Artistic people were like the train travelers who were obliged to stop over for the night when they changed at Chicago. They stayed long enough to get a meal and a shower, then they moved on to more interesting places. I found little to interest me in the current arts scene during my years living across the street from Chicago in Oak Park. The new seemed derivative, the old stale and over-praised. That’s pretty much been the Chicago scene of every era, so these pieces, whether they are about public art or literature or the fine arts, have a strong historical bent.

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Still, there was no want of trying, and while I left town before there was reason to say it, any town that's good enough for Patricia Barber and Jeff Tweedy and Chris Ware and Andrew Bird is good enough for me.