Top 10 Myths About the Great Depression

A bread line during the Depression

March 4, 1933, 90 years ago: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States, at the very depth of the Great Depression.

Top 10 Myths About the Great Depression

1. The Depression was caused by the Stock Market Crash of 1929. That was part of it, but by no means all of it. The end of World War I meant that farmers, having lost a big chunk of their market, had already been in a depression since the Armistice, 11 years earlier.

The famous headline in

the film industry's "trade paper"

In his nationally-syndicated newspaper column, Will Rogers spent much of the "Roaring Twenties" saying how, for farmers, the decade didn't roar so much as mumble. He pointed out that the economic boom wasn't universal for the cities, either: In 1928, about a year before the Crash, he wrote, "Wall Street has never been better off, but Eighth Avenue has never been worse off."

When he was President, John F. Kennedy quoted an old saying: "A rising tide lifts all boats." Not a boat with a hole in it. And, of course, in the 1920s as now, some people didn't have boats, and some people couldn't even swim.

Even with the Crash, the Depression might have been sharp, but relatively short, if not for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which President Herbert Hoover signed into law on June 17, 1930. Named for its sponsors, Senator Reed Smoot of Utah and Representative Willis Hawley of Oregon, both Republicans, the law raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.

Willis Hawley (left) and Reed Smoot

This prompted retaliatory tariffs by other countries against America. As a result, between 1929 and 1933, American exports dropped 61 percent, and American imports dropped by 66 percent. Between 1929 and 1932, real Gross Domestic Product fell 17 percent worldwide, and 26 percent in the United States.

Unemployment was 8 percent when the Act was passed. It doubled to 16 percent in 1931 -- already higher than any of the "recessions" since the Depression -- and 25 percent in 1932. It is suspected that, when FDR took office on March 4, 1933, it may have been as high as 31 percent. If the Crash was the biggest cause, Smoot-Hawley was a strong second.

2. Stockbrokers and other ruined businessmen jumped out of windows to their deaths. Since then, whenever there's a dip in the stock market, demonstrators go to the New York Stock Exchange at Broad and Wall Streets, and yell, "Jump! Jump! Jump!" Because they think that's what happened during and after the Crash of '29.

There is no record of a single stockbroker suicide in the wake of the Crash, let alone one via jumping out of a window. In what remains the definitive book about the Crash, The Great Crash 1929, Pulitzer Prize-winning economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, "In the United States the suicide wave that followed the stock market is also part of the legend of 1929. In fact, there was none."

3. Herbert Hoover Was to Blame. The 31st President of the United States took office on March 4, 1929. Within 8 months, the crash came. But the policies that caused it were already in place. Hoover was a convenient scapegoat, because it happened on his watch.

When Warren Harding was elected President in 1920, he appointed Andrew Mellon as his Secretary of the Treasury. Harding died in 1923, and Calvin Coolidge became President. He kept Mellon. In 1927, Coolidge famously said, "I do not choose to run for President in 1928." Hoover did, and won. He also kept Mellon.

Andrew Mellon

Mellon's policies may have set up the post-World War I "paper prosperity," which became known as the "Coolidge Prosperity," but they also did the most to set the Depression up. If anybody can be called
"Mr. Depression," he's the one. Perhaps Coolidge knew the crash was coming, and left one step ahead of it, and left Hoover holding the bag. A sign at the 1932 Democratic Convention read:

Hoover blew the whistle

Mellon rang the bell

Wall St gave the signal

And the country went to hell.

4. Hoover did nothing about the Depression. This is a considerably fairer statement, but not completely fair. It would be more accurate to say that he tried something, but not enough of it.

One thing he tried was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, although he didn't sign it into law until January 22, 1932. Had such a bill hit his desk 2 years earlier, it could have made a much bigger difference. The RFC -- a precursor to FDR's "alphabet soup" agencies in the New Deal -- provided financial support to State and local governments, and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations, and other businesses.

The RFC became more prominent under the New Deal, and continued to operate through World War II. It was disbanded in 1957, when the federal government concluded that it no longer needed to stimulate lending.

Hoover's main problem is that he was a "strict constructionist" in regard to the Constitution of the United States, and didn't believe it offered him what FDR would, in his Inaugural Address, call "broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe."

5. The Depression was the Golden Age of Gangster Movies. This one is true. People could watch movies about the gangsters who troubled their cities, but, with the Hays Code in effect, could watch them get their comeuppance, as "sin" had to be punished for such a movie to be released. It started with Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, released on January 9, 1931. Paul Muni starred in the original version of Scarface in 1932, which also helped to make a star of George Raft.

James Cagney starred in The Public Enemy in 1931, Lady Killer and The Mayor of Hell in 1933, Angels with Dirty Faces in 1938, and The Roaring Twenties in 1939 -- perhaps the 1st film to treat the 1920s with nostalgia. Later, he would top them all with White Heat in 1949.

James Cagney

Raft -- who, unlike the others, really did consort with gangsters -- was another actor who played those guys with aplomb, in films like Quick Millions and Hush Money in 1931; Night World, Love Is a Racket and Madame Racketeer in 1932; The Bowery in 1933; Limehouse Blues in 1934; and I Stole a Million in 1939. He was in a few films with Cagney, but, ironically, in those films together, neither of them played gangsters. Both men actually got their starts as dancers, or "hoofers."

Incidentally, in the 1932 film Taxi!, Cagney played not a gangster, or even a cop, but a taxi driver, who, at one point, yells out, "Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat!" This led to every impressionist to misquote him by saying, "You dirty rat!"

6. The Depression was the Golden Age of Monster Movies. This myth being true is a matter of opinion, but the way certain characters were depicted at this time defined those characters, possibly to this day. In 1931, Bela Lugosi starred in Dracula. Later in the year, Frankenstein introduced Boris Karloff as the monster, with Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein himself. (The monster was never named in the film, but has, himself, been mistakenly called "Frankenstein" ever since.)

Left to right: Boris Karloff, Maureen O'Sullivan and Bela Lugosi,

posing for the newsreel feature Screen Snapshots #11, 1934

King Kong, about a giant ape taken from his tropical island home to New York, breaking out and terrorizing the city, debuted in 1933. The same year, Karloff starred in The Mummy, and Claude Rains starred in The Invisible Man. In 1935, The Bride of Frankenstein premiered, with Karloff and Clive reprising their roles, and Elsa Lanchester cast in the title role. It wasn't the 1st film sequel, but it can safely be called the 1st good one.

And people identified with the struggles against these characters, as, unlike the Depression itself, they were an enemy that could actually be seen and heard. And, if they touched you, they could harm you in definitive ways, unlike the more subtle harms of the Depression.

And yet, both the Frankenstein monster and Kong were more victim than villain, and people could also sympathize with humanity's unwillingness to accept them. White Americans might not have seen either figure through the prism of civil rights, but they could see them through the prism of "the forgotten man," the man that the establishment didn't want to remember.

Lon Chaney (Leonidas Frank Chaney), who had starred in the silent films The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923 and The Phantom of the Opera in 1925, had died in 1930. His son, Lon Chaney Jr. (Creighton Tull Chaney), starred in The Wolf Man in 1941, toward the end of the Depression, so it can't be counted with these others.

But that started a new trend: With World War II coming up, people decided it was better to see these creatures fight each other, and even to laugh at them, than to be afraid of them. So films where they fought were produced, and there was a series of Abbott and Costello Meet... films with the monsters, some played by their 1930s portrayers.

7. The Depression ended "the Jazz Age." It is true that the term "Jazz Age" applies to the 1920s not just because of the music, but because of a lifestyle that included the happy dancing, the happy drinking, and the gangsterism that supported it. As the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, set in 1935, shows, the Depression showed going out and dancing to have become a very different thing during the Depression, and the 1933 repeal of Prohibition didn't change that. (That film also showed people dancing under a mirror ball, 40 years before the rise of disco music. In fact, the mirror ball had been invented in 1917.)

But, as for the music, if anything, the 1930s were the decade when jazz came out of the shadows of a black-only phenomenon and into the mainstream of white America. The best jazz groups remained black ones, led by pianist-composers Edward "Duke" Ellington, William "Count" Basie, and Thomas "Fats" Waller, trumpeter Louis Armstrong, and drummer Chick Webb. But bandleaders like Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and the brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey -- first together, then separately after a feud, then occasionally together again after reconciling -- proved that white men could uphold the mantle of jazz as well.

By 1938, Goodman and Basie could appear together onstage -- at no less a classical music venue than Carnegie Hall in New York -- and be celebrated for it.

Count Basie, fronting Benny Goodman and Ethel Waters,

at the Stage Door Canteen, New York, 1943

8. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal solved the Depression. Certainly, it made things better. By May 1937, early in his 2nd term, FDR had cut unemployment to 14 percent, approximately in half. But that's still worse than it has ever been since, with the brief exception of the height of the COVID epidemic. Even FDR's commitment and hard work, and the geniuses (genii?) of his "Brain Trust" couldn't get it lower than that.

