I was in the airplane coming home from Jackson, and I saw this article in American Way magazine. This is a fantastic article based on an interview with John Cusack, Chicago's favorite son. He talks about what he loves about Chicago, and it just makes my heart sing to hear him talk so fondly about my hometown.

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Just a Guy on a Bike
by Mark Seal

John Cusack is a would-be boyfriend in multiplexes this month in Must Love Dogs. Anyone who wants to keep up with him as he guides a tour of Chicago must love riding a bike.

The guy on the bike is famous, but he's not right now. Zipping up and down the skyscraper streets, along the famous lakeshore, and through the heady arts, restaurant, and nightclub districts of Chicago, he's no longer best identified as John Cusack, one of the most venerable actors of his generation. Returning to the city where he grew up, Cusack reverts to the role he loves most. He becomes just another Chicagoan, another guy on a bike in awe of the city sprawling beneath his pumping feet.

'Chicago is the best-kept secret in America, in a weird way,' he says. 'It's an international city, and you have all the great 'architecture and all the stuff that any major international city would have. But it still has a great, down-home, down-to-earth, almost no-nonsense sensibility. They don't suffer fools well.'

Which is why Cusack's favorite way to see Chicago is not from some stupid sports car or silly limousine but from the seat of a bike. And even though America's third-largest city stretches across 229 square miles, Cusack insists that the heart of the city is easily navigated.

'It's a great city for biking around,' he says, rattling off streets, sites, secret places. 'I do it on a little half mountain, half electric bike called the Wavecrest.'

So, with the wind in his hair and his grip on the handlebars of his Tidalforce Spike bike from Wavecrest, Cusack takes us on a tour of his hometown, the City of Big Shoulders, the Windy City, Frank Sinatra's kind of town.

Cusack is calling from a hotel in Los Angeles in the middle of a daylong studio promotion for Must Love Dogs, the romantic comedy in which he stars this month with Diane Lane and Dermot Mulroney. He says he's had a very long day, filled with one interview after another, with photo sessions interspersed.

'So, we're going to talk about Chicago,' I say, and I can hear him brighten.

'Hit me,' says Cusack.

And he's off and riding. Cusack has a home in Los Angeles, but when you're from Chicago, you're a Chicagoan until the day you die. He has a place downtown, and on his first day or two back, he usually wants to see everything at once.

'I'll ride up and down the waterfront, go by Navy Pier, then all the way down the public park toward Montrose,' he says, ticking off a multiday biking itinerary. 'You can go all the way up and down Lake Shore Drive. There are parks all over there. Then you can go through the city and all of its different neighborhoods ' Wrigleyville and near Halsted, everywhere. You can go up toward the South Side, toward Millennium Park, to the Shedd Aquarium and Soldier Field, through Chinatown, and all the way back through the city to the Loop, and then through downtown.'

He could practically bike through Chicago' blindfolded. 'I know the city inside and out,' he says. 'I don't think there's an area I haven't been to.'

Then he begins directing me: 'There is a tour where you can go up and down the river and see the architecture there ' it's just out of control.'

He's talking about a boat tour called Chicago from the Lake, which hits the highlights of Chicago architecture. But Cusack prefers the bike to the boat. 'You go past the Wrigley Building,' he says of the circa-1921 terra-cotta-clad edifice that's known as the gateway to the Magnificent Mile, one of the greatest shopping streets on earth.

He'll bike by the city's landmarks, starting at the Marshall Field's building, where his parents used to take him to see the big tree at Christmas. Then there's the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center, where Cusack will jump off the bike and hop into an elevator, arriving at the top of the Hancock, where a diorama of the history of Chicago competes with the heavenly view. 'The John Hancock is great because you can see the whole city from all the way around,' he says.

Back on the street, he heads into Bucktown, once a scruffy quarter named for the immigrant families who kept goats in their yards and now Chicago's hottest neighborhood. Cusack fans would recognize it from his 2000 movie High Fidelity, in which John starred with his sister Joan as a Chicago record-store owner charting his top five romantic breakups.

'You can take your bike through Bucktown, which is terrific,' Cusack says. 'Just a cool area with lots of great coffee shops and clubs and restaurants. We shot all over there for High Fidelity. It's where Double Door [a live-music venue] is. There are great record stores in Bucktown. Tiny little record stores like the one in High Fidelity. They are all over. You can also find great funky art and stuff like that.'

When the lunch hour looms, Cusack bikes to Leo's. 'Leo's Lunchroom,' he says. 'That's a great little place for lunch, a tiny little diner, down on ' I can't remember where it is [in Bucktown]. I know how to get there on a bike.'

Afterward, he might spin by some of the museums. 'MCA is right downtown,' he says of the Museum of Contemporary Art, dedicated to the avant-garde. 'It's fantastic. And there's the Art Institute of Chicago ' unbelievable.'

But now, since it's July, the middle of baseball season, Cusack's bike will head, almost automatically, to Wrigley Field.

'I'll bike from my apartment, meet somebody for lunch,' he says. 'If the game is at 1:20 p.m., you can leave the restaurant at 1:05 and ride your bike right up to Wrigley Field, lock it outside in this bike rack they have out there, and walk in. Wrigley Field is amazing, right in the heart of the city.'

His restaurant choices are dependent on their proximity to the field.

'I could say, 'Hey, I'll meet you over at Smith & Wollensky,' and we would bike over there, have some food, and then make a mad dash to Wrigley Field.'

A lifelong ritual, returning to Wrigley Field represents much more than baseball to Cusack.

