I live in a nice well-organized suburb northwest of Chicago. Most of the nice well-organized people here are either native to the suburban area or are transplants from other nice suburban area. One thing many of them seem to have in common is a terror that they may one day be forced to drive in the city (i.e. Chicago).
Now I know that driving in the city does require some specialized skills. It’s not easy to ignore speed limits, traffic lights and lane markings all at the same time. It can be hard to decide which of many obstacles to avoid: garbage trucks, bike messengers, pushcart vendors, or tourists from Germany and Iowa who have staggered into the street, agog at the tall buildings.
Driving in the city also requires split-second decision-making. The sound of an ambulance siren bounces off the buildings, making it impossible to figure out which direction it’s coming from. The omnipresent scaffoldings and the stanchions for the el trains often make it impossible to see around corners, so an ambulance may seem to suddenly appear as if from a trap door. Your lane may suddenly disappear. The directional signs giving you advance warning of your turn may have disappeared months or years ago. Street signs can be a luxury item in some neighborhoods: sometimes you have to go through an intersection and then crane your head around backward to try to see what street you just went past. A city bus may move into your lane without so much as a turn signal, and then stop dead at an intersection for up to ten minutes, taunting you with that “Do NOT turn right in front of bus” sticker.
The places in Chicago where three streets cross, creating six-way intersections, are more thrilling than any roller coaster at Six Flags. Those with traffic lights are fun enough, but the ones without are a white-knuckle thrill ride not to be missed—especially when you mix in a semi tractor-trailer truck , bicycles, strollers, drunks and the man pushing the paletta cart. Since the concept of taking turns is anathema to most humans, sometimes you just have to grip the wheel, grit your teeth, and floor it.
Chicago also has a big river running through it. This means that a lot of streets end abruptly with no option but to turn around (if you’re lucky) or back out (if you’re not). Chicago also has a lovely variety of drawbridges that alternately allow street traffic to pass over them and river traffic to pass under them. My family and I were on a water taxi on the river one day and saw a large barge go through out to Lake Michigan past the Lake Shore Drive bridge, a truly wonderful thing to watch. Drawbridges are amazingly cool devices, and they make for great film locations.
Unfortunately one thing that happens to drawbridges is that they can get stuck open. One of the largest and busiest Chicago River bridges, the Michigan Avenue bridge, was stuck in a raised position for two months in 1992, as a result of an accident involving a construction crane. Traffic was backed up and snarled for blocks around.
One of the most fun parts about driving in downtown Chicago are the many ramps leading to fabulous underground locations. Lower Wacker Drive (featured extensively in the Batman movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smwyiIIImhA&feature=related, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZEOkPPn214&feature=related ) is a city unto itself. This spooky, winding, constantly dripping route that follows the river for about 2 miles is like the servant’s stair of Chicago. Most of the big buildings on Upper Wacker have their loading docks down here. For years it has functioned as an enormous open-air homeless shelter (although many people say they were rousted with fire hoses when Daley decided to clean up the city for the 1996 Democratic National Convention).
Another of Mayor Daley’s bright ideas was a number of enormous concrete flower garden/planters the size of a single car garage. When they were originally unveiled, it soon became apparent that although undeniably beautiful, they were so grand that they completely blocked the view of the average automobile driver trying to make a turn. These planters have since been scaled back enough so you can see around them.
Of course, once you find the street you’re looking for and navigate the turn, you may very well discover that the street is blocked off for one of the dozens of street festivals Chicagoans enjoy each year. From the Taste of Chicago to the to the Gay Pride Parade you just never know when you might turn a corner and be confronted with ranks of sawhorses closing off blocks of surface street for some sort of festival or so that several hundred men in hot pants or assless chaps can parade down Halsted Street.
One piece of good advice I can offer is to lock your car doors when driving downtown. Once I was sitting at a traffic light in broad daylight and someone approached my car from my blind spot and tried to open my passenger side door. Luckily my doors were locked. I never actually saw the face of this would-be intruder—he retreated away from my car, still in my blind spot, and the traffic light changed so I never saw which direction he went.
Another memorable driving experience I had while driving in Chicago happened on the night the Bulls won the NBA championship in 1991. Half the city poured pell-mell into to the street, yelling, honking horns, blaring music, cheering, waving flags, overturning vehicles and shooting into the air. But don’t worry suburbanites—this probably won’t happen again for years---