9. The New Deal "made the Depression worse." This is what conservatives have wanted you to believe ever since. In May 1937, another downturn began, and by June 1938, unemployment was back up to 19 percent, back to where it was in 1935. The Democrats paid for this at the polls in 1938: The 336-88 advantage they had in the House of Representatives after 1936 dropped to 262-169, and their 77-15 Senate advantage (there were also 4 independents) fell to 69-23.

This had an interesting side effect: Just as the Congressional and gubernatorial elections of 1930, '32, '34 and '36 had wiped out many potential future Presidential candidates for the Republicans, so too did the '38 races knock out some potential Democratic candidates for 1940. As a result, neither party had much of a "bench" that could replace FDR. Without such a challenger to him, FDR knew there was no one who could seriously challenge Nazi Germany's Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, in his bid for world supremacy. FDR thought his Vice President, John Nance Garner, was too conservative to give Hitler the strenuous level of necessary opposition. So FDR ran for a 3rd term.

For most of 1939, unemployment was around 17 percent. By 1940, it had dropped back to 14; for 1941, 10. So what happened? Did FDR's New Deal programs make the Depression worse?

"Worse"? Worse than what? Worse than what he inherited on March 4, 1933? Don't be ridiculous. Republicans then, and conservatives now, want you to believe that "big government" does this. In fact, it was the exact opposite. In 1937, FDR was doing exactly what conservatives want the President to do: He was cutting back on spending. He thought he could do it because of the successes he'd had.

By 1938, he realized what a mistake this was, and, after his "First New Deal" of 1933 and his "Second New Deal" of 1935, he started a "Third New Deal." (His 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights has not been called a "Fourth New Deal," but it should be.) History has repeatedly proven it: The way to cause a recession is to have the federal government cut taxes and cut spending; and the way to get out of a recession is to have the federal government raise taxes and raise spending.

10. World War II was what really ended the Depression. This one is true. As stated, unemployment was still above 10 percent through most of 1941. On December 7, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The armed forces took on 16 million Americans, enlistees and draftees combined. Many jobs they left behind had been taken by those previously unemployed. And many businesses that were deemed vital to the war effort were running 24 hours a day, thus increasing the need for available workers. Because of this, by mid-1942, in a matter of months, unemployment was down to 3 percent. It remained there for the duration of The War.

FDR could not have been elected to a 3rd term in 1940 without the threat of war from Nazi Germany and/or Imperial Japan. He would not have run for a 3rd term without it. Could anyone else, elected in 1940, have brought unemployment back to 1929 levels without entering The War? It is incredibly unlikely.

The people who lived through the Great Depression are now either dead, or very old. They were the "forgotten man" and woman of their age. As my mother once pointed out, there were no support groups for survivors of the Depression, like her parents. There is no memorial specifically for them on the National Mall in Washington, although the FDR Memorial includes a tribute to them. They had their songs, and their movies, rather than tangible tributes.

We dare not forget them now. We have had hard recessions in 1973-76, 1980-83, 1990-93, 2001-03, 2007-10 and 2020-21. But not another Depression, because of the safeguards we put into place in the 1930s. If we fail to support these safeguards, then everything those people suffered through, and everything those who worked to help them did to do so, will have been in vain.

How to Be a Devils Fan In Chicago -- 2022 Edition

This Friday, February 25, the New Jersey Devils play the Blackhawks at the United Center in Chicago. 

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler,
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

Bareheaded, shoveling, wrecking, planning, building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
And under his ribs the heart of the people, laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
-- Carl Sandburg, 1916.

Sandburg knew. He was right then. He is still right now. And this legendary poem "Chicago" fits the Blackhawks, one of the National Hockey League's traditional "roughhouse" teams.

Before You Go. Chicago weather can be unpredictable. This game being played in mid-November, cold weather can be expected. However, the arena is 3 miles inland from Lake Michigan, so the local wind, a.k.a. The Hawk (not named for the hockey team), which tends to produce "Bear Weather," won't be that much of a problem while you're right outside.

The Chicago Tribune is predicting temperatures to be in the mid-20s during daylight, and the teens at night, with "snow showers." The Chicago Sun-Times backs up its rivals' temperature predictions. If you want to see the devil's play every team in the league, and the Blackhawks are a team you up yet to cross off your list, you might be better off waiting for next season.

Wait until you cross into Illinois to change your clocks. Indiana used to be 1 of 2 States, Arizona being the other, where Daylight Savings Time was an issue; however, since 2006 -- 4 years after a West Wing episode lampooned this -- the State has used it throughout. Once you cross into Illinois, you'll be moving from Eastern to Central Daylight Time.

Tickets. The Blackhawks lead the League in per-game attendance in every normal season. In 2019-20, before COVID shut everything down, they were averaging 21,415. Even now that the Cubs have finally won a World Series, the Hawks are the toughest ticket in town. Which, as you might guess, makes them expensive, more expensive than Bulls tickets. (Think of how silly that would have sounded in 1998, or even in 2009.)

And so, tickets are expensive. Seats in the lower level, the 100 sections, are $317 between the goals and $283 behind them. In the 200 sections, they're $220 and $88. In the upper level, the 300 sections, they're $117 between and $83 behind. Standing-room tickets are $15.

I would, however, recommend avoiding Sections 321 to 330 in the upper deck, behind the west goal, because that's the Blackhawk equivalent of the 400 level, the old "Blue Seats," at Madison Square Garden.

Getting There. Chicago is 792 land miles from New York. Knowing this, your first reaction is going to be to fly out there. Unlike some other Midwestern cities, this is a good idea if you can afford it. You might be able to get flights, nonstop in both directions, for under $400.

O'Hare International Airport (named for Lt. Cmdr. Edward "Butch" O'Hare, the U.S. Navy's 1st flying ace, who was nevertheless shot down over the Pacific in World War II), at the northwestern edge of the city, is United Airlines' headquarters, so nearly every flight they have from the New York area's airports to there is nonstop, so it'll be 3 hours, tarmac to tarmac, and about 2 hours going back.

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Blue Line train will take you from O'Hare to the downtown elevated (or "L") tracks that run in "The Loop" (the borders of which are Randolph, Wells, Van Buren and Wabash Streets) in 45 minutes. From Midway Airport, the Orange Line train can get you to the Loop. Both should take about 45 minutes.

Bus? Greyhound's run between the 2 cities, launched 5 times per day, is relatively easy, but long, averaging about 18 hours, and is $330 round-trip -- but can drop to as low as $216 on Advanced Purchase. Only 1 of the 5 runs goes straight there without requiring you to change buses: The one leaving Port Authority Bus Terminal at 10:15 PM (Eastern) and arriving at Chicago at 2:30 PM (Central). This includes half-hour rest stops at Milesburg, Pennsylvania and Elkhart, Indiana, and an hour-and-a-half stopover in Cleveland.

The station is at 630 W. Harrison Street at Des Plaines Street. (If you've seen one of my favorite movies, Midnight Run, this is a new station, not the one seen in that 1988 film.) The closest CTA stop is Clinton on the Blue Line, around the corner, underneath the elevated Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway.

Doesn't look like a major transportation hub, does it?

Train? Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited (formerly known as the Twentieth Century Limited when the old New York Central Railroad ran it from Grand Central Terminal to Chicago's LaSalle Street Station) leaves New York's Penn Station at 3:40 every afternoon, and arrives at Union Station at 225 South Canal Street at Adams Street in Chicago at 10:12 every morning. It leaves Chicago at 9:30 every evening, and returns to New York at 6:47 the following night.

Usually, it's $224 round-trip, very cheap per mile by Amtrak standards. The closest CTA stop is Quincy/Wells, in the Loop, but that's 6 blocks away – counting the Chicago River as a block; Union Station is, literally, out of the Loop.

If you do decide to walk from Union Station to the Loop, don't look up at the big black thing you pass. That's the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, which, until the new World Trade Center was topped off, was the tallest building in North America, which it had officially been since it opened in 1974, surpassing the old WTC. If there's one thing being in New York should have taught you, it's this: "Don't look up at the tall buildings, or you'll look like a tourist."

But since you've come all this way, it makes sense to get a hotel, so take a cab from Union Station or Greyhound to the hotel – unless you're flying in, in which case you can take the CTA train to within a block of a good hotel. There are also hotels near the airports.

If you decide to drive, it's far enough that it will help to get someone to go with you and split the duties, and to trade off driving and sleeping. The directions are rather simple, down to (quite literally) the last mile. You'll need to get into New Jersey, and take Interstate 80 West. You'll be on I-80 for the vast majority of the trip, through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Ohio, in the western suburbs of Cleveland, I-80 will merge with Interstate 90. From this point onward, you won't need to think about I-80 until you head home; I-90 is now the key, and will take you right past Union Station the Loop.

