Surely there's more to Chicago than a cute new boy and some waveless water? Well, yes there is.

There's the Navy Pier, with the Billy Goat Tavern and the Billy Goat Curse. This is the tavern made famous by John Belushi on Saturday Night Live with that whole "cheezborger-cheezborger-cheezborger" sketch.

There's the Saturday morning farmer's market with fresh fruits, vegetables, flowers, and guys. Right outside my hotel, in fact. A nice thing to come back to from my sunrise walk on the beach.

There's the "L" - the elevated trains of Chicago that run like the New York subway, only dirtier and less reliable, so I'm told.

There's architecture - hundreds of years of building fitted anachronistically side-by-side in some crazy jigsaw puzzle of metropolis. Tall brick buildings from yesterday pressed against metal and glass buildings of tomorrow.

There's the Married With Children fountain. Oh, it has another name, but nobody cares and nobody remembers it as anything else.

There are parks covered in metal tubes from which speakers hang for sunset concerts and movies in the park. There are nearly naked men laying beneath these metal tubes, tanning themselves in stripes and zigzag patterns without intent.

And then there's the Bean. The Cloud Gate. The navel of the Universe. This place of a million photographs and a hundred wedding poses a day. This place of happy brides and bitter bridesmaids reflected to infinity.

There are fountains of the faces of Chicago, spitting upon the youth who play below.

There is... Chicago. All of it. Hog butcher for the world... Stormy, husky, brawling...