Last to leave Chicago, turn out the lights

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Now I feel bad.

Had I known, when I left the city in 2000 to move my family to the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, that 200,000 of my fellow Chicagoans would follow clumping after us, fleeing en masse to the surrounding region, according to the United States Census, well, I might have given it a second thought.

OK, that’s not true. It wasn’t my fault. People left Chicago over the past decade for a variety of reasons — some were public housing residents who had their homes demolished out from under them. Some lost their jobs in the Great Recession and had to seek work elsewhere. And yes some — 20,000? 40,000? the number is unknowable — were middle class wage slaves like myself (OK, lower upper middle class wage slaves, to borrow George Orwell’s term) who couldn’t bring themselves to fling their darling children into the stormy chop of the Chicago public school system and couldn’t make the nut at a private school that might not deign to accept them anyway, whatever the price.

And yes, there are good Chicago public schools, and yes, it is possible to get one’s children into them, or so I’m told. But the question was: Is this a risk you’re willing to take?

We weren’t.

Sure, there were other factors. Our boys rode their Big Wheels around and around the dining room table, because it was too much of a hassle for them to find an adult to escort them down the flight of stairs, out the three, count ’em, three locked doors, to finally the busy street and tiny, dog-piss murdered patch of blasted grass, with its anemic locust tree, that served as their playground. A backyard was a plus, or would have been, had they ever put their video games down. But it was there.

This is not to criticize the city — Geez, hold your fire. People seem to have this bellyful of vindictiveness, boiling in their guts, and are scanning the horizon, desperate to find somebody, anybody, for them to spew it onto. Look! A guy who fled to the suburbs! The treachery of betrayal! He’s dissing our city! Get him!

Chicago’s population loss is ominous — first, because a city needs people. Detroit had a population of 2 million in 1950; it has 800,000; just 40 percent of that, now, and it’ll be interesting to see whether our elephant step in Detroit’s direction over the past 10 years will tarnish Mayor Daley’s legacy, the central leg of which is that we didn’t become Detroit under his watch. It isn’t the same if you tack “yet” at the end, “We didn’t become Detroit yet.”

Yes “we.” Because the concerns of Chicago are the concerns of Northern Illinois, which rises or falls with it, and while the bowl haircuts Downstate would like to cut off the city, out of prejudice and parochialism, and the city would like to disown suburbanites like me, out of pure spite, the truth is we are all bound together, sink or swim.

Frankly, I’m not expecting a lot of attention to the population loss story. Like global warming, it’s just too grim for many people to accept or think about. Population loss is connected to every urban problem. How to get those people back? Well, fix the schools, cut crime, create jobs, lower taxes. That’s a start.

My guess is that, when Mayor Daley does his victory lap this spring, basking in the glow of being — everybody, all together now: “the best mayor in the best city in the whole world!” — the incredible shrinking population will be barely a footnote, the throat clearing in between listing his various glories and accomplishments (which were? Oh right, sparing us the fate of Detroit, so far).

Heck, maybe this can be spun as new, edgy thinking. The old concept — that a city is only as strong as its residents — that’s so 20th century. Maybe Chicago can be recast as a brand, an icon on your iPhone. Maybe the city can collect royalties and clicks. If Chicago can have 3 million friends on its Facebook page, maybe it won’t matter how many people actually live here. Nobody really lives in Farmville, do they? Chicago can assume a disembodied online identity: “Click Chicago.” We could be pioneers in this regard. It sounds like something Mayor Daley would hear about on one of his visits to France and get behind.

Daley hasn’t yet said what he’s doing after he retires, has he? Besides giving expensive speeches. He’ll still live in Chicago, right? That’ll be something, to bump into him in line for bagels at the Eleven City Diner.

Maybe we’ll rub elbows. Because as useful as the suburbs have been — really, very nice people, if you can find them — the boys are teenagers, soon college-bound. Then, having done my duty, I plan to move back to the city. (“What about me?” my wife asks. “You’re invited,” I say). That’s where all the fun is.