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and a half in New Jersey, 5 hours and 15 minutes in Pennsylvania, 4 hours in Ohio, 2 hours and 30 minutes in Indiana, and half an hour in Illinois before you reach the exit for your hotel. That's 13 hours and 45 minutes. Counting rest stops, preferably halfway through Pennsylvania and just after you enter both Ohio and Indiana, and accounting for traffic in both New York and Chicago, it should be no more than 18 hours, which would save you time on both Greyhound and Amtrak, if not on flying.

Once In the City. A derivation of a Native American name, "Chikagu" was translated as "Place of the onion," as there were onion fields there before there was a white settlement. Some have suggested that the translation is a little off, that it should be "Place of the skunk." Others have said, either way, it means "Place of the big stink."

Founded in 1831, so by Northeastern standards it's a young city, Chicago's long-ago nickname of "the Second City" is no longer true, as its population has dropped, and Los Angeles' has risen, to the point where L.A. has passed it, and Chicago is now the 3rd-largest city in America. But at 2.7 million within the city limits, and 9.5 million in the metropolitan area, it's still a huge city -- and if you divide the Los Angeles market equally between the Kings and the Ducks, that makes Chicago the largest market in the NHL. If you count Anaheim separately, boosting the Kings' share, then Chicago falls to 2nd place.

The "Loop" is the connected part of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)'s elevated railway (sometimes written as "El" or "L") downtown: Over Wells Street on the west, Van Buren Street on the south, Wabash Street on the east and State Street on the north. Inside the Loop, the east-west streets are Lake, Randolph, Washington, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson and Van Buren; the north-south streets are Wells, LaSalle (Chicago's "Wall Street"), Clark, Dearborn, State and Wabash.

The city's street-address centerpoint is in the Loop, at State & Madison Streets. Madison separates North from South, while State separates East from West. The street grid is laid out so that every 800 on the house numbers is roughly 1 mile. As the United Center is at 1901 West Madison Street, and on the 3600 block of North Sheffield Avenue, now you know it's on the main east-west axis, and a little more than 2 miles west of State Street and the center of the Loop.

Chicago has 2 "beltways": Interstate 294 forms an inner one, while Interstates 290 and 355 form an outer one. It also has highways named for 3 Presidents, and 1 defeated Presidential nominee from the Chicago area.

I-290 is the Eisenhower Expressway; a run that goes from I-90 to I-94 to I-190 is the Kennedy Expressway; I-88 from the suburbs west to the Mississippi River in Iowa is the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway (it passes his birthplace of Tampico and other towns where he grew up); and the Cook County portion of I-55 is the Stevenson Expressway, named for Adlai Ewing Stevenson II, grandson of Grover Cleveland's 2nd Vice President, Governor of Illinois 1949-53, and Dwight D. Eisenhower's defeated opponent of 1952 and 1956.

The CTA's rapid-rail system is both underground (subway) and above-ground (elevated), although the El is better-known, standing as a Chicago icon alongside the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, Michael Jordan, deep-dish pizza, and less savory things like municipal corruption, Mrs. O'Leary's cow and Al Capone. The single-ride fare is $2.50 for the El, $2.25 for the bus. A 1-day pass is $5, and a 3-day pass is $15.

(By the way, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was more likely the result of Mr. O'Leary hosting a poker game in his barn, in which he, or one of his friends, dropped cigar ash, rather than Mrs. O'Leary's cow, knocking a lantern, onto some hay.)

I was actually in Chicago on the day they switched from tokens to farecards: June 1, 1999. It took me by surprise, as I had saved 10 tokens from my previous visit. I was able to use them all, because I'd gotten there 2 days before.

Illinois' State sales tax is 6.25 percent, but in the City of Chicago it's 9.25 percent -- higher than New York's. So don't be shocked when you see prices: Like New York, Boston and Washington, Chicago is an expensive city.

ZIP Codes in the Chicago area start with the digits 60. The Area Code is 312, with 708 and 847 in the suburbs. Just as New York's electric company is Consolidated Edison, or "Con Ed," Northern Illinois' is Commonwealth Edison, or "ComEd," which confused the heck out of me the 1st time I heard it.

Chicago's legendary crime problem has evolved: It's no longer Al Capone-style gangs running things, it's poor kids with guns. So whatever precautions you take when you're in New York, take them in Chicago as well.

Demographically, Chicago is split almost right down the middle: 35.5 percent black, 33.5 percent white, 23.9 percent Hispanic (as with most Midwestern cities, most of their Hispanics are Mexican rather than Puerto Rican or Cuban), with Asians trailing at 7.0 percent.

The South Side is the largest black neighborhood in the country, ahead of even New York's Harlem, and the West Side also has a large ghetto. But there are clumps of Irish and Poles on the South Side, and the Daley family lived in Bridgeport, a few blocks from Comiskey Park, and were White Sox fans.

The North Side is now roughly split between white and Hispanic, with many Mexicans intermarrying with the Irish, Italians and Poles of the North and Northwest Sides, due to their common Catholicism.

But racial issues seem to have always been with Chicago, and have never gone away. There were race riots on the South Side in 1910, following Jack Johnson, the 1st black Heavyweight Champion, defeating the previously undefeated former Champion, "Great White Hope" Jim Jeffries; another on the South Side in 1919; one in Cicero in 1951; and on the West Side in 1966 and 1968, the latter after the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Just as the stereotype of New Yorkers getting old is moving to Florida, when Chicagoans get old, they tend to go to Arizona. Part of that is due to baseball, as Cubs owner Phil Wrigley owned a hotel in the Phoenix area, and moved the team's Spring Training there. The White Sox moved their Spring Training there as well.

Chicago has beaches! If not boardwalks. Lake Michigan even has tides. You can swim or get a tan while seeing a spectacular skyline -- something difficult, though not impossible, to do in New York City -- at Montrose Beach, 4400 N. Lake Shore Drive (Bus 146 to Marine Drive and Montrose, then a 15-minute walk east); Oakwood Beach, 4100 S. Lake Shore Drive (Red Line to 47th Street, then Bus 43 to Oakenwald & 43rd, then a 10-minute walk over Lake Shore Drive and north); and 57th Street Beach, 5700 S. Lake Shore Drive (Bus 10 to the Museum of Science and Industry, then a 10-minute walk east).

Going In. From 1929 to 1994, the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks played at Chicago Stadium, "the Madhouse on Madison," at 1800 W. Madison Street at Wood Street. The NBA's Bulls played there from 1967 to 1994.

The United Center opened across the street at 1901 W. Madison at Honore Street. Naming rights were bought by the O'Hare-based airline. The public transportation situation is a little tricky. You can take the CTA Blue Line to Illinois Medical District Station, and then walk 2 blocks up Ogden Avenue and 5 blocks up Wood Street. Or you can take the Green Line or the Pink Line (no joke: The CTA acutally does have a Pink Line) to Ashland, walk 4 blocks down Ashland Avenue, and then walk 3 blocks down Madison Street. The best way is to take the Number 20 bus, which goes right down Madison.

If you drive in, parking can be had for as little as $5.00. What you don't want to do is park outside of official lots. In a 1992 article, in advance of Chicago Stadium hosting the NBA and Stanley Cup Finals at the same time, a writer for Sports Illustrated suggested that, due to their success having been more recent, Bulls fans were much more likely than Blackhawks fans to say, "I got a great parking space, over in those condos!" Those aren't condos: Those are West Side housing projects.

However you go in, you're least likely to enter from the west side (Damen Avenue). More likely, you'll go in from the north (Madison Street), east (Wood Street) or south (Monroe Street) side. The rink is laid out east-to-west. The Blackhawks attack twice toward the west end.

The United Center has hosted both the Blackhawks and the Bulls since the 1994-95 season, although, due to the 1994 NHL strike, it was January 1995 before the Hawks actually took their new ice for the 1st time. It is 1 of 10 arenas currently home to both an NBA team and an NHL team.

Each team has now won 6 World Championships, and each has won 3 since it moved in. The Bulls clinched at home in 1996 and 1997, the Blackhakws in 2015. At Chicago Stadium, the Blackhawks clinched at home in 1934 and 1938, the Bulls in 1992. The city's 1st NBA team, the Chicago Stags, played there from 1946 to 1950, and reached the 1st NBA Finals there in 1947.

The United Center has become Chicago's top venue for concerts and professional wrestling, and it hosted the 1996 Democratic Convention, at which President Bill Clinton was nominated for a 2nd term. The Democrats had their Convention at Chicago Stadium in 1932, '40 and '44, nominating Franklin D. Roosevelt each time; the Republicans also had their Convention there in '32 (renominating Hebert Hoover) and '44 (nominating Thomas E. Dewey).