'It totally connects me to Chicago and my childhood,' he says. 'My father took me there. We would sit behind third base, not in the box seats, but the grandstand. Then, when I got old enough, I would take the El, the elevated train, from Evanston, change to the Purple Line, and then we would go to Wrigley Field. I remember just as we'd pull into the park, the whole train would be rocking with excitement. You could see the scoreboard, the flags waving, and I would usually have about three or four bucks. It would take 50 cents to get down there, then it was $1.50 to sit in the bleachers, so that would take about $2, which would give me about a buck and a half for food and a ride home. Usually, I would spend the whole thing and we would have to hop the train on the way back.'

Afterward, he suggests following the fans to Chicago's many loud, rabid sports bars ' although it's something Cusack doesn't get to do much anymore.

'Yeah, those are a little trickier to go into if you are famous,' he says. 'Famous and alcohol can be not so good, but I like to go into [the bars]. There are great ones all around Wrigley Field. You can go into any of those and have a great time.'

Nighttime in Chicago. Difficult decisions loom for a guy on a bike. Not because of limitations, but, perhaps, because of a lack of them.

'It's the kind of city where you don't have to make plans,' Cusack says. 'You can go out in Chicago and the day or the night happens to you. You run into people and they say, 'Let's go over here, and let's do this.'?'

A guy who's spent all day on a bike requires sustenance, and in Chicago that most likely means steak. Cusack mentions arguably the greatest Chicago steak house in a city full of great steak houses: Gibsons Bar and Steakhouse, which he calls 'the old standby.'

'It's hard to get a better steak than [Gibsons] in Chicago,' he says. 'It's like Old Faithful. It has a real Chicago feeling.'

But there's more to Chicago than just steak.

'There are great little Italian restaurants on Wells. Edwardo's is a great pizza place. They've got them all over. I get the stuffed spinach. Topo Gigio's Ristorante is a good Italian restaurant on Wells. Traditional. There are so many places ' '

If it's a special occasion, Cusack might bike over to the holy temple of new American cuisine, with its tasting menu of infinite dishes, impeccable quality, and extraordinary price: Charlie Trotter's.

'Charlie Trotter's is a terrific place,' he says. 'There is also Spiaggia [a two-level, upscale Northern Italian restaurant], in the One Magnificent Mile building. It's a fantastic restaurant overlooking the city, right across from the Drake [Hotel]. I've gone there quite a bit. It's really superior.'

Dinner done, it's time for drinks, music, nightlife ' and the guy on the bike knows exactly where to pedal.

'Stanley's is a terrific bar,' he says. 'Stanley's is like mayhem, basically. Donnie Kruse is one of the owners, and he's kind of the mayor of Chicago. A lot of ballplayers go over there. It's kind of like a sports bar and they have live-band karaoke on [Sunday nights]. It's a really loose, fun crowd. They have a little restaurant in back and serve great food.'

From there?

'You can go down toward Halsted and see all the blues clubs and jazz clubs. I like to go to the Green Mill. We shot that in High Fidelity. It's this great old jazz club. It's in a really old building that is just fantastic. They say Al Capone drank there. You feel like you can see how the whole place must have been bustling in the '20s or something. Then the neighborhood decayed, and now it is coming back up. It's been around for so long, you can sort of feel the history. The acoustics aren't great, but the room feels so great. It has a big, long, old bar, and it's a great place to hang out.'

As the night descends, the air fills with big bass and deep voices: Chicago blues. The clubs are lined up along Rush Street and beyond ' all within biking distance of one another, all great, says Cusack.

'Kingston Mines is a tiny little blues place, the best place to hear the blues,' he says. 'The Checkerboard Lounge on the deep South Side [now closed], that's pretty intense. You can hear the best blues in the world in these cramped little places. They have small, tiny little stages and the best blues players in the world.'

He is cycling back in time now, remembering the legends he's seen.

'We used to go hear Sugar Blue play all the time,' he says. 'We would go out to dinner, then go over to Checkerboard Lounge and hear Sugar Blue playing with his band from around 11 p.m. on. Then, after he's done playing, you go to the Green Mill. It's open until four. You can go barhopping all night.'

In the end, Cusack says Chicago is more than its beautiful skyline, its historic architecture, its hearty food, its gutsy blues. Chicago is its people, a brand of Midwesterner as tough and resilient as the seasons.

'They survive all those tough winters and then everybody sort of explodes and goes crazy when the spring and summer come because they are so happy about it,' he says. 'You have the dead of summer and the dead of winter. There is not a better place to be.'

He believes the best gauge of the people is their sports teams.

'I watched all six championships for the Bulls,' he says. 'You could always go to any bar on any given night in the winter and the whole city would stop for Michael Jordan. Everyone would hold their breath to see what he would do. The whole city went nuts for all six championships.

'I would also go to the old Soldier Field on Sundays and see the Bears. I was there for every playoff game when they went to the Super Bowl, when the Bears had that magical season in 1985. I was there for the last game, when they beat the Giants. The colder it got, the happier the fans got. Then, as soon as they knew they were going to the Super Bowl, it started to snow. The whole city was in this state of bliss. ' I was also there the year before when the Cubs were two innings away from going to the World Series. I've been to every playoff game the Cubs have played, too, which haven't been that many ' '

Cusack considers this about Chicago, his city of winning, losing, and waiting, always knowing that victory will eventually come.

'Hey, man, it's like enduring the winters,' he says. 'We will endure and persevere until the spring comes.'

Posted by Yano at July 30, 2005 12:50 PM

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