Yep, that’s me from 11 years ago. Something my Chicago blogging brethren probably don’t know about me is that, like windy citizen Jasmine Davila, I’m one of the Interweb’s charter bloggers. At the beginning of 1999 I began scribing the Brooklyn local site for (I can’t believe they still exist) About.com. For most of the following three years, I wrote weekly articles about life in the “Mother Borough,” as I liked to call my former NYC home. I used to have an archive of all my old content, but a hard drive crash in the early 2000s put an end to that.

Or so I thought. Tonight while goofing through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, I ran a search for my former About blog. I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner. I can’t believe the site was right there all along. That link takes you to the archive that blew my mind tonight. Clicking through years 1999, 2000, and 2001 will bring up lots of content I barely remember writing.

Actually, I barely remember writing so much of it. But it turns out I was as prolific a blogger back then as I have been in the past five years with the more than 600 posts that currently populate the pages of Chicago Carless. I covered a lot of ground familiar to regular readers of this blog: city hall silliness; public art controversies; public transit; tech issues; profiles of local residents. I truly had forgotten Chicago Carless was not the first time I had been an online urban gadfly.

Much more amazing to me, though, is the tone and tenor of the posts. Many of them are still there in the archive. Though I never truly believed I could write well until I began writing Carless, I’m amazed that the online voice that has become so familiar to me from being a Chicago blogger was right there all along back in Brooklyn.

Best of all, the one post that was my favorite from my years as the “About.com Brooklyn Guide” was right there, too. “Stoop-Sitting for Singles.” It was my most popular post from my Brooklyn blogging days and for years I have regretted losing it. I’m thrilled to have found it again. Here’s an unedited peek at the blogger I was more than a decade ago, shared with the joy of finally realizing that the writer in me has been there all along…

___

STOOP-SITTING FOR SINGLES
by Michael Doyle, Your About.com Brooklyn Guide
Dateline: 09/04/99

I admit it, I never use my backyard. And if you’re single, neither should you. Who are you expecting to meet back there? This is Brooklyn, and we have some of the most interesting and eligible people walking down our streets. Love – or lust – might be waiting for you on your very own front steps if you’d just take the time to sit there. You know of other people who’ve met their Ms. or Mr. Right out on that urban porch. Here’s how to improve your chances of it happening to you.

Before we begin, don’t fret if you live in a building without a stoop. If you grew up here, you’d know that real New Yorkers will sit on anyone’s stoop, at least until they’re chased off (and how often does that happen?). So do like us natives: go find a pleasant stoop. Keep in mind that your chances of being shooed away will lower dramatically as the number of doorbells on the building rises. Now, on with the show.

First, step selection is prime. Blow this and you might as well go back inside. You want to be able to make eye contact with passersby. If you like to hold court near the top of your stoop, this will never happen – although you will see everyone walking by, no one will see you. Savvy stoop-sitters opt for the second or, ideally, third step up from the sidewalk, easing the flirtation process for all concerned.

Those in the know also know not to wear sunglasses. I don’t care how bright it is out there. If your eyes can’t be seen, you might as well migrate back to the top step. Wear a cap, instead.

Next, bring along reading material that telegraphs your personality, or that you think would be read by the type of person you want to meet. If you want him to know you’re gay and available, be there with the latest issue of Out. If you want her to share your interest in finance, you better be sitting there with the Wall Street Journal. Just remember, these are tools of the hunt. Read, certainly, but notice the people passing by as well.

You’ll no doubt want a beverage out there. Avoid beer. It’s illegal to drink it on your stoop, but, more to the point, it ain’t attractive either. Think water, or soda, or coffee. A real glass or ceramic mug will tell people that you live in the house attached to this stoop, but a plastic travel mug or a cardboard cup with a lid will keep the ants and leaves out of your liquid refreshment.

Sitting on the stoop so far is you, your reading material, and your beverage. Unless you’re the owner or sole resident, try not to spread across the width of the stoop. Make yourself noticed, but always make sure you leave a path for your neighbors to go up and down.

You shy pies out there won’t like this next piece of advice, but it’s essential. Smile at people. Even better, say hello like you’re the official greeter for your street. Be friendly. You’ll be surprised at how many people will smile and say hello back. And those who are really interested will pause to talk. And there you go, you’ve just met someone on your front stoop. If it works out, I expect an invitation to the wedding or commitment ceremony.

Finally, for those of you with lots of junk and a yen for instant gratification, there’s a sure-fire way to practically guarantee tons of immediate and friendly conversation: have a stoop sale! You’ll turn that spouse hunt into a money-making endeavor and the worst that can happen is you’ll end up with uncluttered closets. Just remember, the above rules still apply. Don’t block the entire width of the stoop with your junk. Do prominently display those items which personify your interests and personality (history buffs, make sure those Civil War biographies don’t go unnoticed; Mac addicts, plop that aging Centris on the front table).

