Hey, all!

Hey, all!

Hey, all! I’m going to start running a campaign this weekend, and we’ve decided on Chicago as our city of choice. I’ve got the city guide, but can anyone recommend some good films or shows that capture the feel of the city? Never been there, and I’d like to be as authentic as I can.

19 thoughts on “Hey, all!”

  3. steve james is the best btw; his docs are always super chicago and super great. in addition to the ones mentioned in that article, Life Itself is a really great look at the life of Roger Ebert (another chicago fixture)

  4. Chicago native here – I dunno if a movie really captures the true feel of the city beyond the sort of stereotype things. So here’s some bullets of stuff that are part of my day to day:

    – elevated train tracks http://www.andrewclem.com/Photos/Midwest/Chicago_elev_train.jpg

    – Lake Shore Drive http://www.planckstudios.com/media/photos/huge/Lake_Shore_Drive_1000_Color_.jpg

    – the river downtown http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d0/66/da/d066da80174a1179fb559278fc1d1dbd.jpg

    – Houses/apartments like this http://s3.amazonaws.com/architecture-org/files/pages/curious-city-2-flats-02.jpg

    – Scrap collectors driving around http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3333/3231924063_36675231aa_z.jpg

    – Snow http://guardianlv.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Chicago-Reverses-Plan-to-Keep-Schools-Open-Through-Bitter-Cold-650×455.jpg

    – etc

    You can get some decent visuals from the Dark Knight movies too. Other than that, I have a hard time really differentiating this city from Generic EveryCity USA in my US game

  5. I’m also a Chicago native that took a brief respite as a kid in Kansas, and I’d super disagree about the Generic EveryCity USA thing. Kansas City is your Generic EveryCity USA. Chicago is not. My two bits.

    A big part of Chicago that you will not find in movies/tv shows is the different neighborhoods and the various cultures that make them up. Chicago is a VERY neighborhood driven place. Each one has its own history and backstory. Pop culture overlooks that fact and stitches the geography together in super weird ways. The city literally changes every few blocks from one neighborhood to the next.

    Also, you’ll want to look at the spooky shit hiding in the city, especially to help inform your Night faction stuff. It’s a city that literally burned down and was rebuilt on the scraps of what remained. We have ghosts everywhere. HH Holmes operated his murder castle on a site that currently has a US post office sitting on it. There is an entire world underneath the downtown part of our city on lower Wacker Drive.

    For architecture, I’d recommend looking up anything photographed or written about by Lee Bey, who used to be on staff at the Sun-Times. Lee is especially great at talking about historic stuff on the southside of the city. His official photography site is here, but it’s mainly for commissions, but if you poke around a bit you can find more of his writing. http://leebey.com/

  6. Megan Pedersen sorry, didn’t meant to imply Chicago was generic, but that I can’t pick out things to express it differently in a game than, say, Milwaukee.

  10. Thinking about this a bit, I think Megan Pedersen​ had the right of it with the neighborhoods. Head to Bucktown for long hair, craft beer, and fixed gear bikes, or the Gold Coast for blondes with expensive handbags.

  11. I used to live in Edgewater/Andersonville which has a history of being predominantly Swedish, but has more recently become an area where many LGBTQ families are moving. I now live in Rogers Park, which has a number of things going on in it including the main campus of Loyola University. My apartment is located in an area that has a large population of Muslims and Orthodox Jews. The two neighborhoods are only about a mile apart from one another.

  12. I’m over in West Rogers Park and it’s a lot of Eastern European families, North African Muslims, and Hispanics. White folks are a hard minority here.

    I used to live in Lincoln Square which is predmoninatly young white folks with young kids – soccer moms with strollers and Starbucks cups.

    Megan Pedersen​ I had no idea you were so close, and I’ve only ever met you at ValorCon 🙂

  13. Just moved to East Rogers Park last month. Hello neighbor!

    Aaron and I live in the same neighborhood, technically speaking, but a few blocks makes a difference.

  14. For those of you in this thread that know a bit about Chicago neighborhoods–and Blaze Azelski feel free to join in ’cause otherwise I’d just be asking you this on Sunday:

    I’m a player in this game–and like-as-not, I’ll be playing a werewolf who is a homeless runaway from rural Washington. What are some neighborhoods I might find myself living in?

  15. Alan Scott there are a lot of homeless people that live on lower Wacker Drive, which is essentially the city under the downtown Loop area that was built for traffic purposes. A lot of homeless folks also sleep/live on the lakefront. It’s like a big park that extends from the north side down to the downtown area, thanks to the Burnham plan.https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/WDUtQqk-wA0WNIwggUyCBRuDCfy18eE0pGcV-AQfdGkzlwGSqLJr_O2_9ZRU_eWRUd2vfsJJeGM4Gw=s0

  18. Alan Scott I didn’t mean to imply that I actually know anything about the city! I stopped there for a spell to visit a friend, but as I’ve sort of said before, I’m incredibly blind to history/culture in general. You could tell me anything short of “Chicago is made of rural farmland” and I wouldn’t know any better. I’m 100% not expecting a faithful recreation of Chicago, and wouldn’t be able to appreciate it anyway!

  19. Sorry for taking so long to get back to all y’all. Suffice it to say that you’ve given me a lot of cool info to spring off of, and a couple of my players here got the same! Especially the bit about how neighborhood-focused the city is; I’m going to lean on that detail as hard as I can.

    I’m going to post some of the stuff we established in session zero, but in the meantime: thank you all very much! ^.^

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