I’m a city girl. Like Aesop’s Town Mouse, Serena Van Der Woodsen and even Miss Piggy, I belong amongst the cluttered streets, huddled beneath skyscrapers and scrambling amongst big yellow taxis. There’s something so inherently romantic about The Big City, and my affair with Chicago, the windiest of them all, remains the most poignant of the relationships I formed in college.

I’ve never been one of those Evanstonian types. The early bedtimes and the chain retail stores bore me, and if I stand on the lakeshore just beside my favorite painted rock, the jutting shark, I can make out the Chicago skyline, beckoning me. The El is my favorite