Chicago in the sun ~

It's official. Chicago is giving a close run to San Francisco for the status of numero uno city of USA, in my list. Particularly when the sun is out. 

Of course, there are huge differences. Whilst San Francisco is a soft, artistic, almost feminine city, in it's grace, generosity and beauty, Chicago is hard as nails, it's steel, it's practical, it's pragmatic, risk-prone and brave. Even it's pulchritude breaks moulds. 

But both the cities revel in the pride of their characters. You only need to meet and talk with the people to discover that.

Chicago has so many things going for it. For if it is not the gorgeous lake-front which gets you, then it has to be the architecture, and if that's not your thing, then the art, and if even that is not your thing, then the theatre, the friendly people, the randomly strewn sculptures and installations at the turn of a corner, and the spirit of a people who refuse to play by the book.

In a random order, over three days I encountered Monet, Chagall, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gehry, Anish Kapoor, Picasso, Sargeant, Renoir, Seurat, Dayanita Singh - only to mention a few; saw places touched by Martin Luther King, Capote, Bugsy, Obama, Swamy Vivekananda; was enchanted by Rogers & Hammerstein and Willie Dixon. And that was just scratching the surface. 

Apart from what a city offers, is what it's citizenry is. On the streets, in the driving seat in a cab, at a ticket counter, in a drawing room, at the hotel reception desk, whilst sharing a meal, whilst showing the city around, across a meeting table. One may not get intimate views, but one does get the pulse. And Chicago might well be under snow and inundated with freezing winds, but beneath it's cold facade is a warm and warming heart. 

A summer-clothed beautiful American family stopped to offer help as we stood helplessly wondering how to go from A to B. A cab driver denied himself a bigger fare by guiding us to a closer metro station. A bus driver helped us all the way into a terminal with our seven pieces of luggage. A shop keeper guided us to a better bargain. 

Is all of this normal for USA? Or is it more so in Chicago. I don't know. Maybe it was the long Memorial Day weekend which did it, for the holiday mood was everywhere. But what I do know is that there is a far greater swirl of happy black, white and brown on the streets here, than I've seen in other cities in this country. 

We traversed through the length and breadth of Chicago, the stadiums, the university areas, the taverns and pubs and restaurants, and the tony tree-lined avenues where the president of USA stays when he comes over, and the boulevards, and the sky-shattering buildings which came up literally over ashes of a burnt city, the areas where Jews stayed, where the Chinese worked, where the blacks congregated, and the gangs fought. But what permeated throughout was the iconoclastic story of this city and the brave imagination of it's people. 

Chicago has been random in it's usage of genius. It has used a street for an airstrip, has made possible a river to flow opposite to it's natural flow, has given the world it's first skyscraper, has rebuilt a whole city burnt to the ashes in three years, has given air rights to builders to build where they wanted, has given the world some world-class gang-wars (!), has given architects the creative freedom to create history. And so many other things which I dont remember now. 

As I stood in Millennium Park, gazing up at my convoluted happy face in the reflecting steel of the enigmatic and absolutely fascinating Cloud Gate made by Anish Kapoor, I caught a bit of the spirit of this terrific city - made of steel, but with enough heart to show you, not only as yourself, but also you in your most mordant way: as you go below the Bean (as the locals call Cloud Gate), and see yourself, you can't see where your reflection ends and where the sky begins.

A city which can use art to show human nature is a city of worth.