Locale Meme

At Wende's request:  

 

10 Things I Like About Where I Live

1. Short commute. Like, 3 miles, most of it through a county forest preserve.  My last 3.5 years in Massachusetts, I drove a minimum of 40 minutes each way (and there were evil school buses that had to stop at the end of every. single. driveway. because the New English can't be bothered to build sidewalks, because building a sidewalk where there previously was none would be changing something, and changing stuff is BAD.  Though you'd think than in a region where almost every home's yard features sizable bedrock outcroppings, they'd be looking for something to do with all their sand and gravel.)  Anyhow, I realize 40-60 minutes isn't all that bad compared to what some people do every day, but I find the quality of life effects enormous.
   
   
2. Looking at the City. Chicago is unspeakably gorgeous. Particularly the parts that Mayor Daley isn't trying to pretend don't exist, but even the slums are vaguely pretty in their own way. 
   
   
3. Pleasantness. Living here as someone who's fundamentally northeastern, I can't help but reflect on the climatic differences.  Cultural shorthand has it that people in the northeast are mean, and people in the midwest are nice. It's an observation more accurate than its simplicity suggests, though the wording is off.  The best descriptor I've found for folk around here is "pleasant" - it's all about behaving oneself in such a way that meaningless, everyday interactions aren't made unecessarily combative.  Frankly, I really wouldn't like Minnesota nice or Southern friendly, but Chicagoland pleasant is just right.
   
   An aside: It's so cute the way local transplants from Iowa and Minnesota seriously think Chicagoans are the big, gruff, mean city folk.
    
4. Public Libraries.  By and large, they're quite good.  Illinois is known for allegedly funding them well. 
   
   
5. Snow removal.  It's not that they do it particularly well, it's just that Massachusetts does it incredibly badly, and I really do feel a lot safer now in that respect. 
   
   
6. Public Radio pledge drives.  They have attitude.
    
   
7. Friends.  This has been an issue for me in the past.  But here there are people I like who like me and who actually have room for new friends, and it's a really good thing.
   
   
8. Mass Transit.  Ok, this is a mixed bag.  The locals think the CTA is hell itself, but they don't know what they're talking about.  It's like hearing the British complain about their national rail - ok, so, no, it's not West Germany, but has anybody heard of Amtrak?  I have a standing disagreement with a friend who grew up here and went to school in Boston and who insists that the T is divine and the El is gross.  I don't know how a right thinking person with a full set of faculties could arrive at this judgment, but if there's one thing anybody should retain from an elite eastern education, it's an understanding of the futility of arguing with an MIT grad. 
   
   While the Boston T does have the advantage of serving what's really quite a small city, the four lines are basically incompatible and were only connected as a distant afterthought, and the trains make this horrible noise that always leaves you thinking they're going to explode in the station and kill everyone.  El trains rumble pleasantly the way trains should, and the stations are named in a manner that hints at their location - calling the stop on Washington Street, "Washington Street" is an innovation that would never occur to Bostonians. There's occasional transparency in T-stop nomenclature - having a station named "Airport" is handy when you're trying to get out of town - but it takes extensive insider knowledge to figure out why there's a subway stop called "Wonderland."
   
   
9. Orthogonality. Yes, this is another Boston-backlash issue.  It's not that I think roads should be perpendicular on some abstract moral grounds, but I've really gotten hooked on this whole knowing-how-to-get-places thing.  Did I mention we have street signs here, too?  It's like Shangri-La, but with potholes.
   
   
10. Spectator politics.  If I were inclined to, or even capable of, feeling attached to or invested in my community, it would be depressing.  But I've long since accepted that I wasn't socialized for that, so it's fun to watch.  Yes, there's ex-gov Blago - anybody can refer to an elected official as a narcissistic sociopath, but how often do you get to be clinically accurate while doing it? - but my soft spot is for our County President, who in a meeting last month reportedly dissolved into tears while begging the board not to rescind last year's sales tax increase.  He lost the battle, by the way, so our local combined sales tax was reduced back to "only" 10.75%.