An excerpt from Chicago: City on the Make, a 12,000 word lyrical essay by Nelson Algren originally published in 1951:
Chicago. City on the make. A tangle of hustlers, gangsters, and corrupt politicians. A city of nobodies nobody knows, the ginsoaks, stew bums, and shell-shocked veterans who lurk in the alleys and linger in the weedy wastes underneath the ‘L’ tracks, and a town that sells out its dreams and disappoints its dreamers, but Once you’ve become a part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real.
I love Chicago—imperfections and all. Some are surprised to learn that 37signals, a software company, is based in Chicago rather than San Francisco or New York. Yes, we’re a company of remote workers. We’re even writing a book called REMOTE: Office Not Required. But I believe our Getting Real approach and REWORK perspective just would not exist without Chicago’s “real-ness” in our blood.
What do you love about your city or town? Does the surrounding culture affect how you approach life or work? I’d love to read about it in the comments below.
PS. Come experience Chicago first-hand by attending The Switch Workshop on Friday, April 12. We’re hosting at the 37signals office. Right in the heart of Chicago.
Nikki Bisel
on 20 Mar 13My company is based in St. Louis... An underrated urban hub of up-and-coming tech companies.
Why’s the city so great?
It’s a city full of neighborhoods – every 10 blocks or so the scene changes, the people, change, the food changes, and so does the mood.
There’s hope. In the past decade, St. Louis has experienced a renewal similar to those of San Francisco and New York in the 90s and Austin more recently.
Talent! St. Louis was recently ranked the number 1 city in the US for new tech startups. In addition, we have a ton of highly ranked universities to pull from (including Wash U and SLU).
Weather. We have all four seasons… Flowers in the spring, swimming in the summer, leaf raking in the fall, and snowmen in the winter.
Everyone knows someone. It’s a big city with a small town feel.
St. Louis has urban, suburban, and everything in between.
Parks. You don’t even need an office when the weather’s nice because there’s a park around every corner where you can claim a bench and get some work done.
If you’re in the area, St. Louis is worth a visit… If you’re looking for a social, forward thinking, financially-backed place to do business… This just might be your city.
Thomas Roth-Berghofer
on 20 Mar 13Since about two years I live in London. For both, my wife and me, it is the city we wanted to live. My wife is a fiction writer and I am professor at a university. Coming from a city of 100,000 residents London is so much bigger, obviously. The city does not only attract us. We do not need to visit others, people visit us. Inspiration and novelty is just beyond our doorstep. For us it is not the museums, galleries, and theatres. It is the palpable engergy around us. It is not distracting us, it is driving us. It broadens our horizons in story telling and researching.
Daman
on 20 Mar 13As a born and bred Chicagoan (who’s currently in Milwaukee) I love the startup scene that has blossomed there. I think you guys and Coudal are in no small way responsible for the RSS strength of presence in the Chicago tech scene, and I’m thankful. Having been up in Milwaukee for about five years now, I’m starting to see a growth in startups here, and there are quite a few in the Twin Cities I’m starting to hear about – I’m glad Chicago has put together a strong performance as an anchor of the supposed “flyover country” and it’s nice to see a lot more startups emerging outside of the established centers of SF and NYC.
Mark
on 20 Mar 13My town is campaigning to become a city. Perhaps we will feel better about being rude to strangers.
We are only half an hour from London and its gravity strips a lot of talent out of our town, but there are those of us who enjoy the space we get from living a satellite life.
It means there is not yet much culture here, but what culture does exist is doing its best to get established. There is not much of a startup community, but there is a pulse.
I live near a canal, and I can watch the daily commute of crows from roost to field and back. In summer the terns perform aerobatics above the water, occasionally diving in to snap up a fish. I can sit at my desk and watch pigeons and squirrels grab as much food as they can from the bird table.
There is space to think and move and breathe.
Anonymous Coward
on 20 Mar 13@Mark: Reading?
Martin
on 20 Mar 13I’m from Brussels, Belgium. We are a living contradiction. We are a major international city – capital of Europe and host to too many structure/administrations/headquarters to name them, and still have single family houses all over the place. We are in the middle of two communities that have trouble to agree on anything, but host a myriad of people of all nationalities (just take the metro…). We are generating a lot of economic activity, but the city still look like a provincial center, and living here is still affordable. Magritte’s pipe is not a pipe. The city of Brussels is not a city. I just love it.
drawtheweb
on 20 Mar 13I’m in Toronto, now the 4th largest city in North America (just passed Chicago earlier this month). We’re an insanely diverse city—the meeting place of the world. Housing prices are through the roof, but the city is safe and the local economy is strong.
