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Posted Feb 5, 2022, 4:57 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Dec 2018
Posts: 1,149
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Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
Interesting
I think this campaign has enough of a sense of humor to it that it wouldn’t be taken seriously
But I have long felt that Chicago just markets itself so poorly that it’s criminal. Just being a place that people from Michigan and Iowa visit to take in some cool skyscrapers………Goddamn, come on man. Really?!!
Everyone knows that there is way the hell more going on here. Why can’t anyone finally get this point across?
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That question has been asked by Chicagoans since the city was founded. And I mean verbatim.
Quote:
Necessarily, when the adherents of two cities start an argument, they are confined to concrete points. They talk about opera and theatres and buildings and hotels and stores, and seldom touch upon such subtle things as city spirit. For spirit is a hard thing to deal with and a harder thing to prove. Yet “greatness knows itself.” Chicago unquestionably knows that it is great, and that its greatness is of the spirit. But the Chicagoan, debating in favor of his city, is unable to “get that over,” and is therefore obliged to fall back upon two last, invariable defenses: the department store or Marshall Field & Co. and the Blackstone Hotel.
Julian Street, Abroad at Home, 1914
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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.
Quote:
To describe Chicago, one would need all the superlatives set in a row. Grandest, flattest,—muddiest, dustiest,—hottest, coldest,—wettest, driest,—farthest north, south, east, and west from other places, consequently most central,—best harbor on Lake Michigan, worst harbor and smallest river any great commercial city ever lived on,—most elegant in architecture, meanest in hovel-propping,—wildest in speculation, solidest in value,—proudest in self-esteem, loudest in self-disparagement,—most lavish, most grasping,—most public-spirited in some things, blindest and darkest on some points of highest interest.
And some poor souls would doubtless add,—most fascinating, or most desolate,—according as one goes there, gay and hopeful, to find troops of prosperous friends, or, lonely and poor, with the distant hope of bettering broken fortunes by struggling among the driving thousands already there on the same errand. There is, perhaps, no place in the world where it is more necessary to take a bright and hopeful view of life, and none where this is more difficult.
Atlantic Monthly, Illinois in Springtime: with a Look at Chicago, 1858
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Last edited by galleyfox; Feb 5, 2022 at 7:20 AM.
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