This doesn't happen often. Before I wrote Tuesday's blog post, I suspected the subject could be a column in the newspaper. Then I shrugged and wrote it for EGD — I don't like to save all the good ideas for the paper. The next day, talking with my editor, we decided the approach merited adapting it for the paper.
This isn't the same as Tuesday's post. But there are similarities. Students of my work — as if such a thing exists — might enjoy seeing how repeated reworking refines a piece. Or if you don't want to read a polished version of something you just read yesterday, you can read this, from over a dozen years ago.
Well, well, well, if it isn't the Chicago Bears, rushing past me on their way to the suburbs, for real this time.
Let me just slide my ample suburban backside over to make room on the Bench of Shame. Welcome to the club, boys. "One of us! One of us!"
It's truly happening.
“Moving outside of the city of Chicago is not a decision we reached easily,” Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren wrote in a letter to season ticket holders. “This project does not represent us leaving, it represents us expanding.”
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Sure looks like "leaving" in the traditional "go away from" sense.
The Bears won't play Downtown anymore, right? Fans who hope to see them play within Chicago city limits will need a television, or a very active imagination. Yet, through some alchemy of branding, they won't become the Arlington Heights Bears. The name "Chicago," they intend to keep. Too good to actually play in the city, but gripping the city's name hard, stiff-arming anyone who would take it away.
Allow me to savor this moment.
Ahhhhhh ...
Honestly, as someone who has had his chops busted continually for 25 years for the moral crime of writing about Chicago while not living in the city, I'm not sure how to feel about this development.
Gleeful? Sure. Nothing we flailing-around-in-the-status-ditch like more than to see our betters knocked off their high horse. This move might even be helpful to my situation. Now I've got the Chicago Bears football team standing foursquare behind me, arms folded across their brawny chests, hands tucked in sweaty armpits, nodding. Now I can reply: "It's good enough for the Chicago Bears, it's good enough for me."
Or is it just harmful to them without necessarily benefiting us scorned suburbanites? Trust me here: Chicagoans love lording their residency over those whose pillows rest beyond the city limits. If the Bears go on some White Sox-like swoon — and they've certainly stumbled out of the gate — will the general weakness and inauthenticity of the suburbs be blamed? Or will they bluster, "No, no! We sucked before!"
Maybe "Chicago Bears" is just another brand. Americans respect branding. Philadelphia Cream Cheese was not created in Philadelphia, nor is it made there. "Chicago" is hog butchers and Bronko Nagurski. The Bears are like Home Run Inn Pizza — a taste of Chicago you can enjoy anywhere. The Chicago Bears can go back to playing in Decatur, where they started, and still keep the name.
Or can they? My experience says that Kevin Warren can spin the move however he likes. It won't help. The suburban stain doesn't wash off. Believe me, I tried reminding folks: Mike Royko lived in Winnetka. Nelson Algren fled to New Jersey. Saul Bellow wrote "The Adventures of Augie March" in Paris, Rome, Salzburg — everywhere but Chicago. "Not a single word of the book was composed in Chicago," Bellow later confessed.
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I doubt if any of that thieving McCaskey family has lived in Chicago either for decades. George Halas lived in the Edgewater Beach Apartments at Bryn Mawr & Sheridan until he died, he was a Chicagoan & he'd probably hate the move to the burbs.
ReplyDeleteAll of this is because the McCaskeys want more & more & more money.
They don't get any of the parking money at Soldier Field, the Park District gets it. I don't believe they get any of the food or beer money either, just the money from their own merchandise with the Bears name & logos on. I was in a Sam's Club last week & they had an entire aisle of over priced junk with the bears name & logos on!
So now they get to build their own football palace & keep all the money, yet they still want a tax break so they won't have to pay Arlington Heights the same tax rate all the other businesses in Arlington Heights pay. What a bunch of moochers, moochers that are currently worth $8.8 billion!!!
There was a time when I wondered how such terrible people managed to sleep at night, but now with that truly rotten, corrupt regime in DC destroying this country to turn it into a fascist state where the billionaires have it all & we the peasants will be begging for their scraps, they just don't give a damn about anyone else, as long as they've gotten theirs!
By my count (and I might have missed a few), at least 11 of the 32 NFL teams do not play in the city for which they are named. Cities are metro areas these days. I, personally, actually do live in the city of Chicago but I wouldn't dream of being parochial enough to deny area residents the right to call themselves "Chicago-area" natives. This is a silly argument in the year 2025.
ReplyDeleteI propose that the city of Chicago annex all of Cook county.
ReplyDeleteNorthbrook and Arlington heights would just be neighborhoods then
Problem solved
That's how the Chinese do it. Municipal Beijing is 25 times larger than Chicago.
DeleteJacksonville, FL swallowed up an entire county. Houston grabbed a lot land and towns, too.
DeleteChicago has a bit of expansion in its history as well. For example, the Township of Cicero once extended East to Western Avenue; the voters of Cicero in a referendum around 1899 voted the Austin area into Chicago. Chicago could have taken the whole Town, but didn't want the areas full of swamps and Republicans.
Deletetate
damn fine idea. it would actually make the pope a chicago native too
DeleteThe McCaskey family's commute to the stadium is about to get much shorter. The fan's commute? Oopsie. It's good to be king.
ReplyDeleteMakes sense... Ginny didn't even show up Monday night.
DeleteMay the Bears never receive a dollar of public money. May the Bears pay billions in taxes back to the people of Illinois and "Chicago." May their players become soft and weak under the dome of capitalism, because why play outside.
ReplyDeleteAnd may the people living in Arlington Heights (and the surround areas) enjoy terrible traffic, needlessly expensive everything, and all the ills that come with having a major sporting franchise where you are.
No one wants the bad that comes with the good. Humans are terrible at understanding that. While the stadium and area may be top notch, everything around it will suffer greatly, especially where the infrastructure cannot handle it... the roads, the rails, the utility, the tax base. nothing good will come of this for anyone but the Bears and their investors.
Fun to see the punched-up version. I especially like "Let me just slide my ample suburban backside over to make room on the Bench of Shame. Welcome to the club, boys. "One of us! One of us!"
ReplyDeleteClaiming 'Chicago' while residing in the suburbs usually does generate flak, yet I don't remember Brookfield Zoo experiencing any backlash when they rebranded to "Brookfield Zoo Chicago" last year.
ReplyDeleteWhen I travel out of state and I'm asked where I'm from, I say "Chicago", or "just outside Chicago". If the person doing the asking is familiar with Chicago, they usually ask for a more specific location. Otherwise, it's just easier. I was wearing a Brookfield Zoo T-shirt in Zion National Park a few years ago and was asked where Brookfield Zoo was located, so I guess I can understand the need for rebranding.
Any move that gets the Bears off the lakefront is a good one.
ReplyDeleteAs a student of your work, it's always interesting for me to see how a blog post evolves into a column. And you're right, of course -- it doesn't seem to happen often at all. I'm not surprised that this topic merited the jump to the paper, though.
ReplyDeleteI particularly liked the reference to Philadelphia Cream Cheese as you suggest that "Chicago Bears' is just another brand." I didn't realize its provenance and that seemed kinda odd to me. Wikipedia says it was invented and produced in New York State, but: "At the time, Philadelphia and its surrounding area had a reputation for high-quality dairy farms and creamier cheese products, so they decided to use the name 'Philadelphia' on the foil-wrapped blocks of their cream cheese." All righty, then!
Just don't tell me that Boston baked beans were created in Pittsburgh. 😏