Summer

It's summer in Chicago. And if you've never lived in Chicago through all four seasons, you might not know that Chicago is the best place in the world to spend summer. We really earn the summer months and we take the season seriously. Everyone bikes and lazes on the beaches and spends long evening hours in Grant Park listening to free live music or playing in the fountains or tangoing/merenguing/waltzing through Dance Chicago. The first warm day arrives and it feels like the population of the city quadruples as everyone pours into the streets to enjoy the weather.

And there is an unusual mix of the everyday hustle and bustle of one of the hardest working cities in the world and a beach geography that juxtapose really beautifully. When I was a kid on vacation at the beach with my parents, there were things we commented on every year that we loved: the seagulls, the seafood, the smell of the ocean, the ocean sky. I get the first and the last all summer long in Chicago--seagulls and their plaintive calls that sound like summer and the vast multi-cloud layered expanse of sky out over the lake to the east and the plains to the west that is just as open and complex as the sky over the Atlantic.

It's nice to settle in to the best season of the year in the best city in the country. . .