On Cities

Chicago is dead, I hate to say it but Chicago has utterly destroyed herself. For she has locked down for too long to come back and function. Her streets once filled with people are now empty of life. Downtown Houston where I was a few weekends ago was at normal activity and much livelier than Downtown Chicago. Which is saying a lot! Downtown Houston should be less lively than The Loop at any time of day due to the much larger and more central nature of The Loop to the 2.5 million people that live in Chicago proper compared to the same number that live in Houston proper. I then went out to Lincoln Park out by DePaul University looking at the commercial streets there and saw nothing open. Pathetic. Over a extremely bad flu. NY and Chicago did not shut down over Polio (because people were tougher back then—because they were poorer.) I did not go to a comparable neighborhood in Houston. But the neighborhoods were functioning as normal because downtown was the hardest hit area in Houston an...