What is all this nonsense about Chicago being the "second city?" That's what New Yorkers'd have us believe. I beg to differ. Take architecture, for example. The modern skyscraper was conceived in Chicago by William LeBaron Jenney in his Home Insurance Building. It was the first steel frame curtain wall structure and stood a whopping ten stories tall. Later came the Masonic Temple Building at State and Randolph that for a time was the tallest building in the world. And how about Adler and Sullivan's Auditorium Building with hotel and theater under one roof. The Monadnock; the tallest masonry structure with 6-foot thick walls at its base. Need we speak of Sears Tower? The old Stock Exchange? The Rookery? The insanely art deco Board of Trade? The Inland Steel building? The list goes on. What does New York have besides the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and theater seats on Broadway at $450.00 a pop?
Deep dish pizza? A Chicago first. What other city has 27 miles of uninterrupted lakefront to enjoy? Where else can you go from summer to winter over night? 60 degrees one day, 22" of snow the next day. And the Cubs, ah, the Cubbies. What other baseball city can boast of 100 years since their last World Series win? And how many other cities can support two baseball teams within its city limits? And the 1968 Democratic convention, now there's story in itself. And Richard J. Daley proclaiming that the police were not there to create disorder but to preserve disorder. Is this a city or what?
Deep dish pizza? A Chicago first. What other city has 27 miles of uninterrupted lakefront to enjoy? Where else can you go from summer to winter over night? 60 degrees one day, 22" of snow the next day. And the Cubs, ah, the Cubbies. What other baseball city can boast of 100 years since their last World Series win? And how many other cities can support two baseball teams within its city limits? And the 1968 Democratic convention, now there's story in itself. And Richard J. Daley proclaiming that the police were not there to create disorder but to preserve disorder. Is this a city or what?