Summers are HOT and typically humid. Winters are hit and miss, but rarely do we actually get significant snow. Autumn is just right.
Our transit system is 2nd rate and thus we struggle with congestion and longer that average commute times. Because of this, our company is equipped for remote work, but normally we’re all in the office.
There has always been a tech scene and notable start-ups would be Freshbooks, Wave Accounting, 500px and way way more. My firm resembles a start up, but slowly building a market and growing on revenue alone, thus we’re not ready to shell out the dollars to be right downtown with the cool kids.
David James Nicol
on 20 Mar 13I’m in the Shetland Islands, about 110 miles north of mainland Scotland, on the same latitude as southern Alaska. It’s an amazing place to live for many reasons. We’ve got astounding nature and wildlife, stunning scenery and generally endless ‘space’. Nowhere is more than 3 miles from the sea. Beyond all this we have generally great community spirit, a pretty special cultural heritage (check out ‘Up Helly Aa’ for example) and also amazing infrastructure and facilities thanks to wealth derived from the oil industry and fishing.
(It also happens to be the place that Shetland ponies come from. And real Shetland and Fair Isle knitwear. And Shetland sheepdogs too).
How does this all impact on my work? Well, I’ve owned and run a digital marketing agency here for over 11 years now. There certainly isn’t a community of experienced designers or developers hanging around waiting to be hired, so recruitment requires some lateral thinking. We’ve consciously focussed on hiring and training young local graduates but, right from day one, we’ve also always partnered with designers and developers from all corners of the globe, communicating via email (and Basecamp, of course). We strive to provide the same level of service you would expect from city-based digital agencies, but from a location which appears, on a map, to be in the middle of nowhere. The combined power of our extended global team allows us to do this.
I am very conscious that there are downsides to being based here. We certainly miss out on meeting up with industry peers from elsewhere in the world, as travel can be costly. There also isn’t really a start up community here either, so it sometimes feels like we’re battling away on our own. But these problems can be overcome, especially by tapping into on-line networks of like-minded people. The occasional visit to somewhere completely inspiring can help too. I popped across to MIT for their Entrepreneurial Development Programme a couple of years back, and that definitely left a lasting impression. (Perhaps it is easier to really value conferences, meet-ups and training events when it is not so easy to attend?)
Shetland really is a special place to live and work, although running a digital marketing agency from here is certainly not without its challenges. I guess this just makes it even more fun, though, and the advances in technology just keep on making geographical barriers less and less relevant. (That said, is there any chance of the next Switch Workshop being held here in Lerwick?)
Benjy
on 20 Mar 13A fellow Chicagoan, I share your sentiments… there’s a grounding in reality in Chicago that some other big cities seem to have forgotten. NYC and San Francisco seem to be another world while some of the newer cities (Atlanta, Dallas) seem more facade than real. While Chicago has the cutting edge brains in finance and tech, it’s also more rooted in its past of making things and understanding real business means taking something, adding value, selling for more than the cost of the good and the labor. Worked turning livestock into bacon and steak, worked making goods from the far reaches of the globe available to the far reaches of our country by mail order, and it works today…
Yi
on 21 Mar 13I live and work in San Francisco. Maybe there is nothing that can be written about this city and tech, but maybe there is. I actually don’t belong to any startup, or wear any special glasses. I don’t have an office, because I remote all the time. I just go to the library in the middle of the city each day, to get my work done. I like taking long walks from my home to the library. Because along the way, I see things. I see Hispanic nannies taking care of white babies. I see black men sleeping on the street. Sometimes, I am stopped by a beggar, and if I have change, I put it in his or her hand.
In San Francisco, the “startup scene” is the same scene where people have no place to go lives. Yet, these two worlds somehow coexist completely independently of each other. It is as if one world is invisible to the other. This pains me to see.
Mark
on 21 Mar 13@Anonymous (probably not a coward, probably reading on IE which makes commenting guesswork) – YES!
Valerie
on 21 Mar 13I live and work in Odessa, Ukraine. Quite far from the mentioned places) I love my city for its charm and the sense of history in the beautiful architecture and surrounding people. BTW it is quite common to some strangers to have small and often funny talks.
