http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/books ... eview&_r=0

I just got this book for my cool new Kindle Fire and thought I'd read a review. Typical New Yorker bitching that Chicago isn't New York, at the expense of really saying anything of substance about The Third Coast itself. She's not happy about Steinberg's You Were Never in Chicago, either, which I enjoyed to some extent except for the revelation that Steinberg beat his wife.

Amidst nominal reviews of three books, we learn that political favors suck, Blagojevich sucks (unequivocally), the Daley machine sucks (yeah), the unions suck (in this case, yes), a glaring lack of cafés sucks (?), Rahm Emanuel sucks (starting to seem that way), everything sucks.

The piece is bookended with smirks that Chicago, in spite of itself, isn't Detroit -- yet. But the author has nothing constructive to say about how Chicago could improve itself. There's some perfunctory gesture about how more women writers should be writing about Chicago, ostensibly more honestly than Steinberg could, but even that doesn't offer anything beyond "I'm from New York and have to live in Chicago. I don't much like Chicago."

I guess it's just more evidence of how provincial and meatball we all are around here that we get our jimmies rustled by an outsider criticizing the city. Ben Joravsky could tear Rahm to shreds every day of the week, but at least it'd be coming, as they say, from a righteous place. This was just grousing.

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The horror!


Could someone explain this to me? What could've Chicago become that it isn't?

Even though she didn't write this particular review, I'd like to add in a complementary DB to Michiko Kakutani. She's the absolute worst of any supposedly serious literary critic in the US today, and her bashing a book is usually a better endorsement of its virtues than a positive review from anyone.

All things considered, there could certainly be less blight, less graft, fewer expressways, more jobs, but I think Chicago has done relatively well for itself, and it's not as if there isn't time or the means to improve it. Whereas all Detroit can hope to do is to stop the bleeding and refashion the city into a smaller, leaner, cleaner version of itself, Chicago has enough going for it to improve its lot. I mean, we all forget that New York was a fearsome shithole in the '70s, and bounced back under arguably-less-than-democratic leadership to take back its throne. Sound familiar?

Besides, which city should it try to be more like? Houston? Phoenix? Atlanta?

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Chicago is nicer than NY, NY has more character as Chicago is loosing it's personality in a hurry.

Delis, Pizzerias, Joints (not that kind).....not a NY real estate expert, zoning laws, city stuff, but Chicago makes it just an amazing pain in the ass to do business, thus you see so many bar/tavern/rest groups opening all the new places, because they have people to do deal with all the bullshit. Owning 1 mom and pop place, then having to deal with the city and state regulations that continue to grow, is a nightmare.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Beige cinderblock condominiums for all! Dorms for yuppies!

Is it weird that I find the northwest side of Chicago to be really, for lack of a better term, Chicagoan? Maybe it's because I used to run errands with my dad on weekends and we'd go to an art supply store somewhere in Avondale and a film/radio memorabilia place in Portage Park, but there's something about rows upon rows of Jefferson Park bungalows that could withstand a nuclear bomb that just, I dunno, it feels right.

I guess I feel the same way about Skokie.

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That reviewer is right, but it hurts coming from an outsider.

BTW, I spent a lot of time in the NW side in the 70s as a little kid. My idea of what Chicago was. Funny how things change so quickly...

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Look at the rest of the rust belt. That is what Chicago could have been. I would argue the city's transformation from an industrial town has been an unqualified success. Chicago could have become Cleveland, or Detroit, or Buffalo which were all very strong, essential, urban centers as little as 30 years ago.

I have lived in great cities in my life. In fact, I have never not lived in an internationally known city. Chicago is a great city.

I'll try to read the review later.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Right, which is why I have zero clue what the hell Ms. New Yawk is talking about. I'd say it's a very good thing Chicago never became the city it could have been.

It's not even a matter of "could have been", by all rights it should have been

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Chicago over the last 30 years has grown and benefitted from being the best option for ambitious college grads from the surrounding states to move to post-graduation. Cleveland/St Louis/Detroit's failures have helped Chicago's success.

And, like a universtiy town, as long as there are fresh crops of newly-minted grads looking to move to the big city year after year, Chicago should continue to win out over Detroit/St Louis/Cincinnati et al in the competion for those college graduates. Tho the more ambitious among them likely realize that if you're going to pay the freight of living in a big city, you might as well go all the way and move to NY/LA/SF.

Chicago's problem is keeping those folks inside the city limits long-term. Exorbitant sales taxes, increasing property taxes, nickel and dime fees and $100 parking tickets might be fine for yuppies with no kids. But when folks start having kids the ambient cost of just breathing in Chicago begins to overtake the benefits--esp with a broken public school system.

The pension crisis in Chicago and Illinois might be the worst in the nation, but it's bad all over. The Stockton/San Bernadino cases could be a model/precedent for how all municipalties ultimately deal with their impossible to keep pension promises. It's unlikely any city/state is going to actually pay out all of what they promised; but how they get from here to there remains to be seen.

All very well said.

That gas prices show no sign of going down to anything we once knew is a good sign for a city with extensive railways and a centralized business district. The edge cities don't have much longer, to say nothing of the megasprawls like Phoenix and Houston. The challenge for Chicago is to bring those businesses back into the city before it's too late.

