[Steely Dan]

Article in the current issue of Chicago Magazine that reminded me of this old thread.

Chicago’s Captured Satellite Cities
Waukegan, Elgin, Aurora, and Joliet developed on their own, but have since been absorbed by Chicago’s suburban sprawl.

BY EDWARD MCCLELLAND
APRIL 12, 2022, 8:24 AM


Waukegan is less than an hour from the northern limits of Chicago on the UP-N Metra line, but a trip there is a trip to another Illinois. Waukegan has an old growth downtown, like an old river city on the Mississippi, or a faded factory town on the prairie. There’s a 1902 Carnegie library, about to become the home of the local historical society; the Waukegan Building, a 10-story brick office tower, now mostly empty; the Karcher Artspace Lofts, built in 1928 as the Karcher Hotel. At one end of Genesee Street — catty-corner from a statue of local-boy-made-good Jack Benny — is the Genesee Theatre, its jewel-colored marquee advertising legacy acts for a legacy city: Night Ranger, Air Supply, Jay Leno, Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone.

Unlike its North Shore neighbors to the south, Waukegan has urban characteristics. Along the Waukegan River is a public housing high rise, the Harry Poe Manor. Waukegan Harbor was long contaminated with PCBs left behind by Outboard Marine Corp., a boat engine manufacturer that went bankrupt in 2000 — one of many long-gone local industries. Unlike its neighbors to the west — Grayslake, Libertyville — Waukegan has a distinct civic identity, much of it built around author Ray Bradbury, who was born in Waukegan in 1920 and made his hometown the model of Green Town, Ill., in Dandelion Wine. Visitors are invited to follow Ray Bradbury’s Green Town WaukWay, which takes them to Ray Bradbury Park, above a ravine depicted in Dandelion Wine, Bradbury’s boyhood home, and the Green Town Tavern.

Waukegan is close enough to Chicago to commute, but far enough away to ignore the big city, and live in your own private Illinois. At the public library (which, of course, has a Ray Bradbury statue in front) I met a librarian who rode the train up from Rogers Park every day, and another who hadn’t been to the city in a decade.

“We’ve got a beach here; we’ve got a theater,” said the latter. “Why go to all the hassle of Chicago?”

Full article: https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life...ellite-cities/