Chicago Stadium hosted 4 fights for the Heavyweight Championship of the World: Joe Louis defending the title by knocking out Harry Thomas on April 4, 1938; Ezzard Charles defending the title by defeating Light Heavyweight Champion Joey Maxim on May 30, 1951; Rocky Marciano defending the title he'd won from Jersey Joe Walcott the year before by knocking Walcott out in the 1st round on May 15, 1953; and Light Heavyweight Champion Archie Moore, the last man Marciano beat before his retirement vacated the title, facing Olympic champion Floyd Patterson, with Patterson winning, on November 30, 1956.

Elvis Presley gave concerts at Chicago Stadium on June 16 and 17, 1972; October 14 and 15, 1976; and May 1 and 2, 1977 -- meaning he was singing while burglars were breaking into the Watergate complex in Washington, and while Chris Chambliss as hitting a Pennant-winning home run for the Yankees. The Three Tenors -- Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and José Carreras -- sang at the United Center on December 17, 2000.

The United Center hosted the NCAA Frozen Four in 2017 season, and hosts the annual Champions Classic, a college basketball season-opening tournament.

Food. As one of America's greatest food cities, in Big Ten Country where tailgate parties are practically a sacrament, you would expect the Chicago sports venues to have lots of good options. The United Center lives up to this obligation.

The north side of the arena has DiGiorno pizza, a Captain Morgan/Don Julio cocktail bar, Madison Street Eats and a Ketel One cocktail bar. The east side has Chicago Dish pizza, Chicago Burger, and a Goose Island cocktail bar. The south side has Monroe Street Eats and a Smirnoff/Crown Royal cocktail bar. The west side has Leghorn Chicken, a Crown Royal Whiskey Bar and a Sweet Baby Rays barbecue stand. That's just on the 100 Level. The 300 Level has fewer theme stands, but quite a few of them, including Breakaway (in keeping with the hockey theme) and Fast Break (the basketball theme).

Team History Displays. The Blackhawks' banners are at the east, Wood Street, side of the building. The Blackhawks' banners are at the west, Damen Avenue, side.

Chicago Stadium in its Blackhawks setup

The Blackhawks have banners for their 6 Stanley Cups: 1934, 1938, 1961, 2010, 2013 and 2015. (Their 49-year drought seemed impossible to break, but for today's kids, it seems impossible to imagine.) They have 16 banners for Division titles (from 1970 to 2017), 2 banners for President's Trophies (1991 and 2013), and 4 banners for Conference Championships (1992, 2010, 2013 and 2015). They do not have banners for pre-1992 seasons in which they reached the Stanley Cup Finals (1931, 1944, 1962, 1965, 1971 and 1973), unless they also won the Division in those years.

The Blackhawks have retired 6 numbers for 7 players. On October 19, 1980, the Hawks retired Number 21 for the recently retired center Stan Mikita, a member of their 1961 Cup winners. Due to a feud between left wing Bobby Hull and the team-owning Wirtz family, stemming from Hull's defection to the World Hockey Association in 1972, they hadn't retired Number 9 for "the Golden Jet." Dale Tallon, an All-Star defenseman, was acquired in 1973, and was given 9, and joked, "They forgot the decimal point." (Tallon is now the general manager of the Florida Panthers.) Hull and the Wirtzes patched things up, and his 9 was retired on December 18, 1983.

On November 20, 1988, the Hawks honored their 2 greatest goaltenders, retiring 1 for Glenn Hall (1961 Cup winners) and 35 for Tony Esposito (1971 and 1973 Cup Finalists). When the last regular-season game was played at Chicago Stadium in 1994, each man was given the banner for his number that had hung in the rafters, and was invited back the next season when new banners were raised to the roof at the United Center.

At Chicago Stadium's closing, April 18, 1994

On March 19, 1998, the Hawks retired 18 for center Denis Savard (1992 Cup Finalists). On November 12, 2008, they retired 3 for a pair of defensemen: Keith Magnuson (1971 and 1973 Cup Finalists, killed in a car crash in 2003) and Pierre Pilote (1961 Cup winners, on hand for the ceremony).

The Hawks dedicated statues to Hull and Mikita on the east side of the United Center in 2012. A plaque with the words "Chicago Stadium - 1929–1994 - Remember The Roar" is located behind a statue of the Blackhawks greatest players on the north side of the United Center.

In 2001, a 75th Anniversary Team was named:

* From the 1934 and 1938 Cup winners: Only right wing Harold "Mush" March. Goaltender Charlie Gardiner, and defensemen Lionel Conacher, Art Coulter and Earl Seibert (there in '38 but not in '34), Hall-of-Famers all, were not selected. Neither were should-be-Hall-of-Famers defenseman Taffy Abel and left wings Paul Thompson and Johnny Gottselig. Owner Frederic McLaughlin is also in the Hall. So are the man he sold the team to, James D. Norris; and his son, James E. Norris.

* From the 1944 Cup Finalists: No one. McLaughlin and Seibert were holdovers. The Bentley brothers, left wing Doug and center Max, played on this team, and were elected to the Hall of Fame. So was right wing Bill Mosienko, famous for his record achievement of scoring 3 goals in 21 seconds in a 1952 game. Defenseman John Mariucci is in the Hall of Fame, but for coaching at the University of Minnesota. Left wing Roy Conacher (Lionel's brother, and also brother of Toronto Hall-of-Famer Charlie) and defenseman Bill Gadsby played for the Hawks in the late 1940s and early '50s, and made the Hall of Fame.

* From the 1961 Cup winners: Hull, Hall, Pilote and Mikita. They, owner Art Wirtz, head coach Rudy Pilous, head coach Tommy Ivan, and defenseman Al Arbour were elected to the Hall. It should be noted that, while Arbour was an All-Star for the Hawks, he was elected for what he did as Islanders coach.

* From the 1971 and 1973 Finalists, but not the '61 Cup winners: Esposito, Magnuson, and left wing Dennis Hull, Bobby's brother, a.k.a. the Silver Jet. Esposito is in the Hall of Fame. So is his brother, Phil Esposito, who played the 1st 4 seasons of his career with the Hawks, and then was sent to Boston in one of the most-mocked trades in NHL history. And his Bruin teammate, Bobby Orr, played 26 games for the Hawks in 1976, '77 and '78 before his injuries forced him to retire at age 30.

* From between the 1973 and 1992 Finalists: Savard; Defensemen Doug Wilson, Pat Stapleton and Bill White; and left wing Al Secord. Savard, Wilson and 1980s head coach Bob Pulford are in the Hall of Fame.

* From the 1992 Finalists: Goaltender Ed Belfour, defenseman Chris Chelios, center Jeremy Roenick, and right wing Steve Larmer. Chelios, Belfour, Dominik Hasek (then Belfour's backup, so not elected for what he did in Chicago), left wing Michel Goulet, and owner Bill Wirtz are in the Hall of Fame.

* Right wing Tony Amonte was with the Hawks at the time of the 2001 vote. Obviously, no one from the 3 recent Cups was selected.

* While the Blackhawk teams that won the 2010, 2013 and 2015 Stanley Cups came after the 75th Anniversary Team, one of their number has since been elected to the Hall of Fame: Marián Hossa.

Gardiner, Hull, Hall, Mikita, Esposito, Chelios, 1938 Cup hero Earl Seibert, 1940s star brothers Max and Doug Bentley, and 1950s star Bill Gadsby were named to The Hockey News' 100 Greatest Players in 1998. Max Bentley, Hall, Hull, Mikita, Esposito, Savard, Chelios, 2010s star Duncan Keith, and current Blackhawks Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane were named to the NHL's 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players in 2017. Stapleton, who also played for the Chicago Cougars of the World Hockey Association, was named to the WHA's All-Time Team.

Gardiner and Conacher were named to the NHL All-Star Team that opposed the host Toronto Maple Leafs in the Ace Bailey Benefit Game in 1934. Gottselig and Marsh were named to the team that opposed a combined Canadiens and Maroons team in the Howie Morenz Memorial Game at the Montreal Forum in 1937. Gottselig and Seibert -- note the difference in the spelling, they were not related -- played for the team that faced the Canadiens in the Babe Siebert Memorial Game at the Forum in 1939.

The Bentley brothers and Bill Mosienko -- best known for his 1952 feat of scoring 3 goals in a span of 21 seconds against the Rangers -- were on the team that faced the defending Champion Leafs in the 1st official NHL All-Star Game in 1947.

