Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/52531
CLOCKWISE, TOP LEFT Scene along busy Michigan Avenue in Chicago; A statue of Grant Wood's famous "American Gothic" painting stands on Michigan Avenue near the Chicago River in Chicago; The lobby of The Rookery, one of Chicago's architectural treasures; The skyline of Chicago rises behind the Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park in Chicago. OPPOSITE Interiors of the historic Auditorium Theatre. the fair was largely intended to educate – and in a way still does as two of its surviving buildings house the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Art Institute of Chicago – its most wildly popular feature was a fun park that featured the world's first Ferris wheel. The park shut down when the Exposition ended its summer-long run, but the merriment continues more than a century later at Historic Navy Pier. The Pier, which juts into Lake Michigan near the mouth of the Chicago River, boasts rides, entertainment, and boat cruises that make it the Midwest's most popular tourist destination. That's just the sort of superlative Chicagoans love – and look for in their sports teams. Michael Jordan, considered by most fans the greatest basketball player ever, starred for the city's Bulls; and the Chicago White Sox won baseball's World Series a few years back. Distinction on a different level is awarded to the city's beloved Chicago Cubs, the other local baseball team, which hasn't won the Series since 1908 – a record in the annals of American baseball ignominy. But Chicago knows how to memorialise even a sporting disaster in grandiose style: in 2003, a mishandled baseball that cost the Cubs a National League championship was purchased by a fan for more than $100,000 – and demolished with explosives. So far, though, this attempt at exorcising the century-old curse has failed to produce results. Not surprisingly, Chicago's tastes also run to the bold and unsubtle when it comes to food. "Make no little lunch" might be the motto of purveyors of the city's famous Italian beef sandwiches, made by pocketing mounds of thinly sliced roast beef into chewy slabs of Italian bread, topping the meat with roast peppers and pickled vegetables, and ladling the lot with so much of the cooking juices that a special style of eating the sandwich has evolved: you hold the thing with both hands while propping yourself on your elbows, standing well away from the counter to keep from being marinated. Although you don't have to stand up to eat a Chicago steak, the same standards of heft and heartiness apply. At a steakhouse like Gene and Georgetti's, on North Franklin Street, the regulars expect filet mignons four inches high, Chicago skyscrapers of beef and porterhouses that flop over the edges of their plates. It's all part of a local tradition that harks back to the days when trains from throughout the Midwest carried cattle to 78 www.travelandliving.com.au