A fight, a fight, a fight!

The Austin vs. Chicago debate is amusing me today, probably because I've lived in both cities. What do drinking habits and sleepovers have to do with someone’s critical abilities or whether or not Bookslut is a good site? Not a damn thing.

Austinites and Texans in general are very defensive when people talk shit about their city or state (myself included) in the “love it or leave it” sense. It’s a knee-jerk reaction and usually not very smart, as in the case mentioned above. Badgley didn’t help Austin’s case any and I’m surprised the column made it past his editors. Perhaps they gave him more leeway since it is a column versus an article. Either way, it was a bad call, Ripley. A bad call.

In any case, it seems like comparing apples to oranges. According to the 2000 census, Cook county has a population of 5,376,741 and the nine-county metropolitan area has 8,272,768. Austin, in comparison, has a population of 656,562, which has certainly decreased since 2000 when the city was home to many more techies and dot-comers. Compare those numbers. Of course there are more writers and editors and venues for publishing in Chicago. There are millions more people.

The quality of my literary life has improved since I’ve lived in Chicago, no question. I have had more opportunities to write and edit. I know more writers and editors here; I have access to more plays, more readings, more MFA programs, more magazines, more everything. That should be obvious, that a city the size of Chicago has more literary opportunities than a city the size of Austin. However, the quality of my daily life has certainly decreased. I spend much more time commuting; housing and food and everything else is more expensive; everything from errands to meeting a friend for dinner takes more time, effort, and planning. For me, that tradeoff isn’t worth it. For others, it is.

I could go into a very long rant about what I don’t like about Chicago. But what I think I’ll do is present one petty grievance per update to save your sanity and my own. That is not to say I think Austin is intrinsically better than Chicago. It was just better for me. So here we go:

Chicago Grievance #1

It’s damned cold. It starts getting cold in November and it’s often cold through May. May is part of spring here, not summer as I am accustomed to, which means gloves, jackets, and a hat more often than not. Last year, it was still cold in June (cold enough to see my breath as I walked to lunch on June 15), which is just plain excessive. When I am in a bad mood about Chicago, I call it the tundra. Or the wasteland. When it especially cold, I put the word frozen in front of those terms. Just a few weeks ago I saw a gaggle of geese stopping for a breather as they flew south for the winter. My first thought was: those birds have more sense than I do.

This is my third winter in Chicago. I layer with the best of them. I have multiple coats and gloves and I use different ones depending on how low the temperature is. October is a jean jacket sliding into a pea coat. November is unpredictable. I have a long wool coat for December. In January and February I bust out with the down-layer-on-the-inside-and-the-wind/waterproof-combo-on-the-outside. Wearing hats is fun. Having winter gear is fun. For about five minutes. Seasons? Overrated. Snow? Done it. I would prefer to visit the snow when I go skiing, not live with the gray sludgy stuff the pretty white stuff transforms into almost immediately in the city (I'm not even going to go into the yellow snow). But feeling cold for six or seven months out of the year is nice, you know, if you like that sort of thing.