Of course, while many Brooklynites have hit the jackpot of romance on their front steps, your results may vary. If at the end of the day all you have to show for your stoop-sitting efforts is a sore bottom, it’s time to get up and go for a walk. First, to Junior’s to take-out one of their legendary cheesecakes, and then back home via your nearest video store.

Sorry, for the fork and VCR you’re on your own.

###

I was overjoyed when occasional PR client and leading urbanist blogger Aaron Renn (@urbanophile) republished my recent tourism post, Meet Me in St. Louis, Not Milwaukee: How Not to Oversell Your Urban Tourism Campaign, on his Urbanophile blog. I was a little taken aback when “Dave,” an anonymous commenter, left a scathingly ad hominem response in both places (here and here.) Whereas I think the current tourism campaign of Milwaukee’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, Visit Milwaukee, is overblown, “Dave” thinks it’s just fine. He also thinks I’m a rotten writer, Renn’s an egomaniac, and that neither one of us has enough standing to opine on urban issues.

As our readers know, that last part is ridiculous on the face of it. But what’s even more ridiculous is where the anonymous comment seems to have come from…within the walls of Visit Milwaukee’s own PR firm. Earlier today, a Wisconsin blogger contacted me about a suspicion that “Dave” might actually be a Visit Milwaukee insider. I doubted that could be the case–what CVB or PR firm would ever allow a staffer to discuss company business in an anonymous, attacking manner? Especially by leaving an anonymous comment regarding public criticism of the public PR work of a firm’s high-profile, publicly accountable client?

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever browsed the Internet that when you merely visit a web page–much less leave a comment on one–you leave a trail behind you. That trail is the IP address from which you’re connecting to the web. For home users, that address is often a dynamic one–it may change every time you go online. For many business users, however, that IP address is static–i.e. permanent. Fixed. Unchanging. To paraphrase John Carpenter’s cinematic masterpiece, Halloween, IP addresses stand where man passes away.

I bet you can see where this is headed.

“Dave” signed his comment with the spoof email address, “no@gmail.com.” However, my blog’s content management system recorded his I.P. address: 67.52.198.230. According to this IP trace, that address turns out to be the static IP of a business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: “NOISE-INC.”

Doesn’t that name sound like a PR firm? It should. In fact, Noise Inc. is not only a PR firm, it’s the PR firm with the Visit Milwaukee web-brand contract. They say so right here on their site. But don’t just take their word for it, the Milwaukee Business Journal says it, too. Just as curious, a simple Google search associating the firm with the name, “Dave,” returns on the very first page a LinkedIn listing (which out of respect I won’t link here) for a…get this…”Social Media Evangelist” of the same name, living in Milwaukee, and employed by none other than Noise Inc.

The only thing missing from the jaw-dropping adventure of Googling all of this today was a bag of popcorn and a stadium seat, folks.

While I can demonstrate the “Dave” comment came from the IP address of Noise Inc., I cannot say that it was an employee of theirs who left it, even the one noted above. It could have come from a third party using a computer of theirs or perhaps signing into a Wifi network they may operate. And even if the comment did come from a Noise Inc. employee, that doesn’t mean Noise Inc., itself, condoned it.

But honestly, an ad hominem comment responding to a blog post critical of the Visit Milwaukee ad campaign that’s written like a love letter to the campaign and was submitted from the IP address of a PR firm associated with the campaign? How much more like a duck does this story have to walk and talk before someone throws it back in the pond?

Two and a half hours ago I emailed Noise Inc.’s three top officials regarding the comment, including most of the links I shared above (and the LinkedIn one as well.)  As listed on the company website, those I contacted include chairman and chief creative officer John Sprecher, chief executive officer and partner Milissa Sprecher, and president Mary Parodo. As of this writing, I have not heard back from the firm. That’s fine. All I really have to say on the matter is in this post.

To wit: Noise Inc. owes itself–not to mention the Milwaukee Convention and Visitors Bureau, which I doubt would find the offending comment as amusing as “Dave” did–to figure out how that comment got on my blog from their office. If it was written by a third party, the company should be more careful about whom it allows to access its network. If it was written by an employee–especially a “Social Media Evangelist”–perhaps they should find another employee (and this time, one who actually understands social media.) And if, on the off chance, they happen to condone the comment, then perhaps the Milwaukee CVB should find another PR firm.

I hear St. Louis has a good one.

If you thought Chicago’s rogue bus union was an isolated incident of transit workers taking a very ill-considered stand against an entire populace of angry riders, you were wrong. The same sorry story is happening right now in San Francisco, where Municipal Railway (Muni) bus and light-rail operators are causing service cutbacks by refusing to give up a yearly wage increase written (incredibly) into the city charter.

By way of background, as every Chicagoan undoubtedly knows, on February 7th, the CTA was forced to lay off 1,000 union workers and cut 10% of ‘L’ service and 20% of bus service. That mini transit-doomsday happened because the CTA’s unions refused to agree to wage, health insurance, and pension concessions that were triggered by staggering shortfalls in operating revenue thanks to the moribund economy.

