The June/July Issue Of Chicago Magazine

I just finished reading the June/July issue of Chicago Magazine, and there are a lot of interesting articles in this month's issue. The cover story, titled Pritzker's Moment, features an interview with Illinois governor JB Pritzker. I know Pritzker is a billionaire and comes from a wealthy family, but I did not know about his rather tragic life during his younger years. In the article, he discusses his confrontations with Trump but says he is not thinking about running for president, which probably means he is. There is also an interesting article about alleys in Chicago, which were mandated back in 1830, when the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commission hired a surveyor to map out a new town along Lake Michigan at the eastern end of the canal's route, in order to deal with horse manure. Chicago now has more alleys than any other city in the country. There is also a nice feature called Doorways of Chicago, featuring photographer Ronnie Frey's impressive photographs of Chicago doorways. There are also, of course, a number of articles about new restaurants, "The Hot List of 10 Places Everyone is Talking About," and a review of a restaurant called Ox Bar and Hearth. Of course, most if not all of those places I would never consider dining at in a million years. Big bucks being charged for very weird food.

The most controversial article to me is "The Best Suburbs to Call Home," featuring a ranking of all 205 of Chicago's suburbs with population of over 5,000, ranked from top to bottom "based purely on the numbers." Chicago Magazine Editor in Chief Terrance Noland writes that they hired analytics firm DataJoe to "collect and weight various statistical measures and crunch the figures." Which brings to mind Mark Twain's famous quote: "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics." I believe that is certainly the case here. As expected, six of the top ten suburbs are located along the upscale North Shore, while one is situated just a bit to the west of that area. The other three are in the western suburbs. The editor, Terrance Noland, in his introduction to the article, did express dismay that his hometown, Oak Park, with its pleasant downtown, tree lined residential neighborhoods, and Frank Lloyd Wright homes, was listed at a rather mediocre 57. And of course, at the bottom of the list were mostly the southern suburbs. There are too many suburbs to go into detail, but what I most want to know is why South Suburban Flossmoor, the downtown of which can be seen in the photograph on the right that I took back in 2010, is number 181 on the list, while Country Club Hills, where I spent a long 10 years while going to high school and college, is ahead of Flossmoor at number 178?

Country Clubs Hills, when I lived there, had no country club, only one hill, and not a single tree in sight. And all of the homes looked the same. When I went back to Chicago to visit back in 2010, it was still as ugly as when I lived there. On the other hand, when I checked out Flossmoor, it was as beautiful as ever - lots of nice homes, a pleasant downtown area directly across from the IC stop (Metra now, of course), and, best of all, the train station had been turned into a brew pub, as seen in the photograph on the left. And Country Club Hills got a higher rating? Has Flossmoor really gone that far downhill since I last visited? I am willing to bet it has not. Homewood, also a very nice suburb and the location of the original Aurelio's Pizza, was listed at number 140 on the list, rated worse than Evergreen Park (number 135), which to me will never win any beauty contests. I could go on and on, but I recommend everyone get their own copy of this month's Chicago Magazine and make up your own mind about that "best" Chicago suburbs list.