Chicago is divided. If you ask a Chicagoan where he’s from he has the option to answer in many ways. If the, “Where are you from?” comes from someone from another state he’ll just answer, “Chicago.” Actually, I’ve heard people from far away suburbs claim to be from Chicago, even when there town resembles Springfield. If the query comes from someone from Chicago, he answers with the side of town: North side, Southside, Westside. If the question comes from someone from the same side, he may answer which side of the train tracks or viaduct, unless it’s a Catholic from the same side of the city who is asking, then he will answer with his parish. If it’s a political gathering the correct answer is your ward number and your precinct number. If it’s a community police meeting, then we identify ourselves by area number and beat number.
And Chicago is divided in many other ways. Margie's ice cream or Gertie's? Are you a Cubs fan or a Sox fan? Anyone who professes to be both a Cubs fan and a Sox fan is considered a weenie.
Now, weenies, that’s another way that we are divided. Hot Doug’s or Fat Johnnies?
Thick or Thin Pizza? Now the real infighting begins. Chicago has the best pizza every in every category. It’s the one food that we can all agree on. And it‘s a food everyone can disagree on. The main argument falls into categories ‘THIN VERSUS THICK” Every neighborhood has their favorite joint.
If you love thin and you’re from the Southside, your heart probably belongs to Vito and Nick’s. If you don’t know pizza from corned beef and cabbage you probably like Fox’s.
Everyone can love Uno’s and Due’s thick stuffed pizzas because they are really not in anybody’s neighborhood. It used to be easy to love Lou Malnati’s but now they have grown to resemble a chain restaurant. Nobody from Chicago admits to loving a chain restaurant, even if they have really good pizza.
After we are finished dividing ourselves up by sides, parishes, areas, beats, wards, sports clubs, fast food favorites, and pizza joints then we segregate ourselves by race.
I wonder if those other people have anything good to eat in their neighborhood?
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