Instead of blaming state lawmakers in Springfield for Chicago transit woes, this time Chicagoans blamed the union workers, themselves, for having the audacity to demand wage increases at a time when many riders can’t even find jobs. Making matters even uglier, now Jesse Jackson is leading a charge with bus union president Darrell Jefferson to essentially extort the CTA to rehire the laid off workers by threatening work slowdowns and a potential (and illegal) strike if the agency doesn’t restore the lost union jobs.

Obviously bus union workers are getting some really bad advice here. Laying on an outdated diatribe claiming the CTA needed to fire a few expensive management “fatcats” before laying off workers, Jefferson originally told his union that the CTA would blink before pulling the trigger on CTA doomsday. Finance likely isn’t his strong point. The CTA is already pared down to the bone and the sales taxes that largely fund the agency are demonstrably not there anymore. Angering the riding public even further will just stiffen what is already very strong civic resolve to let the bus union in no uncertain terms drop dead. Which it probably would from state fines if the union voted to carry out an illegal strike (as was the financial fate of New York’s transit union following its own illegal strike in 2005.)

As described by San Francisco Chronicle columnist C. W. Nevius, San Francisco transit workers have an amazing deal: an annual eight-percent pay raise that’s written right into the San Francisco city charter. Just like the CTA, Muni has a reputation for unreliability and sub-standard service. As will sound familiar to Chicagoans, thanks to the ongoing recession, the City by the Bay no longer has sufficient revenues coming in to afford to pay out that guaranteed annual raise while still maintaining transit service. And there, too, union leaders are claiming that mythical management bloat needs to be culled at the transit agency before cutbacks or layoffs happen.

Such rhetoric didn’t stop Muni’s board from voting to lay off 230 union workers, cut 10% of service, and raise fares beginning May 1st. Muni riders have been here before. In 2009, they suffered through an initial round of service cuts and fare increases, and as local media report, they’re still livid about it. Knowing that the latest cutbacks are being caused by transit workers refusing to give up guaranteed raises at a time when many Muni riders can’t find work (echo? echo?) has San Francisco’s ridership nearing open rebellion.

Riding the wave of anti-union sentiment, one San Francisco supervisor is launching a campaign to amend the city charter to force Muni workers into collective bargaining. It’s a change that’s likely to happen, and it’s a virtual certainty that when it does, Muni workers won’t end up with a contract as sweet as their current wage deal. The Chronicle’s Nevius says Muni union head Irwim Lum thinks the union “had no choice” but to refuse to negotiate on any sort of wage giveback.

The frank response from Nevius could have been uttered as equally in Chicago as in San Francisco:

“Actually, you did. You voted it down. This would be a good time to see if you can get that deal again.”

Especially if you’re a Chicago bus driver who thinks striking or slowing down CTA service will win any sympathy from your fellow Chicagoans. You may know us as the people who pay your salary.

For now.

(Photo: A tee-shirt fit for a friend who took an unexpected Pepsi Challenge…and failed.)

I’m about as non-scene as a gay man can get, but I’m not a zealot. I’d never turn down an offer of free slushy drinks at Sidetrack. Nor did I yesterday, when I found myself sandwiched between Overly Frank and J. P. Organ in the MainBar of Chicago’s mainstream ‘mo hangout on Show Tunes Sunday.

Usually when I go to Sidetrack, which is rarely, I’m stuck in the stand-and-model GlassBar (yes, each bar has an official name), dragged there by whomever dragged me up to Boystown in the first place. Sunday was the first time them that brung me wanted to hang out in the MainBar, where Show Tunes nights are taken far more seriously.

I sneered at videos from the Madonna version of Evita and yawned through the clips from …Whorehouse (I’ve never gotten that show). But I raised my voice with the rest of the bar through the numbers from Oklahoma and tossed my napkins in the air during Titanic: The Musical.

What can I say? I’m a musical-theater purist.

After one too many prurient parts of others rubbed in passing across private parts of mine, though, I felt it was time to stop getting felt up. Frank and I quit Sidetrack and headed for somewhere altogether trashier: Gay-hop, otherwise known as the International House of Pancakes at the top of the Boystown Halsted strip.

Frank wanted something fried. I wanted to see if after two years since the last time I’d eaten there they’d finally cleaned the bathrooms. As I tucked into my biscuits with sausage gravy, I remembered why I used to like the joint.

“I forgot the interesting, trailer-trash vibe this place always has,” I told Frank. “It really is a guilty pleasure of mine.”

“You mean you like it here?” Frank asked, incredulous. “After all the eight minutes of shit you gave me when I suggested it?”

No one ever said I was agreeable. Case in point, I told the ex-Oklahoman to save his much-heralded Pepsi story for the walk back to the Clark bus. As we dodged the eternal puddle in the parking lot outside on our exit, I reminded Frank he owed me a tale.

