DAY 39 – CHICAGO

17^th Feb 2018

What a day!  Sorry for the really late post but I only got in at 2:30am! – I met some fellow tourists and they led me off my straight and narrow path!

European Friends – Chris & Yvonne

But first Chicago!  Oh my god I love it here.  I went on a walking tour this morning by Free Tours By Foot; this is an incredible company, based worldwide, where you literally pay what you think the tour is worth, which is perfect for someone like me who can’t afford the expensive tours!

My first tour was the Winter Loop Walking Tour which pretty much sums up downtown Chicago ‘The Loop’ in 90 minutes.  My guide, Andy, was a comic writer and so his tour was very entertaining!  Each guide writes their own content for the tour so each tour is completely unique!  Andy started out by asking us what Chicago’s famous nicknames are – I thought ‘murder capital of America’ might bring a downer on the tour so I kept quiet!  Chicago is known as the ‘windy city’ and despite the cold chill, it actually has nothing to do with the wind.  In 1871, Chicago burned to the ground by a great fire and over 3 square miles of the city was ruined.  Afterwards, Chicago needed money to rebuild and so they invited people from around America to come and see the ‘new Chicago’ city.  However when the people came, they arrived to a completely burnt down city.  Amongst the people was a reporter from Ohio who wrote that the people of Chicago are ‘full of hot air’, they ‘blow hot air out their mouths’, which is how the city got its nickname.  Chicago, the name itself, comes from the Native American language which translates to smelly onion due to its location on the river where onions would grow when the Americans first arrived in the Midwest.

The city is also known as the ‘second city’ which has nothing to do with its size.  Interestingly, I didn’t realise Chicago was the 3^rd largest city in America behind New York and LA, with Houston as a very close 4^th largest.  After Chicago was rebuilt, a reporter from the New York Times went to check it out and he wrote that Chicago has second class food with second class people and it will always be a city of seconds behind New York.

The tour started in the theatre district.  The Chicago theatre originated as a movie theatre in the 1920s, it was actually the first ever movie theatre in America during an era when silent movies were becoming popular.  The architect who designed the building didn’t know what a movie theatre should look like and so he modelled it after an opera theatre in Paris – giving the city the name ‘Paris on the Prairie’.  This architectural design is mimicked throughout the city making it grand and overwhelming; the original purpose was to attract people from far and wide selling Chicago as the best city, overtime as the elegance wore off and the needs of the people changed, Chicago began building skyscrapers, including ‘the chapel in the sky’ which is a church built on top of a skyscraper!  Due to the theatre being so grand, people had to get dressed up in black tie to see a silent film!  The movie industry changed, as did the people, and it was later turned into a live action theatre instead.

The next stop on the tour was Macy’s – a very special store.  Macy’s itself has only been there for the last decade, before that it was Marshall Fields & Co.  A business man with many individual stores (for hats, shoes, clothes, beauty etc.) throughout Chicago, lost them all during the fire.  At quite an old age, he didn’t want to have to rebuild them all and so instead he decided to put them all together in the world’s first department store.  He revolutionised the industry with set pricing, a returns policy and restaurants within shops.  The building itself is so beautiful and grand!  He even invented the phrase ‘the customer is always right’!  Unfortunately the company went under and Macy’s are now based in the building, but the original features still remain!

We visited a few other key highlights and learnt some fun facts on the tour, Andy was able to fit a lot into 90 minutes!  The winter loop tour is good for cold days as a lot of it can be told inside but luckily the weather wasn’t too bad for us.

Next I went on the second tour of the day; The Lincoln Park Blues & Gangster Tour.  This time Hilary led the tour and she was also fantastic.  She knew all her facts and made the tour interesting for all.  We got to see some blues clubs and learn a little bit about the history of the Lincoln Park neighbourhood but most interesting was the gangster tales!  I can’t remember all the names and exact details but Lincoln Park was home to the North Side gang.  Originally the gangs were at peace, sharing the territories of Chicago equally which continued for quite a few years until the leader of the North sold his alcohol warehouse to the South leader during the prohibition when he got word the place would be raided.  The war between the North Side and the South Side gangs broke out after the leader of the North was killed by the famous handshake murder; two members of the South pretended to be clients, shook his hand and shot him dead instantly.  After this Al Capone took over as the North leader and eventually there was a new leader in the South.  These leaders were far more violent in their murders and Al Capone wanted it all.  So he had a plan to trick the South leader into going to his garage with all his best men waiting on a shipment of whiskey from Canada.  The day the deal was going down, 14^th Feb 1929, the South leader overslept and when he arrived at the garage, he saw two policemen going it.  Little did he, or the 7 men inside, know that these were North gang members in disguise.  They got the men to line up against the wall and machine gunned all 7 of them down!  The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.  They even had two other north members in suits in handcuffs so it looked like the cops caught the bad guys as they left the garage.  No one was ever held accountable for their deaths.

At the beginning of the tour, I met some fellow single travellers – all here for work but taking in some sights on the weekends.  We all started chatting and actually went for coffee with Hilary at the end of the tour!  Ran from Israel, Chris from Germany and Yvonne from Ireland.  I didn’t realised how much I missed people understanding what I was talking about until I met these people.  Ron started talking about the weather trying to convert it to Fahrenheit and we were like we all speak in Celsius here!  I never really thought about how difficult it must be for Europeans having to translate everything from the imperial measurement system to metric.  I was raised on both, more so imperial, so other than the temperature I do okay here.  At least they don’t have the issue of driving on the wrong side of the road because they do that anyway!

I think it’s fair to say I learnt a lot about the difficult cultures within Europe today as well.  Did you know in Germany they pay tax to the church – almost £1000 a year!  They can opt out but then it gets tricky if they want to get married in a church or something similar.  But the best thing was talking to someone from Ireland who actually understands what you’re talking about in terms of politics, celebrities, places and even vocabulary!  I mean don’t get me wrong, I love talking to Americas but half the time they don’t follow what I’m talking about!

After coffee Ron and Hilary left and Chris, Yvonne and I ended up grabbing some food and then going for a ‘quick drink’.  Thirteen hours after we first met and we are on the subway back to downtown Chicago!  Honestly we could have been the start of a bad joke… A German, an Englishwoman and an Irishwoman walk into a bar filled with drunk Americans!  The funny part was went people would ask where we were from thinking we were all here together!  And for someone who doesn’t drink, I ended up having four, even exceeding my three drink rule! I won’t be doing that again anytime soon!  But we had a great time and they were lovely company.  Both in their late twenties, they were telling me all the different places they’ve been either travelling on their own, with friends or with work!  By far, some of the most interesting people I’ve met so far!