If you like geometry, you’ll love Chicago. The grid is straight out of math class, except Lake Michigan ate the right half of your homework. Everything starts at State and Madison, whose coordinates on the numeric plan that describes the whole city are 0 and 0. Addresses move out from there, with each 800 representing about a mile: 800 N. State is about a mile north, 800 W. Madison a mile west, 800 S. State a mile south, and 800 E. Madison underwater. Each street has its own number: Halsted, for instance, runs north-south at 800 West from top to bottom. And the streets at multiples of 400 tend to be major thoroughfares. If you live near Irving Park Road you tell people you live just south of “forty-hundred north.” Armed with a street guide and an address, you’ll always know exactly where you need to be. Just to keep it from being too easy, there are a few diagonal streets, some of which follow the paths of long-gone wagon trails; an address will give you one coordinate, but you’ll have to ask for a cross street for the other. Out here on the prairie, the grid substitutes for landscape: the numbers tell which way you’re headed and how far you have to go.
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Neighborhoods are odd-sized rooms laid over this rigid foundation. In the 1920s sociologists semiofficially divided the city into “community areas,” now 77 in number. Your actual neighborhood may vary: Edgewater is a community area and a recognized neighborhood: it also contains Andersonville, which you might well also call a neighborhood. Neighborhoods are different from wards, of which there are 50, each represented by an alderman in the City Council. At a Center for Neighborhood Technology Web site (newschicago.org) you can type in an address and learn lots of cool things about the property and the community area it’s in.
Parking downtown is extremely expensive, and traffic everywhere can be exasperating. Chicago on foot is the real deal, with people, textures, and buildings. But not everyone has the stamina to walk everywhere, nor do we all have the equipment and courage for bicycling, or the cash for cabs. That’s where the Chicago Transit Authority’s elevated trains, subways, and buses come in. It’s not illegal to use money on them, but it’s getting close. Buses still take exact change, but you pay extra–$2 instead of $1.75 with a card–and you can’t buy any transfers. Trains require that you buy a card in advance, either a transit card, available for cash from machines at stations, or the newer Chicago Card or Chicago Card Plus (chicago-card.com).
The CTA will get you to the near-in suburbs of Rosemont, Oak Park, Forest Park, Cicero, Evanston, Skokie, and Wilmette. Beyond that, you’ll have to deal with Pace (suburban buses) or Metra (suburban rail, which goes to Wisconsin and Indiana if you’re patient). Technically CTA, Pace, and Metra are all ruled by the Regional Transportation Authority. But in 32 years RTA has yet to unify its three fiefdoms’ ticket schemes. Check the latest at rtachicago.com/travel/