“Much like I’ll eat in an Ihop instead of a real restaurant,” Frank began, “when I was in London a few years ago, I spent a lot of time eating in fast food places instead of savoring the fine English cuisine, since as you know the U.K. is not known for its food.”

“That changed a long time ago,” I interjected.

“Well maybe when you were there,” he shot back, “but that wasn’t my experience when I was there, now shut up and let me continue my story.”

I’d have smacked him, but as he is a libertarian who voted for McCain in 2008, I contended myself in the knowledge that as long as I know him my votes will cancel out his.

“Fast food places don’t have a lot of room in London,” Frank went on. “I was in a bilevel Burger King, with the dining room squeezed in downstairs from the order counter. I ordered something I don’t remember and a large Pepsi. I really don’t know what happened. A tremor? A foot slip? But there I was walking downstairs watching my soda tumble end over end in slow motion in front of me.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“When things start to go slow motion,” Frank said, “sometimes you think you have more time to react than you do. I tried to catch the Pepsi gingerly with my tray and instead managed to turn my tray into a tennis racquet that slammed the container all the way to the bottom of the stairs, where it exploded. Everywhere.”

I’d have bet money on that.

“Mortified and being extra careful, I made my way down the rest of the stairs, retrieved the now-empty cup, and went back up to the counter to tell them what had happened. The staff was very nice about it. As female employee went to mop the stairs, the man behind the counter took the cup and said, ‘Here, let me refill that for you.’”

Personally, at this point I’d have opted for something in a sealed container.

“More careful than I have ever been in my life, I went back down the stairs and set down my tray at a table. I felt safe finally sitting, so I grabbed a straw, opened it, and poked it into the lid on top of my new Pepsi. And that’s when the sides gave way.”

I laughed out loud, picturing my straight-laced conservative friend sitting in a puddle of pop in a fast-food basement, probably doing his best not to show any outward reaction.

“The woman mopping the stairs from my first spillage just looked at me and said, ‘Having a bad day, huh?’ Turned out when the guy refilled my Pepsi, he didn’t give me a new cup. And the battered old sides of the one that went down the stairs had just about had enough poking and prodding when it saw my straw coming.”

I flashed on the likely health violation of refilling a customer’s beverage container that had recently hit the floor, but that’s not germane to the incident.

Frank’s story drew to a close. “In response to my latest embarrassment, the counter guy, himself, came downstairs with a bunch of napkins and a new, third Pepsi. I told him I’d just as soon eat my meal dry, but he insisted. He also insisted on inserting the straw for me.”

“Did you learn anything from the experience?” I asked.

“Yep,” Frank said in a drawl reminiscent of a tumbleweed suddenly graced with the miraculous power of speech. “You can’t catch a midair Pepsi with a slow-motion tray.”

There’s gotta be a country song in there somwehere.

Last Thursday, I did the Wisconsin State Fair badly. In my defense, I meant well. But having been to only two state fairs in my life–Arizona’s in 1990 and New York State’s in the Shea Stadium parking lot–I was ill-prepared for the scope of Milwaukee’s century-old annual festivity. Not to mention the heat.

I was looking for a brief break from my Windy City work-at-home day to day, and a ten-dollar Megabus ride to rekindle an old friendship with my Milwaukee friend Big Buddha on the first day of Dairyland’s State Fair seemed like just the ticket.

My inability to figure out how to work the A/C in my overly sunny, upper-deck front row seat on Megabus should have been a clue as to the impending tenor of the day, though the bus’s speedy WiFi made the two-hour trip a multitasking dream. Big’s thirty-minute late arrival at the Cream City’s Intermodal Station to pick me up should have been another.

Late or not, it was fun to take a spin through Chicago’s smaller, northern neighbor. New Yorkers often call Chicago a little NYC due to our town’s smaller but still-imposing skyline, though nothing could be farther from the truth. Yet even for its almost non-existent skyline, I often have a similar impression of Milwaukee: all the lakefront yuppiedom and mid-town slumminess of Chicago, but in a convenient, travel-sized dose.

Even with one-fifth the population, though, driving across Milwaukee’s industrial Menomenee Valley from the staton to Miller Park and back–then south to St. Francis–then further south to Cudahy–all in search of a Chase bank, made the city seem postiviely enormous last week. Big works at an Apple Store and we both have iPhones, so there was no excuse for not Google Mapping the nearest branch. But I wanted to see the city–especially it’s less-touristy side–so I settled in for the ride.

Eventually, we made it to the Mitchell Domes, which provided a respite from the morning’s 80-plus heat. Last time I saw them was with Devyn. They’ve since been renovated and are more spectaular than ever. The modernist in me has to love any botanic conservatory squeezed into three massive, breast-like 1960s conoidal domes.

(Photo: Milwaukee’s version of the Garfield Park Conservatory always puts me in a happy, Jetsons mood. More in my flickr.)