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I guess I would value the perspective afforded by Foreign Policy Magazine, which ranks Chicago as the 6th leading city in the world, over that of a bloviating New Yorker who apparently lacks the historical sensibility to comprehend the massive cultural and economic transformation New York has undergone in the past 35 years: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/node/373401. If Chicago has entered an irreversible state of decline, can you imagine the psychological trauma residents of Los Angeles, Houston, Boston and Philadelphia must endure as a condition of their very existence? They all rank lower on the list than our hapless burgh.

In all seriousness, the reviewer eviscerates Chicago in part for its corruption, debt, subservience to corporate overlords and faltering economy. One might ask if Chicago is anomalous in any of these regards. Chicago's economic outlook may be bleak, but so is the nation's. Chicago may be a cesspool of corruption, but our national political system hasn't sunk to its current level of debasement since the Gilded Age. Chicago may lie prostrate before massive corporations, but guess who owns our federal government? It sure isn't Ma and Pa Kettle.

The remarkable aspect of Chicago's recent history isn't, as the NYT reviewer argues, the manner in which the city has followed Detroit on a path toward social and economic implosion. Rather, it is--as Good Dolphin and others suggest--the extent to which it has defied this trend. Beginning shortly after World War II, Chicago reinvented itself, making the transformation from one of the world's great industrial metropolises to a leading force in the "creative" postindustrial economy of the late 20th and 21st centuries.

Incidentally, as Richard LLoyd documents in his excellent book Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City, this transmogrification has been completed through the infusion of "alternative" or bohemian artistic cultures into the city's mainstream economy. In this close examination of Chicago's economic development at the dawn of the 21st century, Lloyd shows how monopoly capitalism and oppositional aesthetics are deeply intertwined. Thus the NYT reviewer's assertion that Chicago is intellectually and artistically stultified by its obsequiousness to international capital fails to grasp contemporary economic dynamics: Neoliberalism has succeeded not because it has destroyed "alternative" aesthetics and ideas, but because it has absorbed them. In other words, it is precisely because Chicago has remained a "Neo-Bohemian utopia," a haven for a new "creative class", that it has thrived within the world economy (over a period of several decades). As a major cultural and artistic locus within global society, Chicago is likely to continue attracting the kind of young intellectual laborers that will further propel capitalist innovation in the immediate future.

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I liked Steinberg's book but he takes an uncalled for shot at my guy who owns UB Dogs on Franklin and Lake.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I'm beginning to suspect that the author's hatred of Chicago is rooted solely in that loathsome State Farm radio spot. AWRIGHT SHE-CAGO.

"Goddamn Chicagoans. They're so proud of how proud they are of themselves, with their stupid bean and their blues fests and their CHEESEBURGERS. Whisk me away from this barbaric place."

If that's the case, I can't blame her!

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It's a good thing New Yorkers have no history of being braggarts!

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Haven't had the chance to read it yet but here is her defense of this essay in Q&A format

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/Felsenthal-Files/April-2013/Rachel-Shteir-QA/

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Ok just read it

RS: I’m hoping some day to be able to get out and move elsewhere.

CF: What city would you prefer?

RS: I don’t know. I fantasize about moving back to New York … I’m too old to do that really … I think I’d like to live in different places, move around … Am I ambivalent about Chicago? Yes. But I’d be ambivalent about New York if I lived there.

Translation: I would be miserable anywhere...

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I read something very similar to this in a piece about the loss of local music cultures.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/arti ... zation-of/

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what's the problem with the UB dogs guy? I like that place. Back in the day I would've eaten there every day, but I don't eat that kind of stuff anymore.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Well, Steinberg loves Harry Heftman who closed up shop on Franklin after many years. Steinberg ran into the UB Dogs guy at a Hot Dog University program at Vienna and they talked about him opening up and Steingerg told him he would be a good replacement for Harry's and to give him a call when he opened up and Neil would give him a shoutout in his column. The kid never called and Neil got his nose out of joint. I e-mailed Neil and told him the UB Dogs kid is the nicest guy in the world and probably just didn't want to bother him or didn't think he really meant it. But Neil holds grudges. He's still pissed that Carlin faked closing the Berghoff.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/ar ... 21/chicago

Pretty good rebuttal in the Reader.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/steinberg/ ... agoan.html
Steinberg checks in as well.

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Great column by Steinberg!

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Really? I found it a bit sappy, and the dialogue unrealistic. Hint of the Magical Negro trope, too.

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She was on Chicago Tonight a couple of days ago. Phil Ponce tried calling her a Caller Bob in the nicest way possible. She looked and sounded like she hadn't been fucked in 15 years.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

I think the best indictment of Shteir's competence is that she wrote a piece for Tablet that said Rahm would never be elected mayor because he was Jewish. Not only did he win handily, but his victory was seen as almost a foregone conclusion for some time.

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I found the conversation very realistic.

I was surprised that he didn't offer to send the guy a free, autographed copy though.

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People don't talk like this out loud. They talk like this in their heads when conversing with literary devices.

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The review and reviewer are both about the same quality as Steinberg's normal work imo. As well illustrated by Curious above.

Pass.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.