Misery loves Fast Company
How can the city of the year be so sad?
A Forbes cover story with broad, broad appeal
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It’s no secret that Chicago is the third most miserable city in America. Forbes Magazine bestowed the title, claiming that “lousy weather, long commutes, rising unemployment and the highest sales tax rate in the country,” must make us absolutely miserable.
Now, we all know Forbes as the magazine of rich white men with drivers to take them from their Manhattan penthouses to their Manhattan offices with $25,000 tables. But it’s so much more. It also ranks pricey champagnes. It’s obviously got its finger to the pulse of misery among regular people.
Forbes has already been told they can suck it, and Decider agrees. What do fancy statistics and numbers say about the Second City? Even Mayor Daley thinks the only lousy thing about Chicago is the weather. If you can’t survive a little cold, what the hell are you doing here anyway?
There’s so much more to Chicago than a little misery. It’s not just a city with a murder rate 2.7 times higher than the national average (still less than Detroit, seventh most miserable, Miami, No. 9, and St. Louis, No. 10). It’s more than the most caffeinated city in America (which must be how we power through the misery). It goes beyond having the least personal freedom of any U.S. city (if “personal freedom” is defined as ability to pick up a hooker at gunpoint while smoking a cigarette in a restaurant).
Chicago is, simply, the greatest city in the country. At least, it was in 2008 according to GQ Magazine and Fast Company.
Where Forbes slams us on politics, GQ likes the Chicago style: “For decades, Chicago has been a proving ground for any left-leaning midwesterner hoping to make the leap to D.C.” It praises Daley and Obama strategist David Axelrod for their talents as Chicago-brand political gurus and gushes over Stop Smiling, an almost-literary magazine with a counter-culture feel, produced locally.
Then there's Fast Company, which states: “The real Chicago isn't so easy to keep up with. It's constantly reinventing itself. Jumpy. Agitated. Impatient. It's as if the place is trembling. Move aside. Don't linger. And if you're going to dawdle, get out of the way. But what any Chicagoan will also tell you is that the past is very much present. It doesn't go away. It shouldn't. In fact, that's Chicago's lure and its beauty: its ability to take what was and figure out what could be.”
So, Forbes, yes, it’s cold. Yes, we pay high taxes. But in return, we get to live in one of the top 10 cities in the world. Plus, we don’t have to deal with that New York smell.
