These days, much of the coverage that Chicago receives from national or global media outlets relates to the city's relatively high murder rate, so it's usually nice to see our town in the world's spotlight for its positive aspects. But oftentimes, outsiders covering Chicago can give the city a pretty trite representation. CNN's documentary series Chicagoland from a couple of years ago is a pretty good example—it might as well have been a campaign tool for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The latest effort by a major media outlet to make the "Windy City" seem like something it's not comes in the form of an obnoxiously puffy travel piece from the BBC aimed at giving business travelers the skinny on all of the food, art and culture that's available across town.
Sure, it gave some love to some very cool things happening around town—the West Loop's booming dining scene and the boutique hotel resurgence are accurately depicted. But anyone who lives here can't help but roll their eyes at the glaring inaccuracies in the piece. Because we're journalists and really enjoy fact checking, we broke down everything that's wrong with the British publication's article.
"America's third-largest city of more than nine million people has long been a favourite jaunt in the Midwest for mixing business and pleasure"
Granted, the population of Chicago's metropolitan area surpasses nine million, but it's not exactly fair to characterize the number of people who reside in the city proper as greater than New York or LA's. More, Chicago and Cook County saw a population decrease in 2015, which is terrible news for anyone who doesn't want to get screwed over by the city's ongoing pension crisis. Our taxpayer base is caught up shit's creek without a paddle (or a state budget) right now—but, hey, if inflating our population brings us more tourist revenue then that's (sort of) okay.
"The winter months in Chicago are icy and quiet as temperatures plummet to about 20 F or -6 C below freezing, without the windchill factor."
Anyone who lives in Chicago would not refer to a 20-degree day in February to be a "plummeting" temperature, but rather a balmy day in which they can wear four layers of clothing instead of five. At the same time, the sentence brushes over the winter months as if they're not an important part of a Chicago experience. From November through March, our bar scene is on point due to the fact that everyone's trying to drink away the pain from the cold.
"However, starting dinner past 21:00 is not the norm, so plan to head out for dinner before 20:00, said Gabrielle McCaig, head of community and communications at Via, a New York-based carpooling app."
Let's just ignore the fact that the author is citing a New Yorker when describing the "norm" for Chicago's dining scene, and focus on the fact that a 9pm dinner reservation is a perfectly commonplace thing here, especially if you're grabbing drinks beforehand. On the weekends, Chicagoans often have a late dinner—there's also a plethora of late night eats that we're wont to gorge on into the wee hours of the night.
"Situated along Lake Michigan, the sixth-largest freshwater lake in the world, the city has its perks, particularly in the warmer months."
The author is right about a couple things here: Chicago has its perks (which is why they're even writing the damn piece in the first place) and it's an amazing and inspiring place during the summer. But it's a bit weird to describe Lake Michigan as the "sixth-largest freshwater lake in the world," mostly because that statistic is dependent on which measure you're going by. It is in fact the sixth-largest in terms of water volume, but it's the fourth-largest in terms of area. Further, a lot of science folk will tell you that Lake Michigan-Huron is a single lake because the waters are joined through the open waters of the Straits of Mackinac. Combined, Michigan-Huron makes up the largest freshwater lake in the world by area.
Aside from all of these cringeworthy generalizations about the city, the piece is plenty welcome. Chicago will take revenue from wherever it can find it right now, and if the BBC article brings even a handful of money-spending business people to town, we'll take it—no matter how inaccurate their perception of the city may be.