Dave Christian and Jack O'Callahan of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team went on to play for the Blackhawks. Esposito, Mikita, Stapleton, White and Dennis Hull were named to the Team Canada that faced the Soviets in the 1972 Summit Series. Bobby was not: It was only open to NHL players, and he had just jumped to the WHA. As a result of not being selected for that Team Canada, Canada's Walk of Fame is an honor that Dennis -- as well as Mikita, Stapleton, White, Esposito and his brother Phil Esposito, a Blackhawk at the beginning of his career -- has received, but Bobby hasn't.

Hull, Mikita, Pulford, Ivan, Mariucci, and former owners James D. Norris, and Art and Bill Wirtz all received the Lester Patrick Trophy, for contributions to hockey in America. Lloyd Pettit and Pat Foley have received the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award, considered election to the Hockey Hall of Fame for broadcasters.

Historically, the Hawks' biggest rivals are the Detroit Red Wings. These 2 teams have been trying to beat each other's brains out since they were both founded in 1926. The Wings have won 410 games, the Hawks 335, with 85 ties. They've faced each other in the Playoffs 16 times, although with the recent NHL realignment, another matchup is only possible in the Stanley Cup Finals. The Hawks have won 9 of these series, the Wings 7. The Hawks beat the Wings in the Finals in 1934 and 1961.

Geographically, the Hawks' other big rivals are the St. Louis Blues. This time, the Hawks lead, 188 to 162, with 35 ties. There have been 12 Playoff meetings, with the Hawks winning 8.

Stuff. The Blackhawks Store and the Bull Market -- 2 sides of a large store -- are on the lower level of the arena's west end. They may sell Indian headdresses and foam tomahawks, in keeping with the "Blackhawk" image.

Chicago is a great literary city, and while the Cubs have been seen as the city's most romantic sports, there have been some good books about the Blackhawks. George Vass wrote The Chicago Black Hawks Story in 1970. (Until 1986, when the team's original charter was found, and the name of it was found to be written as one word, "Blackhawks," it was usually written as two words, "Black Hawks." This made sense, as the team was named after Chief Black Hawk, the early 19th Century leader of Native American tribes in the Midwest.)

Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Verdi and former head coach Billy Reay collaborated on Chicago Blackhawks: Seventy-Five Years in 2000 (a little early). Lew Freedman recently published Chicago's Big Teams: Great Moments of the Cubs, Bears, White Sox, Blackhawks and Bulls.

DVD packages are available for the 2010, 2013 and 2015 Cup wins.

During the Game. A November 19, 2014 article on The Hockey News' website ranked the NHL teams' fan bases, and listed the Blackhawks' fans as 2nd, behind those of the Toronto Maple Leafs: "Hawks fans are boisterous and publicly supportive. Spoiled with wins, though."

Nevertheless, they still came out 20,000 strong during that long stretch from their Conference Finals berth of 1995 until 2007, when longtime cheapskate owner William Wadsworth "Bill" Wirtz died and his son William Rockwell "Rocky" Wirtz took over and rebuilt the team. This was a time when the Hawks were barely even relevant: Only the low level of support for soccer and thus for the Chicago Fire, and for women's basketball and thus for the Chicago Sky, kept them from being the 5th team in a 5-team town; instead, they were 5th out of 7, behind the Bears, Cubs, Bulls and White Sox.

The United Center is on the West Side, but the well-policed parking lots should buffer you from neighborhood crime. Chicago fans can get a bit rough, and they do like to drink. However, if you don't antagonize them, they will probably give you no worse than a bit of verbal.

This Friday night's game against the Devils will not feature a promotion. Wayne Messmer, former Cubs public address announcer, used to sing the National Anthem for both the Cubs and the Blackhawks. But when he became part-owner of the minor-league Chicago Wolves, the Hawks dropped him. Jim Cornelison has sung the Anthem for both the Blackhawks and the Bulls since 2008.

The Blackhawks' mascot is Tommy Hawk (as opposed to "tomahawk"), a black hawk wearing the 4 feathers shown on the team's logo, in colors red, green, yellow and orange. He has been elected to the Mascot Hall of Fame.

The main chant for Blackhawks fans is "Let's go, Hawks!" -- definitely not, "Let's go, Blackhawks! (Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)," because, to a Chicagoan, it sounds too much like, "Let's go, Red Wings!" Wings vs. Colorado Avalanche was never a real rivalry: Wings vs. Hawks has been going on since 1926. However, unlike us, and Islanders fans, with our "Rangers suck!" chant (and our addition of "Flyers swallow!"), they only use "Dee-troit sucks!" when they're playing the Wings. Otherwise, they put that chant away.

The goal song is "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis: "Dip-diddle-ip-diddle-ip... " And their victory song is the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Old Thing Back." A little touch of our Tri-State Area on Chicago's West Side.

After the Game. The neighborhood should be safe after a day game, but after a night game, with all that extra time to drink, it can get a little dodgy. As I said, leave them alone, and they'll probably leave you alone.

As I said, the parking lots are a buffer zone against the dodgy neighborhood, but also put distance between the arena and any bars or restaurants worth going to: None are in the vicinity.

If you want to be around other New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, Racine Plumbing Bar and Grill is known to be a place where New York Giants fans gather. 2642 N. Lincoln Avenue at Kenmore. Brown or Purple Line to Diversey. And The Country Club, formerly Rebel Bar and Grill, shows Jets games. It's just south of Wrigley at 3462 N. Clark at Cornelia Avenue.

If your visit to Chicago is during the European soccer season (which were are now in), the best place to watch your favorite club is at The Globe Pub, 1934 W. Irving Park Rd., about 6 miles northwest of The Loop. Brown Line to Irving Park.

Sidelights. Chicago is one of the best sports cities, not just in America, but on the planet. Check out the following – but do it in daylight, as the city's reputation for crime, while significantly reduced from its 1980s peak, is still there.

On November 30, 2018, Thrillist published a list of "America's 25 Most Fun Cities," and, as you might expect from America's 3rd-largest city, Chicago came in 3rd.

* Wrigley Field. Built in 1914 for the Chicago Whales of the Federal League, and home of the Cubs since 1916, it is by far the oldest ballpark in the National League, and only Fenway Park in Boston is older among North American major league sports venues.

The Cubs have never won the World Series here, but won 6 Pennants between 1918 and 1945 -- and none since. They've made the Playoffs 7 times in the last 32 seasons (including this year), which is better than some teams have done over that stretch -- but no Pennants. The Bears played here from 1921 to 1970, and won 8 NFL Championships between 1921 and 1963. It hosted the NHL Winter Classic in 2009, with the Hawks losing to the Wings. Wrigley (still known as Cubs Park) was also home of the Chicago Tigers, who played in the NFL only in its 1st season, 1920.

If you go, don't watch a game from one of the rooftops on Waveland (left field) or Sheffield (right field) Avenues. What's the point of watching a game at Wrigley Field if you're not in Wrigley Field? 1060 W. Addison Street at Clark Street. Red Line to Addison.

* Guaranteed Rate Field. Home of the White Sox since 1991, and originally named the new Comiskey Park and later U.S. Cellular Field, they've made the Playoffs 4 times since, including winning the 2005 World Series. 333 W. 35th Street at Shields Avenue (a.k.a. Bill Veeck Drive), off the Dan Ryan Expressway. Red Line to Sox-35th.

* Site of old Comiskey Park. The longtime home of the White Sox, 1910 to 1990, was across the street from the new one, at 324 W. 35th Street, is now a parking lot, with its infield painted in. This was the home field of Big Ed Walsh (the pitcher supposedly helped design it to be a pitchers' park), Eddie Collins, Shoeless Joe Jackson and the rest of the "Black Sox," Luke Appling, the great double-play combination of Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox of the '59 "Go-Go White Sox," Dick Allen, the 1977 "South Side Hit Men" of Richie Zisk and Oscar Gamble, and the 1983 Division Champions of Carlton Fisk, Ron Kittle, LaMarr Hoyt and Harold Baines.

The old Comiskey was also where future Yankee stars Russell "Bucky" Dent and Rich "Goose" Gossage began their careers, and where, in the last game the Yankees ever played there, Andy Hawkins pitched a no-hitter – and lost, thanks to his own walks and 3 errors in the 8th inning.

The NFL's Chicago Cardinals played there from 1922 to 1959, and the franchise, now the Arizona Cardinals, won what remains their only NFL Championship Game (they didn't call 'em Super Bowls back then) there in 1947. The Chicago Sting of the old North American Soccer League played there from 1980 to 1982, won the league title in 1981 and 1984, and hosted the 1st leg of Soccer Bowl '84.

Comiskey Park hosted 3 fights for the Heavyweight Championship of the World: Joe Louis winning the title by knocking out "Cinderella Man" Jim Braddock on June 22, 1937; Ezzard Charles defeating Jersey Joe Walcott for the title vacated by Louis' retirement on June 22, 1949; and Sonny Liston knocking out Floyd Patterson to take the title on September 25, 1962.

