I love Chicago. But I would never want to live there (again).
Growing up in Northwest Indiana, you are always aware that you exist in the shadow of one of the world’s greatest cities. All roads lead to it, literally. All the railways lead to it. Sometimes, it seems that all the culture leads to it. Most of our parents either worked in Chicago or worked for people who worked in Chicago. That’s what happens when you are less than an hour from a place. Northwest Indiana is closer to Chicago than most actual Chicago suburbs.
Chicago doesn’t think much about us at all, except maybe in the summer when they come to use our beaches and eat at our restaurants and stay in our hotels for a quick weekend away from the city (or pass through on their way to Michigan).
When I worked in Downton Chicago a few years after college, a rite of passage most ‘Region rats’ go through at least once, and I told people that I drove in from Indiana every day, they looked at me like I was from Mars.
“Indiana?!?!? That’s so far away.”
“Not really, it’s less than an hour.”
“Still”
The cognitive dissonance of someone who spent 45 minutes on the El to get from the North Side of Chicago to the Loop for work.
When I travel abroad and people ask me where I’m from, I simply say Chicago. This pisses off people who are actually from Chicago (and if I encounter a fellow Chicagoan abroad and they ask me where in Chicago I’m from, and I say Indiana, actually, I’m less human in their eyes immediately).
“You’re not from here!”
Well, I’m sorry, but I am. I grew up with Chicago TV stations, watching the Chicago news, watching Bozo on WGN, and cheering the Bulls during their reign in the 90s. Our football team was the Bears (definitely NOT the Colts), our baseball teams the Sox or the Cubs (and let’s be clear, NWI is neutral territory with fans of both teams living in peace). We went on field trips in school to all the major Chicago museums. We’ve all been to the Sears Tower once. We all still call it the Sears Tower for crying out loud. I’m a member of the Art Institute of Chicago. I attended college in Downtown Chicago (briefly).
The only difference is that there’s an invisible line on the map that separates us from Chicago, where the taxes are lower, cigarettes are cheaper, and you can buy fireworks legally (not to mention gamble, but Indiana no longer has a monopoly on that), and has superior beaches once you get away from the industrial sprawl (Chicago’s beaches are fake, not natural. Do you know where they get the sand? They truck it in from Indiana).
I haven’t worked in Chicago in 15 years; it’s not that I’m not willing to work there again, it’s just that commuting 12 hours a day no longer appeals to me. So, I get to live in Chicago the way I choose to. As in, I visit it a few times a month. We don’t really hesitate to go to Chicago, whether it’s for a sporting event, a symphony concert, or the Lyric Opera. Or a special exhibition at the Art Institute. Or if we just need something from a particular store on the North Side. Or the fact that my favorite barber (Truefitt & Hill) is on the North Side. Or we want to visit a favorite restaurant (the best Ramen noodles in the Midwest are in the Fulton Market District).
It’s only an hour away.
There’s power in that.
Chicago is always alluring. We can always go there. But the key thing is that we can choose to go whenever we like.
Then, when I’m done with Chicago, I can retreat back to Mars (I mean across state lines) and return to my home. I live in an idyll in rural LaPorte County. I have a nice-sized house, on three acres of grass and woods. The end of my street used to be a dirt road. It’s practically paradise. Why would I live in a city when I can live here? And then be in that city within an hour, do the thing I want, then return to my idyll. Though sometimes, I question this life choice when it’s midnight and there’s still 45 minutes left of the drive on the Indiana Toll Road until I can be in my bed.
I like this arrangement. The perks of living adjacent to a big city, with none of the consequences (which there are, and this can easily turn into the rant that small-minded locals would make about Chicago).
Locals here in NWI live in complete fear of Chicago. They fear Chicago’s problems coming here (what they really mean is Chicago’s minorities). A few years ago, when the Northern Indiana Commuter Train District (NICTD) spent a huge sum of money to upgrade the South Shore railway lines to Chicago, the number one criticism was that it would bring Chicago’s problems here much faster. This is ignoring the fact that the trainline has been there for one hundred years already, and a train journey taking 30 minutes less wasn’t going to be a motivation for someone weighing the chance to do crimes.
I’ve met people around here who have actually never even been to Chicago, and that’s not something to be proud of. How can you live next to the greatest city in the world (after London, IMHO), and never take advantage of that?
Another major benefit of living near Chicago is our access to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Anyone who knows better, reading this, will immediately think that’s not a benefit. Trust me, it is. The airport has seen better days, but they’re rebuilding it into the world-class airport it needs to be. But how cool is it that you can drive to O’Hare and fly practically anywhere in the world, directly? Last time I checked, you could fly to all six continents (obviously, except Antarctica) directly. Personally, O’Hare has been my gateway to the United Kingdom, with almost a dozen daily flights to the UK, and I’ve traveled there more than anywhere. It’s comforting to know that every day, there is a conveyor belt of planes that come from Europe, land in Chicago, turn around, and fly back to Europe.
Northwest Indiana is very disconnected from the rest of Indiana, much like Chicago is very disconnected from the rest of Illinois. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been to my own state capitol, Indianapolis. It’s a perfectly nice city, I just rarely have a reason to go there, and there is not much there worth driving almost three hours for. Why would I drive there to go to Ikea? The one in Bolingbrooke is closer!
Recently, the Irish national airline Aer Lingus made news by starting a direct route from Dublin to Indianapolis. It’s always good news when a third-tier airport gains an international connection. What was amusing about it, though, was that the partners involved spent some money on an influencer campaign to send Irish social media influencers to Indianapolis and portray it as this hip, interesting place that would justify an entire trip from Ireland to visit. Anyone from Northwest Indiana would find such a video hilarious. I don’t mean to be mean about Indy, but it’s a boring place, boring but nice. There will be more people flying to Dublin from Indy rather than the other way around.
There’s a movement in Indiana to merge it with some of the more rural counties of Illinois that feel they are being unfairly represented in Illinois because of Chicago’s political power. There’s a concurrent movement in Illinois to do the same for counties in Indiana. Indiana has even gone to the trouble of forming a border commission to explore the idea. If either state lost counties to the other, you know who wouldn’t notice at all? Northwest Indiana and Chicago. Which is probably one of the reasons why our current governor is trying to redistrict Northwest Indiana to neuter our political power.
The United States may be made up of 50 states, but those borders mean very little in practical reality. The real state borders these days are television broadcast area transmission areas. If you were designing the governance of the four states around Lake Michigan again, I doubt you would divide it up between four states. It’d be one state. Chicago. Its border would stretch from Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, around the lake to South Haven in Michigan, and South Bend in the east. It’s Southern Border? Probably US Route 30. Beyond that is Rural Indiana. Aka Mars.
It’s not something that’ll ever happen. But it’s amusing to think about. Until then, Northwest Indiana will continue to be wedged between larger powers, but with its own unique identity. It took me a long time to be proud to be from here, and I hope my fellow region rats understand the privilege we have living here, but also next to Chicago.










