Chicago, In My Opinion
This is home!!! I wasn’t born here, but I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. I chose this place and I’ve never once been sorry. I’d been living in Washington D.C. and got homesick for my hometown of St. Louis. So I moved back there to be with family. I made it one year, and I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t my family. It was St. Louis. For me, it was really true that you can’t go home again. After the excitement of D.C., it was too provincial, too conservative and much too small. I hated my job. I had to get out of there. Chicago put me halfway between both of my divorced parents. It was a six-hour drive to see either of them. So I took a week off and went to visit my best friend in Chicago. I’d always loved it, but I was there for one day when I decided I was moving there. It was magnificent…like New York without all the trash. I spent the week looking for a new job and I got a great one. I came up the next weekend and scored an apartment in the hottest neighborhood in town. I broke my lease, kissed my family goodbye, and forgot about St. Louis as soon as it disappeared from my rear view mirror. I jumped on Hwy. 55 and didn’t stop until I hit Lake Michigan. I hung a left onto Lakeshore Drive and headed north to my new apartment. Parking in front of my building for the first time was my Mary Tyler Moore moment. I had arrived! I lived across the street from one of the best sports bars in the city. I was five minutes from Michael Jordan’s restaurant. I was surrounded by culture, awesome beaches, and some of the best food I’ve ever had in my life. Chicago is the textbook definition of a world-class city. It’s “my kind of town”. It has everything. It is rich and poor, clean and dirty, corporate and industrial, and overflowing with jobs. I became in independent contractor and made it my business to work in every highrise I could, so I had a spectacular view of the city on every job, every day that I went to work. I fell in love, got married, had a baby, and got divorced there. It was the greatest experience of my life. So if you’re thinking of moving to Chicago, stop thinking and start packing. Yes, it’s very cold in the winter. But we play hard in the summer. You get used to it.
Exploring Chicago
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Walk The Neighborhood
Move the mouse on top of the little gold man on the map. Hold down the left mouse button and you’ll see blue lines appear. Those lines are streets. Drag and drop the little man on top of the street you want and let go of the mouse button. The picture on the right will change to show you a view of that street along with the street name. Click the arrows on the street to “walk” around. Or you can double-click the street to walk if there’s an arrow under your cursor. Roll the middle mouse button to zoom in and out. That’s all there is to it. Now get out there and explore!