But after an hour, I felt the clock ticking on my already-delayed day trip. So canned goods in hand for a nifty $7 Hunger Task Force Day admission discount, off we headed for West Allis, the near-west suburb that hosts the Wisconsin State Fair since (incredibly) 1892. The town sits in the same location relative to Milwaukee that Oak Park sits relative to Chicago–but with yuppies and BMWs replaced by mechanics and Harleys.

I bit my tongue–mostly–as we parked half a mile from the fair to save on the parking fee. As we reached the ticket booths after a sweat-infused walk back to the fairgrounds, I noticed a woman trying to pass off a roll of toilet paper as a non-perishable food item. I inwardly begged God to bring Twitter back up from its Denial of Service attack to let me tweet the moment.

Once inside the mile-square fair, snap judgment gave way to the pleasure of surrendering to a big, fat, grassroots, down-home day of fun. The kind that urbanites like me only admit to at the time and later on blogs, but rarely in mixed company once returned to our metropolitan high rises.

(Video: No, I didn’t. Yes, I wanted to.)

Food and beverage booths extended into the distance down multiple pathways as far as my eyes could see, punctuated by gargantuan show houses, with a lazy skyride hanging above all. How much did I get into the mood? I stood on a ten-minute line to buy a four-dollar ticket to stand in another ten-minute line to buy a “famous” Wisconsin dressed baked potato. And liked it.

It was the Midwest my New York friends warned me about when I moved here in six-and-a-half years ago, and it was a blast. But it was also something just short of 1,000 degrees. That kept Big and me off the sky ride. That and Big’s distaste for amusement rides kept us out of the Midway most of the day. And that, my damnable lactose intolerance, and a line of hundreds kept me away from the equally “famous”, gargantuan cream puffs.

Good sense didn’t keep me away from a Noon-time, open-air beer in full sunlight, though. Nor did good sense motivate me to stop taking “No” for an answer every time I tried to maneuver Big into a shaded, air-conditioned show house. (Much as I respect the guy, refusing to enter a livestock barn at a state fair because it would “smell like animals” reached so far up my nose I could feel my brain hurt.)

So by day’s end, what should have been a relaxing end to a really fun, absolutely out-of-character stint in Laverne-and-Shirley town headed south, and quickly. As we exited the fair, I could feel a dehydration headache growing.

By the time we reached downtown’s uber-urban Historic Third Ward to hang out before my trip home, headache had grown to a migraine of historic-hangover proportions. As I sat with Big on the second floor of the Public Market with my sunburned head on the table and a frosty Sprite Zero held tight to my forehead, it was all I could do to apologize–in what feeble voice I could muster–for the unspectacular end to the day.

Big drove me back to the Intermodal Station–a trip that could have been a five-minute walk from the Third Ward if my head hadn’t wanted to explode so badly–where I ditched Megabus for a speedier Amtrak Hiawatha ride back to my home downtown. I did my best to think happy, healthy thoughts the whole way to try and avoid my rampant sense of spew-at-any-second nausea. Thankfully, by the time the train pulled into Union Station, my head had pulled itself together enough–with the help of a pint of vitamin water–to allow me to make the 20-minute walk to my house in relative comfort.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad day. I still love Milwaukee–though next time I’ll stick to the lakefront neighborhoods I’ve frequented in the past. (For Milwaukeans, that would be the yuppie spine of the #15 bus from the East Side, down through downtown and the Historic Third Ward south to Bayview.) I’ll do State Fair again, too. Only I’ll be sure to arrive with a stash of Lactaid pills so I won’t have to avoid the cream puffs. And friends will enter air-conditioned buildings with me voluntarily or via being moved there bodily.

And considering the flu-like symptoms I developed the day after returning home, if ever again I run into a small child hacking his lungs up in the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, I’ll run like hell.

Once again, the Internet has wrought cross-country friendship for Yours Truly. Departing today after a whirlwind Windy City vacation are Seattleites Café Kasey and John Dramatist. Emerald City barista Kasey originally contacted me after visiting a link to my blog. He and actor-boyfriend John were ready for a change of scene and were coming to Chitown to see if the flatland urban shores of Lake Michigan would fit the bill.

I met up with them yesterday after their afternoon at Wrigley Field. “The sun was out when we got to our seats behind third base,” said Kasey. “For about five minutes. Then we froze in the wind and had to buy sweatshirts.”

I could have told them in advance to bring a blanket, but they said they wanted the real Chicago experience. Their newbieness reminded of the last out-of-town couple I helped shepherd around Chicago. In 2006, New Yorkers Adam and Vicky were similarly wide-eyed about this place. (“How do the tall building stay standing without touching each other like they do in New York?” asked Adam as he peered out at the Loop for the first time from the Marina City roofdeck.)

Kasey and John’s happy gaping continued as I led them on a final-day tour of Millennium Park. Somewhere between the Bean and the Plensa fountain, I asked John how Chicago measured up to his expectations.

