How To Visit Chicago Like A Chicagoan; Or, One Amazing Blog Post

By Amy Cavanaugh in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 9, 2013 4:00PM

We've all had them—the friends who come into town and want to eat deep dish pizza and go to a Cubs game, when really we want to do anything but that. Or, friends come into town having read travel stories like the New York Times' Single in Chicago, which suggests visiting the Loop, “a constellation of theater, nightlife and shopping.”

For those visitors, we can now send them Ed Hirsch's How to: Visit Chicago Like a Chicagoan, which ran this week on Go Go Go. Hirsch, a native Chicagoan who now lives in Dallas, offers an amazing itinerary for first time visitors, including the architecture river tour, the Art Institute... and getting locals to invite you to their house so you can order pizza. Here are some of his other suggestions, though you should do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

• Do not stay at the Drake.

Stay at the Tremont. It’s $90 a night, two blocks from the Drake, and nobody worth a dime gives a shit that you roomed where some princess or Oprah or whoever stayed. You didn’t get treated like them anyway.

• Visit the South Side.

See, despite what thirty-something yuppie shitheels in Chicago think, the South Side actually wasn’t always just for black people! You should swing through Bridgeport, over to Bronzeville, down to Hyde Park, through Washington Park to Englewood, and then on to Pullman. Ideally this person giving the tour is Jewish, but I don’t have high hopes for you. Pullman is itself an interesting historic landmark, and there’s a nice little museum.

• Go "someplace weird."

While I think Andersonville and Rogers Park are two great places to do it, I’m going to send you to Uptown. Uptown works for three reasons. First, it’s accessible, right off the Red Line. Second, it has an energetic corner at Lawrence and Broadway. Third, the Green Mill is there. And fourth, there’s a rad Ethiopian place called Demera. If you’ve never had Ethiopian food before, I expect you to go. Do not google anything. Do not be a coward. Do what they do and stop crying. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get to see a guy perform guitar there and drink some honey wine. Once you’re done, go across the street to the Green Mill. Pay the cover. Listen to whatever weird experimental Swedish jazz band has flown in to play there and just there. Shut your gaping mouth and just try to appreciate what is happening. Please. Try.

• Find a hole in the wall to eat meat.

Your keys to spotting this place are:

1) Vienna Beef logo on their hanging sign
2) Their name includes one or more of the following
a. Chicago
b. Windy City
c. Beef
d. Dog
e. Gyros
f. The name of the street you’re on
g. The name of a street you’re not on
h. Any ethnic sounding name followed by an “ ‘s ”
3) Their staff appears to all be related or from the same ethnicity
4) They have any of the following
a. Signed pictures of the old mayor
b. Railroad paraphernalia
c. A picture of a giant hotdog, possibly floating in Lake Michigan
d. A menu hanging above the counter that appears to have ~50 items
e. An elderly lady working the cash register

You should expect to eat here a few times. You will want to try a hot dog (plain), another hot dog (everything), Italian beef (hot peppers), Italian sausage (peppers), gyros (everything, pronounce it “euros” or someone will slap you in a just world).

Read the whole post here.