Anyone from Chicago?

[||Lz3||]

Hi. I'm going to make a presentation about Chicago on next Friday as an English class project. The thing is supposed to be limited to three minutes (time constraints), and honestly that's absolutely not enough time for a proper presentation.

Since I'm just going to have few time for the presentation, I would like to present only the most representative things in Chicago, so I was wondering if any of you could help me with your inherit local knowledge. My English teacher is from Rockford, I believe, so she's already giving us a heads up.

We are going to present:

1- Geographical location.
2- Historical background.
3- Main attractions.
4- Representative music and food. (It would be best if it was something typical or originated in the city.)
5- Famous people.

So we are currently thinking of:
Wrigley Field
Sears Tower
Wind Track
Navy Pier

Music: Jazz & Blues.
Typical food: Hot dogs, Pizza.

Famous people: Capone, Frank Sinatra.

The theme of the presentation will be the 20'ies, so a friend will dress like a flapper while I'll do my best to resemble a gangster (My modern dark striped blue suit, black tie and hat.)

So what do you think? Any suggestion? Interesting facts that you want to share?

PS: I know, trying to present a city in less than three minutes is ludicrous at best.

[Lemur]

I lived in Chicago for something like fifteen years, so I think I can help you out.

First of all, blues was a much bigger deal in Chicago than jazz, although there was a specific style of "Chicago-style" dixieland jazz back in the '20s. But Chicago blues is its own world, its own genre, and definitely the dominant form of the two. (The major difference between Chicago blues and normal blues: extension of the scale, inclusion of 9th chords, rolling basslines. Not to get too terribly technical.)

You may not be aware that house music originated in Chicago, instead of in a gay German dance club. Frankly, most people don't know this. Linky.

Hip-hop is a big deal in Chicago as well, with people like Kanye West being local products.

Historical background I hope you have covered. If not, linky.

Representative music would either be hip-hop and house or blues, blues, blues. You could go either way on that. Feel free to include Smashing Pumpkins if you want to mix it up.

Representative food? Deep-dish pizza, baby. That's the emperor of local cuisine. After that, yeah, maybe hot dogs, but they don't really rank. One of Chicago's best-kept secrets is the insane amount of immigrant food. Wanna eat Ethiopian? There are tons of restaurants. Sushi? Thai? Mexican? French? German? Mongolian? Korean? I have never lived in a city with so many funky foods available at such reasonable prices. Saddest thing about living in New York was how homogeneous and overpriced the food was compared to Chicago.

Attractions:

• Wrigley Field (sure, it was in the Blues Brothers, why not)
• Steppenwolf Theater
• The Art Institute of Chicago
• Navy Pier (cough, cough *tourist trap *cough cough)
• The Lyric Opera
• The El
• The Chicago Public Library (see it to believe it)
• The Field Museum
• The Cultural Center

Famous people (you gotta update your thinking from Al Capone, amigo):

Barack Obama
Oprah Winfrey
Michael Jordan
Studs Terkel
Bo Diddley
John Malkovitch
Kanye West
Muddy Waters
Howlin' Wolf
Patti Smith
John Belushi
Bill Murray
Tina Fey
Bob Fosse
Hugh Hefner
Saul Bellow
Raymond Chandler

... and just about anybody who came up through improvisational theater, which also makes its home in Chicago. People like Amy Sedaris, David Sedaris, Steven Colbert, and half of the average cast of any season of SNL came through the Second City theater. Live theater, in fact, is one of the biggest, most crazy-diverse art forms in Chicago.

Some important Chicago eggheads:

Enrico Fermi (almost his entire career was an U.C.)
Milton Friedman
Carl Sandburg
Leo Strauss
Robert Woodrow Wilson (founder of a little get-together called Fermilab)

If you're determined to fixate on famous criminals, why not update from the '20s anyway? John Wayne Gacy was much more recent than AL Capone, and you could dress up in an evil clown suit and offer to kill people. Much more entertaining.

[||Lz3||]

I cannot thank you enough, my most esteemed moderator, Lemur.

Thanks.

[Lemur]

Always a pleasure to throw around info about my favorite American city.

[Kurando]

Dang Lemur, you're like Pedro's cousins with the sweet hook-ups!

Utah State Fair!

[Centurion1]

Yeah lemur pretty much covered it all. Well i lived there and so did my mom. i think something important is to put emphasis on the cultural diversity. My mom lived on the southside back in the days when it was a majority slavic neighborhood (nows its largely an urban ghetto, high black population). Immigrants especially, eastern europeans were big in Chicago and their culture has rubbed off on the city. I mean look at the location, conduit between the east and west, baby. Dont forget like the sears tower, the great lakes and stuff like why its the windy city.

Ha and dont forget "governor" blagoyevich