Around North America: Chicago

Greetings Programs! That's Jeff Bridges' signature line from the 1982 Walt Disney Studios film Tron. It's also so how every Avalanche broadcast on Altitude Sports Radio begins. It ends with "Around North America and around the world on the Altitude Radio Network."
Around North America. That's where we travel (mostly, thank you Finland) to bring you Avalanche hockey. So when they asked me to add some reading material to the digital arsenal about the places we go, their history and the people we go with, we had no choice on what to call it. So let me be the first to welcome you to "Around North America". Come in, sit down, make yourselves at home. Grab a Reading Sweater and enjoy.

Actually, scratch that. Everybody up, we're going to Chicago.
There are a couple Windy City basics that need covering:
A. The Sears Tower is now the Willis Tower
2. It was never confirmed that Mrs O'Leary's cow knocked over a lantern and started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871
D. SuperFans is still one of the greatest SNL skits of all time
Located on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago is one of the largest urban areas and media markets in the United States. The skyline is almost as recognizable as New York City's, with the Willis (formerly Sears as we've learned) Tower and Hancock building jetting into the sky, and Navy Pier (originally called the Municipal Pier) reaching out into the ever changing waters of the lake. While the pier was used by the US Navy for training purposes during World War II, it was given the name "Navy Pier" in 1927 to honor naval veterans of World War I. Somewhat ironically, it was a prison during World War I for draft dodgers.
Food is always at the center of every Chicago based conversation, and whether you choose legendary classic Italian, Chicago-style deep dish pizza, hot Italian beef, a prime cut of legendary midwestern steak, or Cheeburger…cheeburger, no fries cheeps, no Coke Pepsi from the Billy Goat Tavern on Michigan Avenue, you can't go wrong. You will always eat well in the city of Chicago.

As one of America's centers for industry and culinary excellence, it should surprise no one that the combination of Chicago's people, music and culture have made it an entertainment hub as well. NBC has an entire night dedicated to the city with Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., One Chicagoand Chicago Med taking the nod from Ron Howard's Backdraft,a film about firefighters in Chicago from 1991and one of the greatest television show's of all time, E.R.
Earlier we referenced Saturday Night Live's skit "SuperFans", with Mike Myers, George Wendt and nightly peak physical and home cooked comedy from Chicago's favorite Chris Farley. That Chicago skit wasn't the first on SNL.We did not misspell "cheeseburger" earlier. Jon Belushi and Dan Aykroyd's skit about "The Olympia Restaurant" is a play on the above referenced Billy Goat Tavern. Belushi and Aykroyd moved their Chicago theme from TV to the big screen in a big way with 1980's symphony of silliness, The Blues Brothers.Whilst cruising around the Chicago outskirts of Joliet and Calumet City in a black and white 1974 Dodge Monaco police interceptor and disposing of more than enough perfectly good City of Chicago active duty police cars, the recently incarcerated Jake (Belushi) and his dry but brilliant brother Elwood (Aykroyd) play a show with one of the best show bands in the history of music to raise money for their former orphanage. Incredibly quotable and watchable, the penultimate scene finishes in Chicago's Hon. Richard J. Daley Plaza where the Blues Brothers' beloved car finally meets its end as they are pursued by likely every member of Illinois' law enforcement and military community.
A film made later but taking place earlier in time, Kevin Costner, Sean Connery and Robert DeNiro bring us The Untouchables. Costner plays Treasury agent Elliott Ness, charged with enforcing the 18th Amendment (the prohibition of the sale and consumption of alcohol) and tracking down Chicago's most notorious gangster and whiskey runner, Al Capone (played by DeNiro). Nobody can watch any of these shows or movies without thinking of the city of Chicago.
One of the bad parts about coming near one of the Great Lakes, is the fact that Avalanche television play-by-play voice Marc Moser loves to sing Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". It's not that he can't sing, he actually nails it. It's just that first of all, that was Lake Superior. Secondly, and far worse, no song get stuck in my head easier and for longer periods of time. We will visit Chicago (or Winnipeg, musical mecca of Lightfoot's home country) in November, and on Memorial Day I'll still be humming it.

As a matter of fact, to sign off, let's get it out of our heads and recap our brief journey through the City of Big Shoulders (a nickname coined by poet Carl Sandburg in 1914 as he described the city as "stormy, husky, brawling") with a song that Frank Sinatra made popular in 1964, "My Kind of Town (Chicago Is)":
Now this
could
only
happen
to a guy like me
And only
happen
in a town like this
So may I say to each of you most gratefully
As I
throw
each one of you a kiss
This is my kind of town,
Chicago
is
My kind of town,
Chicago
is
My kind of
people
too
People who
smile
at you
And each time I roam,
Chicago
is
Calling me home,
Chicago
is
Why I just grin just like a clown
It's my kind of town
My kind of town,
Chicago
is
My kind of town,
Chicago
is
My kind of razzmatazz
And it has all that jazz.
And each time I leave,
Chicago
is
Tugging my sleeve,
Chicago
is
The
Wrigley
Building,
Chicago
is
The
Union
Stockyard,
Chicago
is
One town that won't let you down
It's my kind of town.
Thanks for reading.