Chicago's Daley could teach Villaraigosa a few things
The sun cast golden light across the metropolis, flowers overflowed baskets hanging from every post, people by the thousands strolled through massive parks or sunbathed on sandy beaches, enjoying public spaces with little or no trash, graffiti or homeless encampments.
This city's got pride, I thought while walking along the river under swaying cranes. It also has a clear sense that someone's in charge, ruling with an iron fist and rallying support for even greater imaginings.
Unfortunately I was not in Los Angeles or even in California.
I was vacationing in Chicago, the city that beat out L.A. last year in a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
"I said from the beginning never count Richie out," L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley at the time. "This is a man who has no peer. . . ."
By coincidence, Villaraigosa was in Chicago just before I was. I'd like to think he took a good look at the place and came home with a few ideas, but that was definitely not his main reason for being there.
What was? You guessed it. Money. His pal Daley co-hosted a June 3 fundraiser, where, if recent fundraising excursions are any indication, Villaraigosa may have picked up a pile from slobbering mugs who have had, or will have, business before the city.
But let's get back to Chicago.
I can guess what some of you are thinking: "Hey, Lopez, you live in the Mediterranean clime of Southern California, which happens to sit on the Pacific Ocean, and you vacationed on the prairie, which only thaws out long enough for a brief, steamy summer that leaves everyone praying for snow?"
Here's the deal: My wife had always wanted to take an old-fashioned Midwestern lake vacation, and we decided to squeeze in museums and other city stuff along with a trek through Michigan.
So we landed in Chicago, where folks in museums, hotels, restaurants and shops seem to have formed some kind of a pact to be helpful, polite and welcoming.
If we'd stayed more than three days, I would have had to start slapping people.
Having been to Chicago before, I know that comparisons to L.A. -- which has its own infinite charms and frankly is a far more interesting place to live -- make for an apples and oranges game. Chicago was built on a different scale and in a different era, pedestrian-friendly and transit-heavy, and it's not chopped up into indifferent municipalities with competing interests.
