My Kinda Town, Sorta

In the midst of a high-end travel piece in the New York Times, I couldn't help but be amused by the following passage.

"Chicago perhaps has the handsomest downtown in the United States. None other attends to its public and commercial spaces with such civic pride. Everywhere you turn, a landmark building's facade is being steam-cleaned, its terra-cotta bricks recemented. Plaques along the street give detailed histories of immediate surroundings. It can also be a wonderful smelling city in spring and autumn when a breeze carries the scent of chocolate from a candy factory along the Chicago River. For a few giddy weeks pedestrians walk around under the influence of a sugar high."

Indeed: a) to cite just one example, Mayor Daley was kind enough to obliterate the civically convenient Meigs Field with a midnight demolition crew (just before Election Day, no less); b) those recemented terra-cotta bricks exclude those which have already fallen, pummelling unsuspecting pedestrians, thanks to the landlord's chronic neglect; c) those plaques charmingly invoke classic buildings which once stood there, before being deemed expendable and an impediment to the onslaught of faceless condo towers; and d) the smell of rotting alewives and mystery river effluents are also quite memorable, whether you want to remember them or not.

Clearly the writer didn't venture out of the Gold Coast or the Loop.