“This is way better than our New York trip was,” he told me. “New York has a million things to do, but Chicago feels like it gives back to you. There’s a real civic pride that we don’t have back in Seattle.”

“Chicagoans really like where we live,” I replied. “We’re aggressively amiable about it, and we like the folks who come to see our town. We go out of our way for each other, too. That’s the attitude that got me to move here six years ago.”

(Video: Facebook friending brings prospective Chicagoans Kasey and John to town–and their Seattle weather along with them.)

It really is a magical attitude most native Chicagoans downplay, but I have yet to meet a longtime Windy Citizen who gives the lie to this relative civic truism. Not long ago, I visited my old professional stomping grounds at Chicago community-garden land trust NeighborSpace (whose staff and gardeners work their green thumbs off to protect neighborhood gardens all across Chicago from the bulldozer). I was in the neighborhood and wanted to ask head honcho Helpinghand Ben if he had any favorite bloggers to clue me into for my super-spy-secret web project.

He did. In return, he handed me an envelope of seeds. “Do me a favor and blog about this,” he asked. “After all, it’s The Year of the Bean.”

Amazingly enough, he didn’t mean it ironically. A vote among members of One Seed Chicago, a project of NeighborSpace to promote urban community gardening through seed distribution, selected Blue Lake Pole green beans as the giveaway for 2009. More than 100,000 seeds will be mailed around Chicago to interested gardeners. (Mine are in my shoulder bag waiting for me to develop the urge to buy a balcony planter.)

I told Ben it felt like Chicago magic for the two of us to meet up unannounced and both have blogger business to tell each other about.

“It is like magic, look here,” he said, pointing to a chart of planting instructions. “All you do is plant the magic seeds and water them and wait a little while. Then these little ones like I gave you? They grow from bean magic.”

I’d have kicked him in the shin, but he’s the most adorable straight guy I know, so I let the deadpanning continue.

Ben went on. “The round red things? Wait a little while and they’ll grow because of tomato magic. These orange ones over here? They’re my favorite. That’s carrot magic!”

I came to recognize magic as the theme of the entire week of Kasey and John’s visit. I pondered the obvious enchantment between the two lovers as we sat at a table in the backroom of Cellblock on Saturday night.

Something made out of ice slush and vodka at our evening’s first stop, enormous grande-dame gay video bar Sidetrack (“You could break up with someone in here, neither one of you leave, and never run into them again,” said John), and a manly pint of Smithwicks in Cellblock’s front bar help explain why normally Pollyana I was sitting in the back of a wanna-be-1970s gay leather mecca.

On “Furr Party” night.

As I pondered the relative emotional health of myself and the cowhide-clad daddies and boys surrounding our table, I told the Seattle duo I was uncharacteristically tipsy.

“I’m a lightweight too,” said John. “I usually don’t get drunk at bars.”

“That’s not what you told me the other day,” I said. During the obligatory visit to my high-rise Marina City home, the pair recounted how John stood three-sheets-to-the-wind in a Pike Street bar on the eve of his 39th birthday, thinking he’d be alone forever. Out of nowhere comes the eight-years-younger barista and sweeps the unsuspecting birthday boy off his feet.

“Who knew you could find love at the Eagle?” said Kasey.

Rare that may be. Rarer still is finding me on a Boystown bar crawl. At all–much less ’til 2 in the morning and having a good time straight through from entering the glass bar at Sidetrack to heading off the hangover with a wee-hours visit to Halsted street’s late-night lifesaving Taco & Burrito Palace.

“The food here’s cheaper than Seattle,” said Kasey, between mouthfuls of an enormous torta.

“And really good, too,” said John.

Last night, after Millennium Park, as we tucked into hulking slices of Lou Malnati’s deep-dish in River North, I had a feeling Kasey and John were past the point of no return.

Little do they know, it’s the food magic that really sucks in those prospective Chicagoans.

(Click the HQ button for a higher-quality video. RSS subscribers, click here to view the video on CHICAGO CARLESS.)

(Photo: The blurry, official portraits painted by visitors sites ChooseChicago and CincinnatiUSA leave a lot to be desired.)

UPDATE (5:00 p.m.): And it’s an odd one.  Apparently, the same day this story appeared, the City of Chicago began promoting a redesigned “official” tourism website–and a nifty one at that, ExploreChicago, sponsored by the Chicago Office of Tourism, that tells the story of both city and citizens perfectly.  Kudos to City Hall for unveiling such a marvelous site.  The Chicago tourism website mentioned below, ChooseChicago, which also calls itself the city’s “official” tourism site, was created by the industry-funded Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau. Unfortunately, it remains as limited in viewpoint as originally described.

Cities are the sum of the people who live there, that’s why each one is different. A recent article on popular city-watcher blog Urbanophile asked why so many Midwestern cities have trouble communicating this uniqueness to outsiders, usually opting instead to market themselves with similar, drab lists of hotels, restaurants, malls, and office parks that only serve to demonstrate their homogeneity.

