After New York & Los Angeles, What Does Chicago Have to Offer a Girl Like Me?

Last weekend marked one year since I moved to Chicago from Los Angeles.

Twelve months ago found me driving through the continental Southwest in a 16-foot moving truck, my car sitting atop a trailer hitched to the back, and two mewling cats as my only company on the passenger seat beside me. I was moving myself and all of my possessions across the country to be closer to a man I'd been in a long-distance relationship with for several months.

It was a big risk, but I'll spoil the end right now and tell you that we got married last month. We originally "met" while writing for the same online publication, and while I initially had no intentions of pursuing the relationship, a layover in Chicago lent itself to our first date. Although I've traveled to 46 states and over 20 countries in the last three decades, my path had yet to land me in the City of Big Shoulders. When it finally did, during that 16-hour date with my future husband, I was surprised to realize what a large and beautiful city I'd overlooked all this time.

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and after a brief stint at a college in Vermont during which I realized that I wasn't equipped to live in a small town, I hightailed it to New York City, where I would live out the first half of my twenties, living in the East Village, going to the New School and bartending in Union Square. From there I moved with my then-boyfriend (yes, an actor) to Los Angeles, where I lived in Hollywood for a year before breaking up with him and settling down for four years by the beach in Venice.

When I met Greg I was very entrenched in my life in Los Angeles, working as a psychotherapist and writing on the side. It was going to take a lot for me to give up my West Coast home, but Greg was persistent. From Lakeview, where he shared an apartment with his childhood best friend, we rode the Brown Line to the Loop. It was Memorial Day weekend and Chicago was warm and wonderful, teeming with people who were out enjoying the first big weekend of the summer. On our walk to the train station I paused, aghast at the bunnies hopping through yards, at the pretty brownstones lined with pots of geraniums, and at the full, leafy oak trees whispering in the breeze above.

Isn't this a great city? Greg would ask me over and over again that day, and as the train curved its way through Lincoln Park and the Near North Side into the Loop, for the first time, but not the last that afternoon, I would nod my head in agreement. We got off at Adams/Wabash and walked up Michigan Avenue to Millennium Park. I couldn't believe it. Chicago was like the best parts of Boston, San Francisco and New York all at once. Staring up at myself reflected in the Bean, the cityscape wonderfully distorted behind me, Greg asked, would you ever consider living here? Definitely, I replied, before I could think about it.

Dropping my life in LA for one in Chicago was easier said than done, though. I rolled into town on the Friday that kicked off last summer's Labor Day weekend and Greg was there to greet me, friends in tow, to help unload my possessions into my quickly-chosen Lincoln Park apartment. The place turned out to be ten times worse than I remembered it being when I signed the lease, my neighbors a bunch of beer-guzzling college boys, and my street backing up to a noisy intersection.

My first six months here were brutal. Too broke to splurge on winter clothes, I layered all of my LA outfits on top of each other and shivered through the worst winter Chicago had seen in a decade. The college boys downstairs grew louder by the day and in December my apartment got broken into, my laptop and camera becoming no longer mine. Somehow, throughout all of this, Greg and I weathered the dark days together, growing even closer.

At the six-month mark of my time in Chicago, Greg and I moved into a sunny and beautiful place together on the river near Lincoln Square. Just as quickly as spring came over Chicago, my memories of those first few dark months faded and gave way to the Chicago I had glimpsed in the first 16 hours I spent here.

There were a few things I had to overlook, of course: Cubs traffic (I always pick Clark to drive down when there's a game), snow in April, the CTA being a lot slower than I want it to be, girls obsessed with sports, and what I consider to be too many street festivals.

But on the flipside, there's been so much to fall in love with. Riding the train to the Loop and getting off to walk alongside the river on Wacker never ceases to thrill me. And I can honestly say that I've had some of the best meals of my life here (Indian food on Devon, the stuffed squid at BOKA, those damn breakfast burritos at Lula and the hot dogs at U Lucky Dawg). I've also spent whole mornings perusing Chicago's incredible farmers markets, taking home some of the best produce the Midwest has to offer. Triple that by putting a cup of Intelligentsia in one hand and a view of the skyline before me and I can hardly remember what New York or LA looks like.