* Previous Chicago ballparks. The Cubs previously played at these parks:

State Street Grounds, also called 23rd Street Grounds, 1874-77, winning the NL's 1st Pennant in 1876, 23rd, State, and Federal Streets & Cermak Road (formerly 22nd Street), Red Line to Cermak-Chinatown.

Lakefront Park, also called Union Base-Ball Grounds and White-Stocking Park (the Cubs used the name "Chicago White Stockings" until 1900, and the AL entry then took the name), 1878-84, winning the 1880, 1881 and 1882 Pennants, Michigan Avenue & Randolph Street in the northwest corner of what's now Millennium Park, with (appropriately) Wrigley Square built on the precise site. Randolph/Wabash or Madison/Wabash stops on the Loop.

West Side Park I, 1885-91, winning the 1885 and 1886 Pennants, at Congress, Loomis, Harrison & Throop Streets, now part of the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Blue Line to Racine.

South Side Park, 1891-93, just east of where the Comiskey Parks were built.

West Side Park II, 1893-1915, winning the 1906 and 1910 Pennants and the 1907 and 1908 World Series, the only World Series the Cubs have ever won, at Taylor, Wood and Polk Streets and Wolcott Avenue, now the site of a medical campus that includes the Cook County Hospital, the basis for the TV show ER, Pink Line to Polk.  (Yes, the CTA has a Pink Line.)

Prior to the original Comiskey Park, the White Sox played at a different building called South Side Park, at 39th Street (now Pershing Road), 38th Street, & Wentworth and Princeton Avenues, a few blocks south of the Comiskey Parks.

* Soldier Field. The original version of this legendary stadium opened in 1924, and for years was best known as the site of the Chicago College All-Star Game (a team of graduating seniors playing the defending NFL Champions) from 1934 to 1976.

It was the site of the 1927 heavyweight title fight between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, the famed "Long Count" fight, which may have had what remains the greatest attendance ever for a U.S. sporting event, with figures ranging from 104,000 to 130,000, depending on who you believe. It definitely was the site of the largest football crowd ever, 123,000 to see Notre Dame play USC a few weeks after the Long Count; that record stood until a 2016 Tennessee-Virginia game was staged at Bristol Motor Speedway in front of 156,990. The 1926 Army-Navy Game was played there, in front of over 100,000.

The Chicago Rockets of the All-America Football Conference played at Soldier Field in 1946, '47 and '48, changing their name to the Chicago Hornets in '49. They were not admitted into the NFL with their AAFC brethren in Cleveland, San Francisco and Baltimore.

Games of the 1994 World Cup and the 1999 Women's World Cup, were also held at the old Soldier Field. MLS' Chicago Fire made it their 1st home ground, winning the MLS Cup in 1998, and will return to it for the 2020 season.

There have been 14 matches of the U.S. soccer team played on the site, most recently a 2016 win over Costa Rica. The U.S. has won 7 of these games, lost 4 and tied 3. An NHL Stadium Series game was played there earlier this year, with the Blackhawks beating the Pittsburgh Penguins 5-1. The Grateful Dead played Soldier Field 9 times, including what turned out to be Jerry Garcia's last concert, on July 9, 1995.

Amazingly, the Bears played at Wrigley from 1921 to 1970, with the occasional single-game exception. The story I heard is that Bears founder-owner-coach George Halas was a good friend of both the Wrigley and Veeck families, and felt loyalty to them, and that's why he stayed at Wrigley even though it had just 47,000 seats for football.

But I heard another story that Halas was a Republican and didn't like Chicago's Democratic Mayor, Richard J. Daley (whose son Richard M. recently left office having broken his father's record for longest-serving Mayor), and didn't want to pay the city Parks Department a lot of rent. (This is believable, because Halas was known to be cheap: Mike Ditka, who nonetheless loved his old boss, said, "Halas throws nickels around like manhole covers.") The real reason the Bears moved to Soldier Field in 1971 was Monday Night Football: Halas wanted the revenue, and Wrigley didn't have lights until 1988.

A 2002-03 renovation demolished all but the iconic (but not Ionic, they're in the Doric style) Greek-style columns that used to hang over the stadium, and are now visible only from the outside. It doesn't look like "Soldier Field" anymore: One critic called it The Eyesore on the Lake Shore.

Capacity is now roughly what it was in the last few years prior to the renovation, 61,500. And while the Bears won 8 Championships while playing at Wrigley, they've only won one more at Soldier Field, the 1985 title capped by Super Bowl XX. The Monsters of the Midway have been tremendous underachievers since leaving Wrigley, having been to only 1 of the last 28 Super Bowls (and losing it).

1410 S. Museum Campus Drive, at McFetridge and Lake Shore Drives, a bit of a walk from the closest station, Roosevelt station on the Green, Orange and Red Lines.

* Site of Chicago Coliseum. There were 2 buildings with this name that you should know about. One hosted the 1896 Democratic National Convention, where William Jennings Bryan began the process of turning the Democratic Party from the conservative party it had been since before the Civil War into the modern liberal party it became, a struggle that went through the Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt years before it finally lived up to its promise under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

It was here that Bryan gave the speech for which he is most remembered, calling for the free coinage of silver rather than sticking solely to the gold standard: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

Now a part of Jackson Park, at 63rd Street & Stony Island Avenue. 63rd Street Metra (commuter rail) station.

The other was home to every Republican Convention from 1904 to 1920. Here, they nominated Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, William Howard Taft in 1908 and 1912, Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 and Warren Harding in 1920. When TR was maneuvered out of the nomination to return to office at the 1912 Convention, he held his subsequent Progressive Party Convention was also held there.

It was also the original home of the Blackhawks, from 1926 to 1929 and briefly again in 1932. In 1935, roller derby was invented there. In 1961, an NBA expansion team, the Chicago Packers, played there, becoming the Zephyrs in 1962 and moving to become the Baltimore Bullets in 1963 (and the Washington Bullets in 1973, and the Washington Wizards in 1997).

The Coliseum hosted a few rock concerts before the Fire Department shut it down in 1971, and it was demolished in 1982. The Soka Gakkai USA Culture Center, a Buddhist institute, now occupies the site. East side of Wabash Avenue at 15th Street, with today's Coliseum Park across the street. Appropriately enough, the nearest CTA stop is at Roosevelt Avenue, on the Red, Yellow and Green Lines.

* Site of International Amphitheatre. Home to the Bulls in their first season, 1966-67, and to the World Hockey Association's Chicago Cougars from 1972 to 1975, this arena, built by the stockyards in 1934, was home to a lot of big pro wrestling cards. Elvis sang here on March 28, 1957. The Beatles played here on September 5, 1964 and August 12, 1966.

But it was best known as a site for political conventions. Both parties met there in 1952 (the Republicans nominating Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Democrats nominating their host, Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois), the Democrats in 1956 (Stevenson again), the Republicans in 1960 (Richard Nixon), and, most infamously, the Democrats in 1968 (Hubert Humphrey), with all the protests. The main protests for that convention were in Grant Park and a few blocks away on Michigan Avenue in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel, one of the convention headquarters (now the Chicago Hilton & Towers. 720 S. Michigan).

The Amphitheatre, torn down in 1999, was at 4220 S. Halsted Street, where an Aramark plant now stands. Red Line to 47th Street. This location is definitely not to be visited after dark; indeed, unless you're really interested in political history, I'd say, if you have to drop one item from this list, this is the one.

Elvis also sang in Illinois at Assembly Hall at the University of Illinois in Champaign on October 22, 1976, and at Southern Illinois University Arena in Carbondale on October 27.

* Northwestern University. Chicago's Big Ten school is just north of the city, 16 miles from the Loop, in Evanston. Dyche Stadium/Ryan Field, and McGaw Hall/Welsh-Ryan Arena, are at 2705 Ashland Avenue between Central Street and Isabella Street. (Purple Line to Central.)

While Northwestern's athletic teams have traditionally been terrible, the school has a very important place in sports history: The 1st NCAA basketball tournament championship game was held there in 1939, at Patten Gymnasium, at 2145 Sheridan Road: Oregon defeated Ohio State. The original Patten Gym was torn down a year later -- don't be too hard on them, no one had any idea how important this historical distinction would become -- and the school's Technological Institute was built on the site. Sheridan Road, Noyes Street and Campus Drive. Purple Line to Noyes.

Welsh-Ryan, under the McGaw name, hosted the Final Four in 1956: Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, soon to be Boston Celtics stars, led the University of San Francisco past Iowa. These are the only 2 Final Fours ever to be held in the Chicago area.

The University of Illinois is in Champaign, 137 miles south on Interstate 57.

* SeatGreek Stadium. MLS' Chicago Fire played here, a stadium until recently named Toyota Park, from 2006 to 2019. The NWSL's Chicago Red Stars have played here since 2009. The U.S. soccer team has played here once, a 2008 win over Trinidad & Tobago. 7000 S. Harlem Avenue, Bridgeview, in the southwestern suburbs. Orange Line to Midway Airport, then transfer to the 379 or 390 bus.