As I commented there, I believe it’s a question of storytelling. Real uniqueness lies in the history of a place, and history is nothing more than the stories of people.  Regardless of lists of amenities, only by telling the stories of the people who came together–and continue to remain–in a given place can that place most deeply communicate to outsiders why they should visit, do business in, or move there.

It’s an emotionally moving appeal that many Midwestern cities forget to make, and it begins by answering the  question: “Who?”  Who founded the place and why? What great things did they accomplish there over the years? What did they invent? Who among them became famous–or infamous?

Who are they now? What races, ethnicities, and cultures do they represent? What are their neighborhoods like? And what are they doing to prepare their communities and their city for the future?

Some cities haven’t even begun to answer these questions, while others, for some reason, have stopped doing so. Yet, not knowing who peoples a place, that place becomes anonymous to outsiders. It begins to read like anywhere else on the planet, matched, peered, rivaled.  Ultimately, same.  And sameness is a bad way to try to fill hotel rooms and convention halls.

This week I took a look at the official visitors websites of my two favorites Midwestern cities: my adopted hometown of Chicago (ChooseChicago); and Ohio’s Queen City, Cincinnati (CincinnatiUSA). In doing so, I found that size is no predictor of marketing ability. Both visitors websites fall flat in the storytelling department, among a host of other faults.

I’ll put the worse first and say that although Cincinnati is one of the Midwest’s most underrated, vibrant, just plain cool medium-sized cities, you’d never know it from the almost aggressively mediocre CincinnatiUSA visitors site. Last August, after my first trip to the Queen City, upon my return I perused the site to learn more about the place for potential future visits.

What I found there surprised me so markedly–and not in a good way–that I fired off an email almost begging them to change the way they were presenting the bi-state region.  They never responded.  It now looks like they did take some of my suggestions to heart, but the site still has a long way to go.

Where it’s going–or more to the point, where you’re going if you visit Cincinnati–is a good question.  For some odd reason, the Queen City visitors site steadfastly refuses to use the words Ohio or Kentucky, the two states that Cincinnati’s metropolitan area straddles. Instead, throughout the site you read the made-up monicker, “CincinnatiUSA”, as if that were the name of an actual place.

It obviously isn’t. Last August, I asked why the visitors website didn’t want to name the states where people would actually be visiting.  Bi-state deal to not promote either state exclusively?  Fear that sophisticated big-city types would never deign to visit a state beginning with a ‘K’?  Whatever reason, avoiding placing your place in an actual place (get it?) instantly removes an enormous piece of any story you have to tell–and in this case is an affront to people who live in those states (in this case, Ohioans and Kentuckians), while you’re at it.

That fear of place probably explains why in in August as now there was no discussion on the visitors site at all about actual Cincinnatians, their cultures of background, or the places they live.  Not one word about the varied, vibrant, historic neighborhoods and diverse ethnic and cultural communities that together form the very fabric of the city.  The citizenry could be black, white, purple, or plaid and have come down from the moon or up from the depths of Atlantis.  They might as well be for all the information the website tells you about them, which remains nothing.

In fact, the only place on CincinnatiUSA’s front page to find an overall discussion of the city is by following a tiny link to a FAQ page hidden all they way in the footer. This FAQ bore the brunt of my criticism from last year.  Sadly, not much has changed. Here are three punishing passages from the page, followed by my take on the information presented.

Introduction
It’s been portrayed as a conservative Midwestern town with plenty of quirks (a foot race named for swine with wings?). But Cincinnati is filled with exciting events, attractions, and thousands of great restaurants!

Well, at least they don’t go all nine yards and say, “We’re not as exciting or dynamic as New York, Los Angeles, or other big cities,” like they used to in August, a phrase almost guaranteed to keep visitors looking for a vibrant place to go going elsewhere. But how about getting rid of that self-destructive first sentence and leading with what is true and exciting about the place, instead?

Should I rent a car?
Probably. Although bus service in and around the downtown area is easily accessible, many activities here take place in the suburbs which might not be on the bus routes…If you’re on a tight schedule…for the sake of convenience, a rental car is the way to go.

Last August, this passage actually told visitors that Cincinnati’s transit system was bad–so bad that they shouldn’t consider bothering to take it at all. At the time, it stunned me to witness one of Cincinnati’s public agencies throwing another under the bus so openly (not to mention literally), and I told them so in my email. Looks like they’ve adopted a more soft-shoed approach here, but the message remains the same: our bus system probably won’t get you where you’re going.  Way to support your city’s own public-transit and anti-congestion efforts, CincinnatiUSA.  (While we’re at it, considering that you’re the visitors bureau, you probably should make it a point to learn what suburban attractions are accessible by transit.)

Where’s a good place to shop?
One of the trendiest places is the new Rookwood Commons complex, the Norwood retail center which opened in August. The mall features 45 upscale merchants, including about a dozen or so (Zany Brainy, Z Gallery, Sur La Table, among others) that are new to Cincinnati.