Don Schenck
on 21 Mar 13York, Pennsylvania here. A backwards, hick town with no technology “vibe”. It’s trying to become a town of artists … yeah … good luck with that.
Why do I like it?
I don’t. I’m way too talented and intelligent for this town (say what you will, but it’s true and you’d feel the same way if you lived here).
Why don’t I leave?
Because selling the house and moving all the STUFF I’ve accumulated over the past 17 years is just too much of a hassle.
And THAT, my young friends, is how you reach 53 years of age and realize your life is NOTHING like you thought it would be. Take note.
You have a dream or ambition? GO FOR IT!
Jamie
on 21 Mar 13Wow, very diverse stories from all of you. I’m learning about cities that hardly get “tech blog” coverage. Thanks for sharing so far.
@Yi, that is quite a paradox. I have good friends that aren’t tech workers and live in San Francisco. It’s a different world for them. Very “un-TechCrunch-like yay party over here rain money on me” atmosphere. I wish there were more stories about real San Francisco living that didn’t have Facebook, Google, Apple, etc as the main headline.
Yi
on 21 Mar 13@Jamie yeah, probably the same in Chicago, SF is a city of paradox. The tech population is relatively new to the city, and it is altering the landscape of the city as we speak. You have all kinds of people in SF, from different walks of life. If you’ve never been to SF, you’d be surprised how poor and dirty some parts of the city are. Sometimes I wish the distance between people can be closer here. I been to Chicago once, and I felt people are in general more friendly there. That said, the challenges of living in a city like this is what I appreciate about it.
Bob Stanke
on 21 Mar 13I feel the exact same way about Minneapolis/St. Paul. It is amazing the talent we have up here. We are the start of the “River Valley” tech region that spans from the Twin Cities through Wisconsin with some of the most advance companies of the past and present. Companies like Cray Research and Hutchinson Technology; companies that built the technologies companies all over the world use.
Bob Stanke http://bobstanke.com
Tim
on 22 Mar 13I moved from Chicago to Las Vegas to join the booming #vegastech movement. You definitely saw us at SXSW. Downtown, where I live and work, is experiencing growth like I’ve never seen before, with new brick-and-mortar businesses opening every week and construction everywhere.
People like to give all the credit to Tony Hsieh but it’s really way more than that. I encourage people to get off the strip the next time they’re here and take a wander up to Fremont East. The Beat is the hub of everything exciting happening in Downtown Las Vegas.
Alan
on 22 Mar 13New Orleans.
If you live in New Orleans, you accept risk far more consciously than most Americans. You know that live is short and the world is fleeting. You are regularly reminded, on some complex rhythm, that habit informs ritual and rituals create tradition. You see the messy jostling of expression and ingenuity in public space, taking over your neighborhood, and put on a pedestal for the entire city to see. It’s a city full of showmen, at once consummate performers and the genuine article. Creativity is social, not just among the players, but with the audience. That tradition is now mixing with others. There is a sense of urgency, an awareness that the status quo is unsustainable. The downside risk of doing too little far outweighs the risk of trying and failing. It’s a city with little to lose, confidence to win, and incredible imagination.
Jamie
on 22 Mar 13Alan, inspiring. I need to go there sometime.
anon
on 23 Mar 13I stopped reading this blog because there is so much 37 signals marketing.
Dhru
on 24 Mar 13@anon and yet you took time out of your day to come back and tell us….. Thanks!
anon
on 24 Mar 13@dhru enjoy living under your bridge!
Jared White
on 25 Mar 13I live in Santa Rosa and work in Sebastopol – both in Sonoma County about an hour north of San Francisco. I love being here—the pace of life is a little slower yet it’s still not far to travel to the City and the Valley. I also appreciate the burgeoning tech & startup communities here (which I’m heavily participating in!), as well as the emphasis on sustainable community/ecology building that is sometimes missing in the larger urban areas. We’re more likely to be interested in lifestyle and slow-growth businesses here than the quick flip or the IPO. 37signals fans might like it here. =)
Nate Burgos
on 26 Mar 13Thanks for asking, Jamie. Here’s a shout-out to Detroit, Michigan. Visited once. Happened to had met a few who want to help contribute to the city’s vitality. Also cool to see an urban garden movement. Discovered this video by Monocle magazine about local creative self-starters committed to making things better » “Retooling Motor City”
This discussion is closed.