You’ve Never Been?: 5 things Bob Odenkirk recommends doing before leaving Chicago

There’s a fine line between civic pride and obnoxiously blurting out, “Hey! He’s from Chicago!” every time your friends are trying to watch a movie or TV show and a local actor appears onscreen. What your shushing friends don’t realize is that this knee-jerk instinct is hardwired into the DNA of lifelong Chicagoans. In other words: We can’t help it. Be that as it may, not even the most rah-rah Chicago booster is an absolute expert on everything this city has to offer. You've Never Been? helps us all get a little closer, as The A.V. Club catches up with prominent former locals for a mandate of things no Chicagoan should move away without having first experienced.

This week, Second City alumni and Mr. Show co-creator Bob Odenkirk recommends a good psychedelic heart-stopping burger and explains why L.A. isn’t as cool as you might've heard. Odenkirk returns to his old stomping grounds June 18 and 19 for The Not Inappropriate Show at Mayne Stage as part of the Just For Laughs Festival.

1. Get a burger from That’s-A-Burger (2134 E. 71st St., 773-493-2080)

Bob Odenkirk: Yeah. Gotta get a burger from That’s-A-Burger. I’ve never been there, but I’ve eaten their burgers. It’s pretty far away, down [south].

The A.V. Club: What’s so special about their burgers?

BO: It’s unbelievable. I have no idea. I wish I could tell you, and duplicate it. They’re huge. They’re made fresh. They put something in them that makes your brain melt and slows your heart down, in a good way. And it makes you see things; you have visions. They must put psilocybin mushrooms in them. But they also taste good. I’m not kidding you; this is the craziest thing ever.

I was in Chicago shooting a movie, and Chi McBride said, “You’ve got to have these burgers.” We were like, “Sure, yeah.” You know, you always hear that from people. It was lunchtime. I had already eaten a full lunch, and Chi shows up, and he goes, “Here, I got everybody some. I had them brought in from the South Side.” He had a grocery bag filled with these things, and they’re huge, man. They’re like eight inches around at least, and the meat hangs out from the bun. He goes, “Here, you’ve got to have it, man.” I didn’t want to be a jerk, so I was like, “Aw, thanks man! Cool!” I thought, well, I’ll take a bite and throw it out. I ate the whole thing. I ate the whole burger. It was so good. They mix it with spices and stuff, they make it right there by hand everyday. I think they just have an incredible mixture of spices and things. It was really, really crumbly but juicy. It was so good. So good. I’ll never forget it.

AVC: You never reached a point where you were like, “You know what? I’m full.”

BO: I had to finish it. It was so good. And it didn’t make me feel bad, either. When I was done, my stomach didn’t feel gross. Which is a testament, I think, to good meat.

2. Walk on the frozen lakeshore during winter

BO: If you can, you should walk out in the middle of February at night, when the ice is 10 feet high, and it’s sculpted into all kinds of crazy shapes and curlicues. Up by Loyola you can get right up along the edge there. Late February, when it’s just crazy, the water’s just frozen so high up. Highly recommended. It’s crazy. Of course, you could die. You could end up frozen out there.

AVC: Well, life is all about taking risks.

BO: It’s beautiful. It’s like you’re on the moon.

Bob Odenkirk and Ken Campbell, presumably NOT during a Chicago winter..

3. Watch the city come alive at 5 a.m.

BO: I’m going to say downtown. This is asking a lot of people, but downtown, 5 a.m., any day of the week, it’s just so neat to watch the city come to life. Chicago’s such a busy city, and yet it gets so quiet. I did this in Paris once, just to brag and drop a name. Namedropper! But seriously, some cities go from zero to 100 in an hour. You can walk around, and it’s a ghost town, and then watch it come to life. Am I not being ironic enough here?

AVC: No, you’re fine.

BO: If you were to try to do that in L.A.—it never comes to life! [Laughs.] You would never have that experience, because it would be just as dead at 9:30 as it is at 6 a.m.

4. Ride the El

BO: You should ride the El, but sit in the seat that faces right out the back. [Laughs.] Like a little kid. Either the seat in the back that faces out the back or the seat in front that faces right out the front.

5. Take a class at Second City

BO: Take classes at Second City and definitely at [iO] and at Annoyance. The things going on in improv and sketch and theatre in Chicago, that’s not duplicated anywhere. That amount of people, experiment, and honest excitement about what you’re doing as opposed to just career enhancement. If you go to New York and L.A., it’s just so much more about, "How this can get me from here to there," instead of, "Let’s all do this cool thing."

AVC: When we interviewed Scott Adsit for Second City’s 50th anniversary, he said that New York actors are intimidated by Second City-trained actors. Would you agree?

BO: I don’t know about that, but I believe Scott, if Scott feels that that’s how he perceives it. I maybe don’t hang out with actors quite as often as he does, but I don’t know. I probably spend more time with writers. I haven’t noticed it, but that may be true. I think that people know about the reputation of Chicago for having the unbelievably fervent, live theater scene. It’s pretty hard to describe, almost, to people in L.A.—which is a bigger city but has nothing, nothing, compared to Chicago. Whenever anything cool happens in L.A., it sticks out so much. They’re like, “Something cool happened! It’s been five years since that happened!” In theater, you know. “Somebody’s doing a cool show that you’ve got to see! They really want you to see the show. They’re not just doing it as an audition for something else.” I think UCB Theatre has been a great thing for L.A., because it’s brought a little of that excitement about the—people call it “the process” or whatever—the thing itself to the scene here.

AVC: Second City just has a training center out there, but has it had much of an impact on the scene?

BO: They haven’t really been able to build themselves up yet. They’ve had a hard time. UCB’s done an amazing job and had great luck, I would say. But I think it also has a lot to do with their openness to mixing forms and just doing great, crazy stuff. I mean, at UCB you can see stand-up comedy, sketch comedy, sketch comedy on video, or a long play that someone wrote. Of course, you can see a lot of improvisation. You can see all of that in one night. Second City has this allegiance to certain forms.

AVC: A few years back, iO experimented with having stand-ups perform there. It pissed a ton of people off and was really polarizing.

BO: By the way, I don’t think it was stand-up, but Severn Darden used to do monologues at Second City onstage. And I don’t think he was a character. The way I read about them, he was just monologuing about things. It sounded a lot, from what I read, like a lot of alternative stand-up. So what happened that that doesn’t happen anymore?