Never a City So Real: A Walk in Chicago (Crown Journeys)

Author: Alex Kotlowitz

Rating: ⭐ 3/5

Date Read: 2013/05/23

Pages: 160

I liked the idea of this book: exploring the hidden parts of Chicago through the stories of its residents. As a Chicagoan, I’m aware that my Chicago is white, middle class, and fairly geographically constrained. Chicago is a segregated place: to see this, one only needs to watch the demographics change while riding the red line south of Roosevelt. Kotlowitz writes “the truth is that the city’s imaginary borders can be as impenetrable as the Berlin Wall had been.”

Unfortunately, Never a City So Real falls flat. There’s no connecting thread between the stories, no narrative structure, no argument made by the author. He didn’t even seem to pick his interviewees in a meaningful way. The people he profiles are his friends and family members: it’s a sample of convenience, and it shows. The whole thing feels haphazard.

The strangest inclusion is the section on Wicker Park, which was the only neighborhood I had heard of when I moved here from California in 2009. It’s a nice place to pick up some vintage clothes and used books, or wash down an ice cold PBR. However, Kotlowitz speaks of the neighborhood as if it’s still full of artists, muggers, and prostitutes. I can see how thrifted suits, beards, and neon mini-skirts might be confusing to someone unfamiliar with hipsters, but I can’t give Kotlowitz a pass on this one. I hate gentrification as much as the next person (I’m the type of urban nimby who would be livid if a Lululemon went up in my neighborhood), but to pretend that it wasn’t happening in Wicker Park when this book was written in 2004 is asinine.

I’d recommend this only to interested Chicagoans; anyone else can probably skip it.