“Downstate definitely is the road less traveled,” writes Glenn Coleman in Chicago Enterprise (August 1988). “Cook County alone generates nearly 70 percent of the state’s estimated $8.6 billion in travel-related income.” These numbers don’t have much effect on state lawmakers, however, who require the Illinois Office of Tourism to spend half its $10 million advertising budget and two-thirds of its development grants downstate–“marketing pig races, flea markets, and other quaint but relatively minor-league attractions outside the Chicago metropolitan area.”
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“To me, Chicago sometimes seems created not by architects, but by set designers, canny manipulators of mood and imagination,” writes James Morgan in Chicago Times (September/October 1988). “Bold backdrops, coupled with the city’s energy, give the town a certain dramatic presence; as a result, the place becomes a virtual sound stage for any kind of movie you want to live in. . . . A friend of mine puts it this way: In some towns, if you find yourself standing in a parking lot in the middle of the night, you’re simply standing in a parking lot. In Chicago, on the other hand, you stand in that parking lot and you can be in West Side Story, and the Jets and the Sharks might round the corner at any second.” Oh goody.
“Great Lakes surfing is sometimes known as ‘storm surfing,’ because the fall and winter storm seasons provide the best waves,” writes Paul Botts in the Great Lakes Reporter (June/July 1988). The annual Great Lakes Surfing Championship will be held at Grand Haven, Michigan, this Saturday. “Good wave days here . . . mean on-shore winds of 15 to 25 mph, which most often occur in low-pressure weather systems. . . . Some hardcore enthusiasts can be found in full wetsuits, clambering over ice to jump into the middle of raging winter storms clutching their boards, if not their sanity.”
