LET'S GO BLACKHAWKS! Chicagoans, check in here and reminisce about the greatest US city!
I'm interested to see how many Chicagoans and Ex-Chicagoans are in DU.
Check in and tell me where you were born, where you grew up, where you went to grammar school, high school and college. What's your favorite baseball team: the Cubs or the Sox? Where did you work? What's your favorite hot dog, Italian beef, pizza? Favorite bar(s) and hangouts? Favorite neighborhood? Favorite Chicago memories?
Here are mine:
born on the south side, grew up on the west side but lived on the northwest and north side from late grammar school on....so I'm really a north sider.
grammar school: St. Lucy's on Lake Street on the West Side
high school: Lane Tech
College: University of Illinois Chicago Campus for 2 years, then Loyola for my degree
baseball team: The Cubs, but one of my favorite memories was the Disco Demolition at Comiskey back in the 70s....I was there and unless you were there you can't imagine how crazy it was!
worked in many jobs, most notably as a technologist for ComEd
hot dog: SuperDawg
Italian Beef: Connie's on Harlem and North (no longer there 
)
Pizza: Gino's East for stuffed pizza, any one of many family owned neighborhood pizzerias for thin crust
Other favorite food joints worth mentioning: Jim's Polishes on Halsted and Maxwell, Potbelly Sandwiches on Lincoln (back when they were a mom and pop shop and before they became a chain ), The Pita Inn in Skokie, Hero's Subs on Addison and Western across from Lane Tech
favorite bars: Get Me High Lounge, Green Mill Lounge, Cubby Bear, Biddy Mulligan's, Orphan's, Lily's, Holstein's, Earl's (Earl Pionke just died a few weeks ago ), Fiddler's Green, B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted, Wise Fools, and so many of the little neighborhood bars in Lincoln Park.
hangouts: to name just a few - Lincoln Park Zoo, Field Museum of Natural History, Shedd Aquarium, Art Institute, Grant Park, all up and down the Lakefront
favorite neighborhoods: Lincoln Park, Old Town, Uptown, Lakeview, Rogers Park
favorite Chicago memories: so many to list, but here are a few in no particular order....
Ethnic diversity and great food
Disco Demolition at Comiskey
Bears' Superbowl
Chicago Fest on Navy Pier
concerts at the old band shell in Grant Park
Day games at Wrigley in the bleachers
Bowing to Andre Dawson in right field when he'd come out and, way before that, getting to see Fergie Jenkins, Ron Santo, Billy Williams and Ernie Banks play
Night games at Comiskey
Getting to see Tom Seaver and Carlton Fisk play (two guys that seemed to stay young forever)
Bears games at Soldier Field
Getting to see Gayle Sayers, Dick Butkus and Walter Payton (the greatest ever) play
Hawks games at the Stadium
The National Anthem at the Stadium before a Hawks game
Getting to see Bobby Hull, Tony Esposito, Stan Mikita, Bobby Orr and so many other greats on the ice
Concerts at Chicago Stadium, International Amphitheatre, and even the general admission concerts at the Aragon Ballroom (Brawlroom)....maybe especially those!
Seeing great artists like Steve Goodman, David Bromberg, Albert Collins, James Cotton, Buddy Guy and more playing in small clubs
Smelt fishing at Montrose harbor on cold spring nights
wandering around downtown aimlessly
playing softball in Grant Park and elsewhere (16 inch softball)
watching the Puerto Rican folks playing soccer on weekend days in Humboldt Park (using metal trash cans as goal posts)
Fishing in the Humboldt Park Lagoon
White Castle's hamburgers at 3 in the morning after heavy partying
...ah jeez, help me out here. And, don't be a jagoff and not post anything!
= new reply since forum marked as read
I know how that feels. I wasn't sure I'd make it through the entire 3rd OT. I've been sick all week and owe a relapse to the Hawks.
Totally worth it, though I feel like ass today. 
Hey, man, I was taking it easy tonight. It's not my fault the game went 6 periods!!!
HAAAAAAWKS!!!!
The damn city is electric tonight, and not on account of the lightning storms.
(The Kruger line was HEROIC. It will be the untold story.)
Oh, you meant Chicago! I thought you said "the greatest U.S. city". 
I actually did live there briefly, in the mid-'80s. Baseball hint: Both places were walking distance to Wrigley. I did, however, get to a Sox game, and the company paid for it: we were recruiting some young hotshot.
Offbeat food joint: The Doggery, a little shack on the street that parallels E. Ohio to the south (now probably part of Oprah's studio 
)
Music experience: several Dead shows, at UIC and Rosemont. About half my final total of 13. Only time I ever slept out for tickets! Also, a nocturnal excursion to Fitzgerald's in Berwyn for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band from New Orleans. The strange thing was, they were alternating sets with some outfit called "Paul Cebar and the Milwaukeeans". They were just OK. Then the Dozen came out and blew the roof off the joint. Then P. C. and the M.'s came back out -- and all of a sudden, they were good, too! Maybe the Dozen turned them on to something backstage.
Political stuff: One of the early Green conferences, sponsored by a collective called Maxworks, right on Maxwell Street.
Weather: It's where I first heard the term "drizmal". Then there was (at the time) the coldest night in Chicago history: -26. Not when you want to be in a drafty old stone pile with an electric heater. 
The following morning, I discovered the temperature at which mucus congeals within the human nose into a substance closely resembling rubber cement. For reference, that temperature is around 5 below. On the plus side, there was the time it was in the 80s -- on Groundhog Day. And it was the weekend!
Sports: Remember when people shelled out thousands of bucks for the first night game at Wrigley -- and it was rained out? During the middle of a dry summer. Then there was the Bears-Eagles playoff game played in pea-soup fog, which was odd, since at first there was none from my vantage point five miles north, and a block from the lake. (It rolled in a few minutes later.)
As Chicago has perhaps the finest organization in my field, not to mention the pioneering graduate program (at UIC), it is even possible that I may someday return.
the organization is Access Living, one of the first half-dozen or so independent living centers in the country (but the first was in Berkeley ).
http://www.accessliving.org
and, as I mentioned, UIC pioneered (!) disability studies as an academic discipline.
http://www.ahs.uic.edu/dhd/academics/phd/
Hey, who knows? Maybe with global warming, Chi-town could get back in the sweet spot!
edit: And if you thought it was a great post, I must have been a better Chicagoan than I thought I was at the time. I was never able to make any friends (not your fault, just me) and couldn't wait to move on to New Orleans three years later (but that's an OP )
Cubs fan who still misses Harry.
Best Hot Dog: Superdawg on Milwaukee Avenue
Best greasy burger: Hamburger Heaven on North Avenue. Open when the weather's nice, outdoor seating only, and they don't need no steenkeeng wi-fi.
...in fact, I did...but, a customer interrupted me and I accidentally deleted it.
GO CUBBIES!!! GO BEARS!!! GO HAWKS!!! GO BULLS!!!
Italian Beef, friggin' Vienna Beef hot dogs, an overstuffed gyro, the neighborhood festivals, Chinatown with all it's oddness, the museums (especially the little ones), the diversity (we don't get that here in AZ), the culture, the beauty, the architecture, the music, the people, the politics (what? 
), all of it!!!! Well...except the weather. That just blows.
And...the Crosstown Classic!!! Navy Pier, the lakefront, the street musicians, the funky little artsy stores, the food...
...the Picasso, The SEARS Tower (I don't know any Willis), The Hancock, the River, the water taxis, Blues Fest...
And, everything from your list that I forgot! Even the White Castle hamburgers at 3 am!
GO CHICAGO!!!!!!!!!
it was Rockefeller Center... or else. 
