[sentinel]

Originally Posted by galleyfox

That question has been asked by Chicagoans since the city was founded. And I mean verbatim.



There’s no real answer because the world has been interested in Chicago for its moral deviancy and extreme contrasts from the very beginning. It’s the reason Chicago is culturally famous.

We’re talking pre-Civil War before the fire, and Chicago is only a twenty-year-old city, and there were already a flurry of articles about “two Chicagos” and “terrible divides.”

There are interviews from the 1800s with Chicagoans, where they become distressed and frustrated with reporters, because all visitors want to do is go to the stockyards to watch the slaughter or meet a gangster. People who visited would rave about the amazing architecture and great restaurants and food, and still insist on the blood and guts and crime.

Portland and Austin can do a little bit of advertising and a “Keep City Weird” slogan and run with it, but Chicago has an unrelenting history to deal with and marketing doesn’t really make a dent.

And compared to other U.S. cities, there’s an amazing, tumultuous and thought-provoking history that occasionally comes across in media, but it’s hard to turn that into a tourist activity.

Great stuff here