But Chicago is definitely a different city. For me, it's been a place to come down off the wild, impulsiveness of life in cities like New York or LA. I do miss the way those two places attract the kind of people who follow their dreams at any cost ( money-hungry investment bankers on Wall Street, Tom Cruise, or the guy who wears a banana hammock while juggling silver Tai Chi balls day after day on the Venice Beach boardwalk), but lately, I've come to the realization that Chicagoans are here to follow their dreams too. They just do it in a more reasonable way.

And now that I'm 30 and married, it's probably time for me to start acting a little less crazy anyway. Chicago, I think, offers the best of both: Midwestern sensibility coupled with big city edge. If the last 12 months have been any indication of what's to come, I can't wait to see what the next 12 have in store.

Follow Claire Bidwell Smith on Twitter: www.twitter.com/clairebidwell

Comments

[johnfrank]

As a lifelong Chicagoan until 2 years ago, I'm glad to hear your impressions of it. Nicely put. A while back (a good while), Hunter S. Thompson called Chicago, "A vicious, stinking zoo, a mean-grinning, mace-smelling boneyard of a city; an elegant rockpile monument to everything cruel and stupid and corrupt in the human spirit." Suffice it to say, the place has changed a bit. Like many American cities, it bottomed out in the seventies. To see the renewal in the past 20 years, along with a bit of a return to form with the architecture, it's quite the nice place to be now, especially where you have settled. Now, just say something rotten about it so a zillion people don't move there.

Enjoyed your piece, thanks.

[SFWard]

Thank you for writing this. I'm going to print it out and read it again in Februrary, when I'm missing the farmers market on Fairfax, shopping on Colorado and going to the Silver Lake Dog Park at night, with no coat.
Here since '99, by way of South Pasadena

[Claire Bidwell Smith - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for all the generous and supportive comments! Nice to receive on my first blog entry on Huff Post.

I think that Chicago really is an oft-overlooked city. Because of that though, I think it has great potential to become a place where people seek an originality that may be played out in cities like NYC or LA.

I can hardly believe that the leaves are changing outside my window right now. I'm curious as to what round two of winter in Chicago will be like. Hopefully, the shock of the first will lesson the impact of the second!

[vivificantus]

What a great essay. I moved to Chicago a year ago today, so your post is helping me celebrate my own Chicago anniversary! I spent it trolling the vintage stores in Wicker Park, and then watching the monkeys swing at the Lincoln Park Zoo!

[LanieBeck]

(Sorry if the earlier one was reprinted.)

Loved this.

Think you're marvelous as is this piece.

So glad you found him!!

Good luck!

[ChiGuy]

Welcome, and thanks for the kind words about the city I was born, raised, and reside in to this day.

I've been to N.Y.C. about two dozen times, L.A. about half a dozen, and many other cities in "Murrka" including my second favorite, Boston.
You can have the first two, but there's a lot to be said for Boston. I felt almost as at home there, as I do here in Chicago.
But I always find my way back to the city that I love, and my favorite neighborhood, Rogers Park. (Living a block from the beach doesn't hurt.)

The only thing we disagree on is the street fairs. I love them, and get to as many as possible each season.

[LanieBeck]

I love this -- you capture exactly what it was like for me when I got here...

Can't wait for the next piece...

Oh - and congrats on finding him!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!­!

Any advice...?

[barrywayne10]

Chicago is the gorgeous, forgotten stepchild of the big cities! I'm glad it's a (partial secret), but where have you been hiding?

Thanks for sharing this!

[Craiggers]

Claire - this makes me yearn for home. Seriously.

Wonderful work -- where can I read more of your stuff?

[billyboy111]

Brilliant. I know exactly what this is like.

Thanks for making me feel less crazy!!

[jrenwah]

That's a HUGE change.
I don't know if I could leave the coast.
But I do know that every city has it's charm and attraction and I'm glad you've found that in your new home.