NEWS FROM:
ANDY MARTIN
Executive Editor
ContrarianCommentary.com
'Factually correct, not
Politically correct-

'A CONTINUING LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE CITY OF CHICAGO-

(CHICAGO)(June 14, 2007) Thirty-five years ago I moved to the City of Chicago. Bolstered by a large bonus I purchased a condo with a small lawn and private entrance on Lake Shore Drive. It was cute, and cool. Living on the lake.

Thirty-five years later, I am still here.

In all honesty, I must confess to being a slut puppy when it comes to big cities around the world. I love all of them. London, Hong Kong, New York, Washington. My memory of moving into the World Trade Center remains vivid. The office in Washington was a real fighting camp. I lived a lifetime in Baghdad. And then I was called back to Chicago.

I originally fell in love with Chicago on my first visit, in 1964. Chicago Circle, the Pru, it was all big, and complicated. And moving. Cities should be that way. And each time I came back, I said to myself, 'I've got to live here.- We almost made it in 1969. And in 1972 I finally did.

I don't remember if I harbored thoughts of linking up with Kate Webb again, and playing house on Lake Michigan. We came from similar experiences and the thought crossed my mind. But it was not to be.

I moved into the apartment with my dog Grumpy and we loved the place. Grumpy was a city dog. She loved the excitement. Grumpy fancied herself as the top dog of Division Street, and she loved to patrol her domain. Out the door and down Division Street. Or the lake.

My moot court partner from law school lived a few blocks away. He would visit, for pan pizza and Greek food.

By then a new had family formed. On Lake Shore Drive. Goofy and his Ms. moved in; I got to walk the dogs almost every morning. Soon we moved down the block. More space. Still on the lake.

As I walked the neighborhood last night the weather was perfect. Chicago summer perfect. Sweaty day. Cool, clear night.

I'm not the night club or country club type; a gentle evening walk does it for me. And as I walk around, many of the names have changed, of course. The Acorn on Oak is gone. A bank branch now. Mr. Kelly's is no more. But people still come around for a good time, and Friday night Rush Street will be a madhouse. Mostly, the visitors behave; even the tourists.

Chicago has a heart, a pulse, a throb. There is that Midwestern beat. Thirty-five years later I am still in the same neighborhood, but at a new location. I have traveled hither and yon around the world, but Chicago retains its hold on me. And I still walk along the lake at night.

As a young law student I was smacked in the face by the reality that courts and judges were mostly corrupt, and that lawyers were enablers and profiteers. The idea of dotting i's and crossing t's, and waiting for some client in extremis to appear in my office, desperate for machinations and legal magic, did not appeal to me. Still doesn't. There were cities out there. A world to see and experience. And so I came and went.

Chicago has something else in abundance; crooks and crooked politicians. I met the original Mayor Daley in 1968, in a legendary confrontation over corrupt state government. I was right then, and he remembered that. You could shoot an arrow in any direction and be sure to hit some sleazy pol. I began in 1972 by attacking a shady real estate deal on the near west side, on the edge of Skid Row where one of Daley's slum landlord influence peddlers was trying to pull a scam.

We delayed the project sufficiently to stop it for a decade. The judge in the case, a machine hack named Daniel Covelli, was not happy. And he told me so in vivid terms.

Not long ago I ran into George Dunne at the Greek Islands restaurant, shortly before he died. George was there with all of his cronies. What a scene. We saluted each other. He had tried to recruit me, unsuccessfully, to become a Daley machine hack. Dunne managed to survive decades without being indicted. Virginia, there really is such a thing as honest graft. Way back when, Dunne accused Dick Kay of Channel 5 of being my press agent. Now Dick Kay is retired, and working as a press agent for our crazy governor.

Eventually I got to see all of the city's neighborhoods, to meet the people, to view the devastation wrought by the blockbusting and rioting of the 60's and early 70's. And still I stayed. I remember the horrors of Cabrini-Green. Today the neighborhood is luxury housing. Chicago is like that. The past is swept away, and something new rises in its place. But memory remains.

I continue to be amazed by Chicago's vitality, and practicality. In New York, they pretend that if they don't build parking spaces in new apartment buildings, the cars won't appear. In Chicago we know better. There is always plenty of space for cars in new buildings. There is a practicality about the place.

Michigan Avenue and State Street retain their allure as the Main Streets of the Midwest. Marshall Field's is still mostly Field's, but the name change to Macy's has hurt. Macy's is in New York. Not Chicago.

The banks are mostly run from out-of-town now, New York and Charlotte. There is a big battle going on for control of one of the few remaining institutions headquartered here, LaSalle Bank. The fight is being waged in the Netherlands.

The city has changed since I first arrived. I remember landing in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. 1968. Sheer madness. And then going home to Champaign and watching more of the chaos on TV. When M. L. King came to Chicago the hate was seered on people's faces. Today, the hate is gone.

Chicago is becoming the San Francisco of the Heartland. Every time Mayor Daley The Son gets caught in some corruption scandal he proposes allowing small quantities marijuana to be sold. Enough to take your mind off the corruption, I assume.

Carl Sandburg, Chicago's patron saint of poetry, eventually left the city. But he left an indelible legacy behind. His poetry mirrored the power of the city's energy, vitality and, yes, naughtiness. It still does. My Senator, Paul Douglas knew Sandburg, and Clarence Darrow, and Jane Addams. Those greats have long since passed. The trains don't stop here any more, or at least not very much. And O'Hare Airport is daily pandemonium.

But the South Side, having fallen, is rising. Bronzeville is golden again. The real estate boom revived almost every neighborhood. The high-rise slums are almost all gone. And colorful local characters, today? Ask me about them.

To go back and read Sandburg's classic poem 'Chicago,- is to realize that even as the cranes still tower in the loop and near north neighborhoods, and new buildings rise and rise and rise, and the lake is occasionally filled in to satisfy some new real estate demand, the city changes and remains the same. Come to think of it, that's close to the definition of a love affair, too.

Now they want to build the tallest residential structure in the world here. Will it rise? Don't bet against the city.

Thirty-five years have passed since I first arrived. And tomorrow is my first day. In Chicago.

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Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. He is a chronicler of all things Midwestern and the authentic Voice of Middle America. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers regional, national and world politics with forty years of personal experience, 35 in Chicago. Columns also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639.
Web sites: ContrarianCommentary.com;; AndyforUSSenator.com.