wandeljw wrote:Serious debate going on about whether Chicago has street vendors selling hot dogs.
The most serious debates in Chicago involve food.
wandeljw wrote:I have seen Hollywood movies about Chicago where the male and female leads are walking on a street and stop to buy a hot dog from a vendor. In reality there are none. Hollywood sometimes makes Chicago look like New York.
There was an action movie set in Chicago where you can see palm trees during a car chase. (Chicago has no palm trees either.)
Some views of Chicago are over the top
Chicago Tribune (reg. req'd)
Published March 29, 2006
`There really are hills in Chicago," wrote Carol K.
She was responding to a recent column about the mountains looming outside an alleged Chicago airport in the new Fox sitcom "The Loop."
"When I lived in the Edgewater neighborhood," Carol K. continued, "I had a neighbor who one day became ill at work and took the `L' home. `I was so sick,' she said, `I could barely make it up the hill.'
"I must have looked confused because she explained that it was the hill between Broadway and Clark. I looked and sure enough there it was--a rise of a few feet over the half mile along Granville between Broadway and Clark.
"I later learned that Clark Street is one of the glacial ridges that run along the north side of town. And for all that time, I thought Chicago was flat. I just wasn't looking close enough."
Slopes in this city? Other readers also had curious tales. Here are a few more, slightly edited:
"Several decades ago, there was a mysterious ad campaign, `I will bring a mountain to Chicago,'" wrote Judith A. "My age cohort was agog with anticipation. It turned out to be merely an alleged mountain of flavor within (I think) Folger's Coffee. Perhaps this show is the fulfillment of that long-ago promise.
"P.S. If you rent the '50s turkey `The Beginning of the End' (Peter Graves saves Chicago from giant mutant grasshoppers attacking from Downstate), you will see what may be the same misplaced mountains in the background."
Giant mutant grasshoppers? Attacking from Downstate? Are you sure those weren't legislators?
"How you ever watched that putrid Fox offering long enough to notice the mountains must have taken the patience of a saint," wrote Larry G. "I could no longer give it my full attention after the lead character appeared to drive home to the barn at Lincoln Park's Farm in the Zoo."
Give the show some credit, Larry. At least the barn wasn't on a hill.
"I am all too familiar with the seeming inability of TV shows and movies set in Chicago to actually look, sound or feel like Chicago," fumed Steve P. "I cringe every time I watch `ER' and hear a character refer to a carbonated soft drink as `soda.' That show's been on the air for, what, 10 years now, and they still don't know that Chicagoans use the word `pop'?"
Pop? Really? I thought most bubbly drinks in Chicago were called "beer."
"Gosh, Mary," wrote Delia R., "where have you been? The mountains in `The Loop' are the same ones in `The Silence of the Lambs.' The feds flew right over them on their way to Calumet City!"
And from Kent K.: "It's obvious you have never enjoyed the breathtaking view of snow-covered Mt. Prospect at sunrise from the lofty Arlington Heights."
No, I haven't, Kent. I prefer the vistas from the Calumet Peaks.
This came from Mike K. in Springfield: "Your column, along with the recent death of Darren McGavin, reminded me of another geographical faux pas years ago, when McGavin played in the TV series "Kolchak: The Night Stalker.'
"Kolchak was a Chicago-based reporter who hunted down evil supernatural beings. The episode we all enjoyed down here began with the murder of a state legislator who drove his car over a cliff and into a ravine in Springfield.
"Cliff? Ravine? In Springfield? Now THAT would be supernatural."
Very strange, Mike. Did that legislator by any chance look like a giant mutant grasshopper?
"This reminds me of the first Halloween movie," wrote Mark J. "It took place in northern Illinois, if memory serves me, and all the leaves were on the trees on Oct. 31. That doesn't even happen in central Illinois where I live."
Leaves on Oct. 31? Why not? Some years, spring here doesn't start until July.
And a parting thought from Jim T.:
"It is so flat in Illinois that you can sit on your front porch and watch your dog run away for three days."