* Allstate Arena. Known from its 1980 opening until 1999 as the Rosemont Horizon, this 17,500-seat area was built as a modern (for the time) suburban alternative to the ghetto-ridden Chicago Stadium. It became Chicagoland's premier site for NCAA Tournament basketball, rock concerts, "professional wrestling" and the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Mostly, it's known as the home court for DePaul University basketball, and the playing surface is named the Ray and Marge Meyer Court for the coaching legend and his wife. It's also been home to the WNBA's Chicago Sky (2010-17), minor-league hockey's Chicago Wolves, and Arena Football's Chicago Rush, winners of the 2006 ArenaBowl and hosts of the game in 1988. (The Rush, named for the city's Rush Street nightclub district, suspended operations in 2013, and are currently listed as dormant rather than folded.)

6920 N. Mannheim Road at Lunt Avenue, 18 miles northwest of the Loop, across I-90 from O'Hare Airport. Possible to reach by public transportation, but not really worth it: If you're pressed for time, and need to cross some items off your list, this should be one of them.

* DePaul University. Led by legendary coach Ray Meyer, and then his son Joey Meyer, the basketball team at this "mid-major" Catholic school has featured eventual pro stars George Mikan, Bill Robinzine, Mark Aguirre, Terry Cummings, Dallas Comegys, Quentin Richardson and Rod Strickland.

The Blue Demons' longtime home court was Alumni Hall, until 1979. It was demolished in 2000, and DePaul's new student center was built on the site. 1011 W. Belden Avenue. Red Line to Fullerton. Starting in 1980, they moved out to the aforementioned Allstate Arena.

In a few days, they'll move into the new Wintrust Arena, at the McCormick Place Convention Center. The WNBA's Chicago Sky will follow them next Summer. 2201 S. Indiana Avenue, at Cermak Road. Green Line to Cermak-McCormick Place.

* UIC Pavilion. On the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, this 6,972-seat arena opened in 1982. It was the 1st home of the Chicago Sky, from 2006 to 2009. 525 S. Racine Avenue, on the West Side. Blue Line to Racine.

* Arlington Park. Now officially named Arlington International Racecourse, this track, with a 41,000-seat grandstand, has been the Chicago area's leading horse racing facility since it opened in 1927. Jimmy Jones, the Hall of Fame trainer of 1948 Triple Crown winner Citation, and late 1950s Kentucky Derby winners Iron Liege and Tim Tam, said, "Arlington Park became the finest track in the world, certainly the finest I've ever been on."

In the spirit of Chicago's tendency toward innovation, Arlington Park was the 1st track to install a public address system, hiring horse racing's top radio announcer of the time, Clem McCarthy, to speak over it. It added the sport's 1st electronic tote board and clock in 1933, the 1st photo finish camera in 1936, and the 1st electric starting gate in 1940. One of the earliest televised major horse races was held there in 1955, with Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes winner Nashua defeating Kentucky Derby winner Swaps.

In 1973, hoping to lure Triple Crown winner Secretariat to the Midwest, the track's owners created the Arlington Invitational. It worked: Secretariat's owner, Penny Chenery, accepted the challenge, and Secretariat won the race. The race was renamed the Secretariat Stakes the following year, and is still run.

On August 31, 1981, it hosted the 1st thoroughbred race with a $1 million payout, the Arlington Million. That may not sound like a big deal today, but in 1981, when horse racing was a lot bigger than it is now, and an athlete earning $1 million in a season was a new phenomenon, it was huge. (With inflation, that $1 million would be worth about $2.7 million today.) John Henry was the winner, with Bill Shoemaker aboard.

A fire burned down the original 1927 grandstand in 1985, and the track reopened in 1989. In the interim, its meets were moved to Hawthorne Race Course in Stickney, home of the Illinois Derby. It shut down again from 1998 to 2000, for a renovation  that allowed it to host the 2002 Breeders' Cup.

This past September, Arlington Park was closed, and the Chicago Bears agreed to buy property, with the intention of building a new stadium on the site. But it won't be opening anytime soon, and it may take the entire decade of the 2020s to sort everything out, build, and open. 2200 W. Euclid Avenue in Arlington Heights, 25 miles northwest of the Loop. METRA commuter rail from Ogilive Transportation Center (formerly Northwestern Station) to Arlington Park.

* National Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame. Appropriately in Chicago's Little Italy, west of downtown, it includes a state uf Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio.  Other New York native or playing baseball players honored include Joe Torre, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Billy Martin, Vic Raschi, Tony Lazzeri, Dave Righetti, Frank Crosetti, Roy Campanella, Sal Maglie, Mike Piazza, Bobby Valentine, John Franco, Carl Furillo, Frank Viola, Jim Fregosi, Ralph Branca, Rocky Colavito, broadcaster Joe Garagiola, and the last active player to have been a Brooklyn Dodger, Bob Aspromonte, and his brother Ken Aspromonte. 1431 W. Taylor Street at Loomis Street.  Pink Line to Polk.

* Museums. Chicago's got a bunch of good ones, as you would expect in a city of 3 million people. Their version of New York's Museum of Natural History is the Field Museum, just north of Soldier Field. Adjacent is the Shedd Aquarium. On the other side of the Aquarium is their answer to the Hayden Planetarium, the Adler Planetarium.

They have a fantastic museum for which there is no real analogue in New York, though the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia is similar: The Museum of Science & Industry, at 57th Street & Cornell Drive, near the University of Chicago campus; 56th Street Metra station. The Art Institute of Chicago is their version of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at 111 S. Michigan Avenue, just off the Loop.

* Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If you're a fan of that movie, as I am (see my 25th Anniversary retrospective, from June 2011), not only will you have taken in Wrigley Field, but you'll recognize the Art Institute as where Alan Ruck focused on Georges Seurat's painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Other sites visited by Ferris, Cameron and Sloane were the Sears Tower, then the tallest building in the world, 1,454 feet, 233 S. Wacker Drive (yes, the name is Wacker), Quincy/Wells station in the Loop; and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 335 S. La Salle Street, LaSalle/Van Buren station in the Loop. (That station is also where Steve Martin & John Candy finally reached Chicago in another John Hughes film, Planes, Trains and Automobiles). The von Steuben Day Parade goes down Lincoln Avenue every September, on or close to the anniversary of Baron von Steuben's birth, not in the spring as in the film.

While the Bueller house was in Long Beach, California, the Frye house is in Highland Park, north of the city. Remember, it's a private residence, and not open to the public, so I won't provide the address. And the restaurant, Chez Quis, did not and does not exist.

Nor did, nor does, Adam's Ribs, a barbecue joint made famous in a 1974 M*A*S*H episode of the same title. Today, there are 18 restaurants in America named Adam's Ribs, including two on Long Island, on Park Boulevard in Massapequa Park and on the Montauk Highway in Babylon; and another on Cookstown-Wrightstown Road outside South Jersey's Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base. But only one is anywhere near Chicago, in Buffalo Grove in the northwestern suburbs.

Not far from that, in the western suburbs, is Wheaton, home town of football legend Red Grange and the comedic Belushi Brothers, John and Jim. John and Dan Aykroyd used Wrigley Field in The Blues Brothers, and Jim played an obsessive Cubs fan in Taking Care of Business. Their father, an Albanian immigrant, ran a restaurant called The Olympia Cafe, which became half the basis for John's Saturday Night Live sketch of the same name, better known as the Cheeseburger Sketch: "No hamburger! Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger... No fries, chips!... No Coke, Pepsi!"

Don Novello, an SNL writer who played Father Guido Sarducci, said the other half of the inspiration was the Billy Goat Tavern, originally operated by Greek immigrant William "Billy Goat" Sianis, originator of the supposed Billy Goat Curse on the Cubs, across Madison Street from Chicago Stadium, from 1937 until 1963. At that point, Sianis moved to the lower deck of the double-decked Michigan Avenue, since it was near the headquarters of the city's 3 daily newspapers, the Tribune, the Sun-Times, and the now-defunct Daily News. Mike Royko, who wrote columns for each of these papers, made it his haunt and frequently mentioned it in his columns.

Novello and Bill Murray, Chicagoans, were regulars at the Billy Goat, but John Belushi later said he'd never set foot in the place, so while the others may have drawn inspiration from it, his came from his father's restaurant.

Sam Sianis, nephew of the original Billy, still serves up a fantastic cheeseburger (he was there when I visited in 1999), he deviates from the sketch: No Pepsi, Coke. It's open for breakfast, and serves regular breakfast food. It looks foreboding, being underneath the elevated part of Michigan Avenue, and a sign out front (and on their website) says, "Enter at your own risk." But another sign says, "Butt in anytime." 430 N. Michigan Avenue, lower deck, across from the Tribune Tower. Red Line to Grand. The original location near Chicago Stadium has effectively been replaced, at 1535 W. Madison Street.

