevailing sense of civic pride seems unaccompanied by irony or arrogance. I love that all the waiters laugh and tease. I like that when you smile at people here, they smile back. Sometimes for no reason at all.


In fact, to my mind Chicago has everything a big city needs ~ world class art institutions and museums; a booming economy to support great restaurants and retail, and a solid infrastructure with effective mass transit.

All in an arresting package that indicates an appreciation of both it's history and it's future, as embodied in it's preservation of the old amid the construction of the new. With just a touch of oddly Midwestern whimsy thrown in.

Maybe it's just the wind whipping in off of Lake Michigan that blows away the angst and sweeps the air clean, but it seems to me that Chicago has as much to offer as it's big sister to the east, New York, and without the proverbial chip on it's shoulder. And I say this with all the smug confidence of a native New Yorker, born with a proverbial chip on my shoulder. (And which, as a now devout Californian, I'm seeking to have removed by a prominent cosmetic surgeon).
Well, some things never change.



We stayed at the small but gracious Talbott Hotel, which I found on my latest web/travel obsession, Trip Advisor, and cannot recommend it highly enough. I don't believe we'll be staying anywhere else when we're in town ~ unless of course I get that brownstone, which I have never stopped lobbying for, by the way (I think I'm wearing him down). The hotel staff are friendly and welcoming, the ample accommodations more than comfortable. And of course, they have that cow climbing up the side of the building. You don't get that at the Four Seasons.


See what I mean? Whimsy. Perfect.