August when?  And for that matter, Rookwood Commons where?  And for that matter, given that a Google search places Rookwood Commons in the suburbs, how about promoting a “good place to shop” in Cincinnati, itself? Perhaps an actual home-grown business instead of a chain? I can name a few stellar examples of those and I live in Chicago (High Street and Park + Vine, for starters). Have you actually been downtown in your own city, lately?

More comprehensive background information is actually to be found in the virtual pages of CincinnatiUSA if you know where to look. Hidden deep within pages and pages of those aforementioned, unexceptional attraction and amenity lists but nowhere accessible from the home page are two hard-to-find links: a welcome page (yes, a hidden welcome page) from CincinnatiUSA president Linda Antus; and an About the Region page. It took me ten minutes to find them.

Antus’ welcome page still refuses to use the words Ohio and Kentucky, so I guess that bone-headed omission started at the top and worked its pernicious way down.

But–Lo and behold!–that About the Region page does use them, for the first time telling you where Cincinnati is actually located. Even better, the page goes on to give you facts and figures about the metro area, links to useful resources like transit, weather, and business information, and even tells you why different kinds of visitors (e.g. “music lover”, “sports lover”, etc.) would enjoy a Queen City visit.

Admittedly, some of the links presented on the page are broken (and yes, that’s still bad show), but at least the information is here. So why the heck is it buried ten minutes into the visitors site instead of prominently displayed as a big, fat button on Page One? Your guess is as good as mine.

My lesson from browsing the CincinnatiUSA website? Apparently (if you go by the site), that the region’s location is worthy of disdain, the populace unworthy of description, the transit system inconvenient, and the best shopping not even in the city.  For its own visitors site to paint such a woefully misguided picture of the Queen City is not exactly being your own, best booster, folks. It’s more akin to telling potential visitors why they should stay home.

You just know someone in a position of power must think the CincinnatiUSA site is doing a stellar job for crap like this to remain on it. They’re wrong. My advice to them is to find another line of work, because they’re shooting their own city in the foot with this civically self-effacing website.

Surprisingly, my home city’s tourism website does no better a job in telling its own story. Certainly, the recently renovated ChooseChicago is sleeker than its Queen City counterpart, with longer lists of attractions and amenities to crow about. But another ten-minute browse here turned up the same key omission that the Cincinnati site suffers from: no answer to the question of “Who?”  Funny thing is, that question used to be answered on Chicago’s visitors wesbite.

One can argue that world cities like Chicago can rest on their many famous laurels, since millions of visitors will drop by anyway because of them.  That’s true: in this town we have a skyline; a lakefront; and a restaurant scene that are envied by many. Local icons like the Sears Tower, Second City improv, or Uno’s pizza need no introduction.

Still, in a city with the largest Polish population outside Poland, the deepest African-American cultural roots west of the Hudson, and the largest Mexican population east of the L.A. basin, our ethnic, racial, and cultural communities are attractions in themselves and a fundamental part of the story of our town.

Also fundamental to our civic message is our story for being: who first came here, when, and why; how our previous populations put us on the map–before and after we burned down; what our celebrated neighborhoods are like today; and why you should visit them (or at least visit further afield than Hyde Park and it’s 15 minutes of Presidential fame).

Until recently, all of these questions were answered on the ChooseChicago website.  They still are, for the most part, in the visitors bureau’s official printed guide. So why have such important pieces of Chicago’s story–the pieces about Chicagoans, themselves–been removed from the visitors website?

Along with the story of who we Chicagoans are, also recently gone missing from the site is an introduction to the city itself: where we’re located; how we’re laid out; and, yes, even what states our region is located in.  Worse, unlike on CincinnatiUSA, there is no lonely, hidden FAQ or About page on ChooseChicago where this information can be found.

I have no explanation for this seeming new trend of omission in the presentation of visitors information for key Midwestern cities.  I could understand if the problem was confined to the Cincinnati website, that burg with a lot of potential has an equal amount of conservative inertia to overcome.  But for Chicago’s website to dump such fertile pieces of its story off its visitor website is injurious to all Chicagoans, anywhere, who value their cultural backgrounds.

In the Windy City’s case, I have to wonder whether this is just one more misguided civic attempt to whitewash–here meant very literally–the public portrait of the city being displayed to the International Olympic Committee in order to win the 2016 Olympic Summer Games.  If we have to pretend to be something we’re not just to get the games, I for one don’t want them. [Ed. Note: Happily, this criticism doesn't apply to the city's new ExploreChicago site.]

I live in a vibrant, historic, multicultural, multi-racial city that presides over a region full of similarly described cities very much worth visiting (as most surely is Cincinnati).  Of my beloved city, fellow cities, and Midwest region, that is the story I want told. It’s the only one that has any hope of touching people’s hearts and helping outsiders see why we Midwesterners value our cities in the first place.

And it’s the only one that will help outsiders understand why they should value Midwestern cities, too.