The Tribune Tower is a work of art in itself. Its building, Tribune publisher "Colonel" Robert R. McCormick, had stones taken from various famous structures all over the world: The Palace of Westminster in London, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, the Grand Canyon.  (He must've paid a lot of people off.) These can be seen at near ground level, but the building itself is so grand that it doesn't need it.

The building is also the headquarters of the TV and radio station that McCormick named for his paper: WGN, "The World's Greatest Newspaper," a line that has long since disappeared from the paper's masthead. 435 N. Michigan Avenue. Red Line to Grand.

The Wrigley Building is right across from it, at 400 N. Michigan. The block of North Michigan they're on is renamed Jack Brickhouse Way, and Brickhouse's statue is on the grounds of the Tribune Tower.

* Quad Cities. Rock Island and Moline, Illinois, and Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, are, together, known as the Quad Cities. Together, these cities and adjoining smaller towns have a population of about 475,000. (Davenport about 100,000, Moline 44,000, Rock Island 39,000 and Bettendorf 35,000). Not big enough to be major league -- but some people tried.

The 5,000-seat Douglas Park was the home of the Rock Island Independents from 1907 to 1925, including 1920 to 1925 in the NFL. In fact, it was the site of the 1st NFL game, on October 3, 1920, a 45-0 Indys win over the Indiana-based Muncie Flyers. It was also home to a minor-league baseball team, the Rock Island Islanders, from 1907 to 1937, winning Class D Pennants in 1907, 1909 and 1932. West side of 10th Street between 15th and 18th Avenues in Rock Island, 180 miles west of Chicago.

One of the oldest surviving pro basketball teams is the Atlanta Hawks. They began as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (they dropped Bettendorf from the "Quad Cities" description) in 1946. They weren't very good, and moved to Milwaukee in 1951, St. Louis in 1955, and Atlanta in 1968. They played at the 6,000-seat Wharton Field House, which opened in 1928 and still stands. 1800 20th Avenue.

There is a minor-league baseball team in the Quad Cities, but it's been known by various names since its inception in 1879 as the Davenport Brown Stockings. They've won 10 Pennants, previously in Class B, and in what's now Class A: In 1914, 1933 and 1936 as the Davenport Blue Sox; in 1949 as the Davenport Pirates; in 1968 and 1971 as the Quad City Angels; In 1979 as the Quad City Cubs; in 1990 again as the Quad City Angels; and in 2011 and 2013 under their current name, the Quad Cities River Bandits.

Since 1931, they have played at a stadium right on the Mississippi River, which proved a problem during the 1993 flood. The 4,024-seat ballpark was known as Municipal Stadium until 1971, then as John O'Donnell Stadium until 2008, when it became Modern Woodmen Park, as the fraternal organization bought naming rights. 209 S. Gaines Street in Davenport.

No President has ever come from Chicago, and none has a Presidential Library anywhere near it -- yet. Barack Obama has spent his adult life in Chicago, as a lawyer, law professor, and, famously "community organizer," before being elected to the Illinois State Senate, the U.S. Senate, and the Presidency in 2008 and 2012. Since he taught at the University of Chicago, his Library is being built there, at 6201 S. Stony Island Avenue. 63rd Street Station on the South Shore commuter line. It is scheduled to open in 2021.

Abraham Lincoln's Presidential Library is 200 miles away, in the State capital of Springfield. Many other Presidents have Chicago connections. Most notably, the 1st true Presidential Debate, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, was held on September 26, 1960, at the old CBS Studio, home to WBBM, 780 on your AM dial and Channel 2 on your TV. 630 N. McClurg Street. The building is no longer there. Red Line to Grand, then an 8-minute walk.

In the early days of American politics, any temporary meeting structure was called a "Wigwam," which is a Native American word for a temporary dwelling. Chicago's 1st Wigwam was at what is now 191 N. Upper Wacker Drive, right where the Chicago River splits into north and south branches. Abraham Lincoln was nominated there at their 1860 Convention. A modern office building is on the site today. Clark/Lake station in the Loop.

Another Wigwam stood at 205 East Randolph Street, in what was then called Lake Park, now Grant Park. The Democrats held their Convention there in 1892, nominating Grover Cleveland for the 3rd time. The Harris Theater is on the site today. Randolph/Wabash station in the Loop.

In 1864, the Democrats nominated General George B. McClellan at The Amphitheatre, 1100 South Michigan Avenue. A Best Western Hotel is on the site today. Red Line to Roosevelt. In 1868, the Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant at Crosby's Opera House, 1 West Washington Street. A modern office building is on the site today. Blue Line to Washington.

The Interstate Industrial Exposition Building, a.k.a. the Glass Palace, was where the Republicans met and nominated James Garfield in 1880, and both parties met in 1884, the Republicans nominating James G. Blaine and the Democrats nominating Cleveland for the 1st time. 111 South Michigan Avenue. The aforementioned Art Institute of Chicago is on the site today. Adams/Wabash station in the Loop. And in 1888, the Republicans met at the Auditorium Building, 430 South Michigan Avenue. It still stands. Harold Washington Library station, a.k.a. State-Van Buren station, in the Loop.

The old Cook County Courthouse, where the Black Sox trial took place in 1921 (and where a boy allegedly called out to Shoeless Joe Jackson, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" which may actually have happened) was at 1340 South Michigan Avenue, corner of 14th Street. The building has been replaced by an office building, with an Italian restaurant named Giordano's on the ground floor. Green, Orange or Red Line to Roosevelt.

You may notice some other film landmarks. The Chicago Board of Trade Building was used as the Wayne Tower in Christopher Nolan's Batman films. And Chicago stood in for Metropolis in the Superman-themed TV series Lois & Clark, with the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower as standout landmarks.

Chicago seems to lend itself well to TV dramas: Crime, legal and medical. Crime dramas set there include The Untouchables, about Eliot Ness and his Depression-era crimebusters; the 1960s period piece Crime Story, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Angel Street, Due South and Chicago Code. Legal dramas include Reasonable Doubts, Boss and The Good Wife.

The setting of the cop TV show Hill Street Blues was never explicitly stated onscreen, but there was much to show that it was obviously Chicago: The skyline, the elevated railways and expressways, the lousy weather, and the police cars with "METRO POLICE" on the doors were obviously patterned after Chicago's, saying, "CHICAGO POLICE."

At the start of the 1994-95 TV season, competing hospital shows aired: ER on NBC lasted a whopping 15 seasons, while Chicago Hope on CBS lasted 6; it lost the competition, but was hardly a loser. Oddly, CBS had previously aired a sitcom titled E/R, set in a Chicago hospital, but it only lasted the 1984-85 season. Starting in 2012, NBC began airing shows of producer Dick Wolf's "Chicago Franchise": Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med (hospital) and Chicago Justice
(prosecutors).

Other shows set in Chicago include Good Times, set in the infamous, now-demolished Cabrini-Green housing project; Punky Brewster; the related sitcoms Perfect Strangers and Family Matters (Great shows? Well, of course, they were, don't be ridiculous!); Married... with Children, Fox's longest-running non-cartoon (though the Bundy family was pretty darn cartoonish); the fantasy series Early Edition; the TV version of Soul Food; Steve Harvey's sitcom The Steve Harvey Show (not to be confused with his current talk show); According to Jim, starring Wheaton, Illinois native Jim Belushi; the inaptly named (it was, after all, a comedy) Andy Richter Controls the Universe; Mike & Molly, a sitcom about a cop and his teacher girlfriend; the Disney Channel teen sitcom Shake It Up; Shameless; and, perhaps most classically, The Bob Newhart Show, with Bob as psychiatrist Dr. Bob Hartley.

Roseanne, its recent reboot, and its post-Roseanne "threeboot," The Conners, have been set in Lanford, Illinois, a fictional small town near Chicago, perhaps too working-class to be called a "suburb."

Nearly every one of these shows was actually filmed in Los Angeles, and the exterior shots were also mostly L.A. sites, so don't bother going to look for them. However, a statue of Newhart is at the Navy Pier, near its amusement rides, between Grand Avenue & Illinois Street at the lake.

As far as I can tell, Chicago has never been a setting for a soap opera, but 2 have been set in fictional Illinois locations: As the World Turns in Oakdale, and Another World in Bay City (not to be confused with the city of the same name in Michigan). On The West Wing, White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry was from Chicago.

*

Every American should visit Chicago. And with the Blackhawks having won 3 of the last 6 Stanley Cups, a visit to the United Center can be an epic experience. Have fun -- but remember, be smart, and don't go out of your way to antagonize anyone.