AdamN wrote: Fri May 31, 2024 1:31 pm Svengoolie lives around the corner from my uncle in Oak Park. I've seen him mowing his lawn before lol.

Berwyn seems to have been the next hipster hotspot for the last 10-15 years, but I don't think it's taken hold yet. Even Logan Square feels less hipstery than Wicker Park was back in the day. I was worried my dad's neighborhood (Wrightwood Pkwy / Kelvyn Park) might get encroached upon, but it's still solidly lower middle-class immigrants mostly.

Just had our 10 years of living in Berwyn. Never felt hipstery to me, lots of fuckin Nazi shit though. That dickhead Nick Fuentes lives (or his parents) a few blocks over from me. Metra is nice though.

Even setting aside my bias having always lived in or near Chicago, it is absolutely a world class city that people from all over the world come to for tourism in large numbers.

Also whenever I am traveling anywhere in the entire world, I tell anyone I am from Chicago and they more often than not light up and tell me how great they think Chicago is. That has to be worth something.

All I ever got when I was living in Europe was either Michael Jordan or Al Capone, followed by finger guns.

Not really. Unless you've got specific business, it's a poor man's NYC.

This video explains the US’s shitty rail. Shame, I kind of liked the idea of a scenic route between New York and Chicago.

Chiming in late here. As a life-long Chicagoan, it's great to see non-US people come visit us. I often hear something like, "OH, Chicago, I've been to LA and NYC, but I've always wanted to see Chicago, maybe some day!" I will say, between LA and NYC, you will find it to be easy to traverse (not as complex as the NYC Metro and not as car-bound as LA). Pick your direction, north or south? I'm a northsider, so I'm pretty biased. There's some great pockets of things on the southside, but it's much bigger and more spread out, with lots areas that don't have a ton of interest. North side is dense, you could travel down Lake Shore Drive and every neighborhood would have something exciting in it.

I don't hang out much downtown, it's more business-focused. Even when I worked downtown, I never hung out after work. Grant Park is awesome, and so is all the lake front around it, including the museum campuses. River west has some stuff in it, restaurants mostly. Chicago neighborhoods are where its at though and I'm biased to the north side because that's where I'm from and spend almost all my time. You couldn't really go wrong staying east of Western and just go North from downtown to Roger's Park.

Chicago has amazing food, on par and different than what you can find in LA and NYC. Tons of great music, more in the vibe that those of us here on the forum are used to and less of what you might find in LA or NYC, like a lot of bands made up of session musicians. Tons of great venues, big and small. The summer boasts at least one festival every weekend, it's almost exhausting.

Anyway, there's a lot to do and I always suggest to visitors to go into the neighborhoods, they are much more interesting than downtown. It's not as dangerous of a city as some people like to think, but there are dangerous areas. Those are mostly easy to avoid, depending on where you're going on how you're getting there.

I'm sure I've said things already said. Is it worth visiting as a tourist on a US Trip? Absolutely, it's the third-largest city in North America (or 4th or 5th, it keeps going up and down with Houston and Toronto). There's plenty to do here, especially in the summer.

As a non-tourist giving tourist advice, one of the coolest things to do is go on the river architecture tour, then hit a water taxi to Chinatown and get some grub.

Gramsci wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2024 1:24 pm This video explains the US’s shitty rail. Shame, I kind of liked the idea of a scenic route between New York and Chicago.

While the video isn't wrong about problems with US Rail (slow, weird, hampered by the activities of investor-class parasites, expensive), I'd argue that there are a lot of Amtrak routes worth taking if you're in no particular hurry or don't want to deal with airports or driving. Taking the Empire Builder from Seattle to St Paul was an amazing family trip a number of summers ago. There's a lot to see in the Western US in particular that you won't see otherwise if you aren't up for marathon drives. Getting the most out of US train travel can require a bit of a "let's have an adventure" mindset. If you're going to be constantly mentally comparing it to European train travel, you'll be frustrated. It really depends on what kind of fun you're up for.

https://www.amtrak.com/lake-shore-limited-train (NY or Boston to Chicago )

https://www.amtrak.com/routes.html

This looks cool but I imagine it’s a fortune.

https://www.amtrak.com/onboard/onboard- ... suite.html

cakes wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2024 1:41 pm As a non-tourist giving tourist advice, one of the coolest things to do is go on the river architecture tour, then hit a water taxi to Chinatown and get some grub.

Yes.

We often do this with visitors a lot if they're here when it's nice out.

One time my uncle and aunt were here, and we went on this excursion. Lovely day, excellent food, etc.

We walked back to Ping Tom Park where the water taxi picks up in Chinatown. There was a taco truck in front of it and loud salsa music playing. In Chinatown.

Behind the truck, a mass of people salsa dancing. Black, Latino, Asian, white, young, old, infirm, fit, whatever.

My aunt is a pretty serious dancer, and her eyes lit up. She went up to some random guy and dragged him onto the "dancefloor" for twenty minutes.

Afterwards I told them it's like that all the time here. Which was a joke, but not completely.

You can't really compare New York to anything else in North America, so why bother?

If you are energized by architecture, food, massive scale urban planning, how migration shapes cities, and the arts, I can't think of anywhere in North America outside of NYC that you should go first except Chicago.

No it's not London nor NYC, but nothing is.

Amtrak's long haul routes are a pain in that they are rarely on time. Keep that in mind if you decide to take the train.

Yeah you should come here.

See also: the Toronto - Montreal - Quebec corridor.