The Tale of Three Cities
By James Banakis
August 22nd, 2025
I’ve always been a city boy. I got together with a group of friends recently and the conversation settled into the early 1970’s. We wistfully talked of dating and the restaurants and clubs we frequented. Jobs we held. We didn’t know each other then, yet we all had similar coming of age experiences, and frequented the same places.
During those years, I was going to school and working the weekend 11PM – 7AM shift at my uncle’s restaurant, Mitchell’s at State and Division. Truth be told, it was there, hosting and working the register that my love affair with the city really took hold. If I ever finish my memoir, Mitchell’s will for sure occupy a chapter. You’ll need to buy my book to read about the colorful details beginning with the most popular hangover cure, 16oz. hanging over the plate skirt steak and eggs breakfast.
Mitchell’s was a stopping off point for politicians, minor celebrities, Gold Coast matrons, mobsters, Division Street bar hoppers, hookers, and any other local character strait out a Mike Royko piece in the still mourned by me, Chicago Daily News. Each of the characters I interacted with became part of the tapestry of my life. During the 30 years span beginning in late 1970’s, the restaurant business became my focus and passion.
To understand food and its evolution you must constantly travel and discover what the world has to offer. So, I willingly traveled searching for the most perfect meal. I found plenty. The other thing I found was that the United States had 3 bright shining stars.
Like Orion’s Belt from east to west, those three stars shined brighter than all the others in the national constellation. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles formed the axis of not only hospitality and commerce, but of every other essential national enterprise.
All of us who live in and around a city contribute to its growth and character. Our great cities provide something for everyone.
New York is that part of a reoccurring dream where I find myself somewhere that feels familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time. It always only takes me about 15 minutes of entering Manhattan to feel like a native.
Even though many of us are generations removed for our descendants arriving at Ellis Island, our subconscious memory reminds us that this town was our first home away from home. That welcoming place that first gave our ancestors shelter. It was their culture shock to becoming American.
During the years I traveled there, it was the safest big city in the country. That was because of brilliant policing which targeted minor offenses to prevent more serious crimes. It worked, and it drove liberals to distraction.
New York always has been the nerve center of the country. Foodwise it’s the international outlet mall of cuisines. It’s the home of America’s most talented, inventive, and more often than not, egoistical chefs.
Chicago, my hometown has always been the heart of the nation, not just location wise, but emotionally. Located at the faucet of the largest freshwater depository in the world. It’s the agricultural capital of the country with the richest farmland in the world surrounding it and nurturing it like an overly protective grandparent.
If you were able to start from scratch, and locate a great city in North America, the logical choice would be where Chicago is located. Since the beginning of the 20th century, it’s been the crossroads of the country.
Nelson Algren famously wrote, “Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose. She may not be beautiful, but she’s real.” To me she has always been flat-out beautiful, especially at dusk returning to the city over the lake on your approach to O’Hare.
Returning there always felt like going back home as a kid after the streetlights come on. Everyone was glad to see you. The city has always been a welcoming stopover for visitors.
I will always feel fortunate that I was involved in so many aspects of the growth of the city’s restaurant ethos.
Los Angeles has always represented the most persistent American yearning, the search for Emeral City. The land over the rainbow, of endless summer, affluence, convertibles, beautiful tan girls, and Hollywood. It was the place where we all wanted to go to even if we had to settle for the shore of Lake Michigan on Hollywood Ave. beach.
To me it has always been all that along with the goofy creativity that developed fusion restaurants, agrarian chefs with purple hair, and self-absorbed people giving themselves countless awards. Liberal yes, but in a once harmless way that anchored the other end of the American universe.
Creating wealth, Botox, soy and kale diets, and entertainment in a city of dreams. Now I realize that these observations are my own and not universal, yet even if you’re not a fan of cities most of us want them to remain dynamic centers of commerce, innovation, and individual freedom.
What happened? Presently these 3 shining stars are on their way to becoming dystopian nightmarish burned-out wastelands.
It began with the Obama administration scolding and degrading half the country as systemic racists. He ushered in and blessed the faith of wokeness. He was the first to identify the police as responsible for all the unfairness in his perceived cosmos. He insisted on DEI hiring and recruitment, pitting one group against another while relegating white males to insignificance.
What could go wrong? Everything.
Business and corporate leaders cowered self-flagellating themselves. The George Floyd riots, defunding police, and the pandemic created a perfect storm, flushing down the toilet years of freedom and progress.
It’s not a coincidence that the 3 major urban centers in America all are in very blue states run by clueless socialist governors who defy their oaths of office and defy federal law and shelter criminals.
They use finite state resources to coddle criminals and illegal immigrants. They pass out EBT cards like they’re free samples at Costco. They don’t even attempt to balance the state budget. Taxing everything they can, while championing legalizing drugs, reducing and defunding police, and releasing dangerous criminals.
Then after leaving their state in financial ruin, they run for president without the least bit of shame. These cities are led by Marxist mayors who don’t give a damn about the safety and economic well-being of the citizens they were elected to protect.
Mayors who blame all their problems on capitalism, racism, police and the business community. They all champion state run businesses and taxing and punishing the successful.
They work in tandem with Soros sponsored prosecutors who are committed to emptying the jails and prisons. Their legal systems are populated by feckless judges who are controlled by a mindless, dangerous ideology of ignoring the victims and championing the criminals.
Now we’re on the brink of a communist takeover of what has always been known as the financial and capitalistic capital of the world. Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old is set to become the mayor of New York.
Mamdani a Uganda-born Muslim labels himself a socialist, but he is in fact an outright communist. He intends to eliminate ALL police and replace them with social workers.
He plans to make all public transportation free and run government owned grocery stores and pharmacies.
He vows to redistribute the wealth. He plans to eliminate the nuclear family, and private property.
There’s much more, the piece de resistance, he’s belligerently antisemitic and that’s just for starters.
Despite all of this we have Washington elites like George Will who say he’s rooting for Mamdani’s election because it will remind us all how bad communism really is. This is exactly the type of dreamy above the fray mentality that got us into this mess. We all need to wake-up from our apathetic stupor and protect our metropolitan inheritance.
The Biden/Obama debacle of open boarders was the final cataclysm to these 3 cities, turning all financial resources to billion-dollar deficits. Remember Brandon Johnson and Karen Bass cannot print money. Not yet at least.
We know all this can be fixed. It’s a matter of will, not George Will.
Never again should we accept leaders who see themselves as victims. Leaders take responsibility and fix the problems.
We only need enlightened managers instead of unabashed Marxists. Brandon Johnson, a guy who didn’t pay his personal utility bills, claims, “Chicago finances have reached the point of no return.” How pathetic and shameful for any leader of a great metropolis. What a loser.
Our cities are resilient. Chicago rebuilt from the ground up in 1871. Los Angeles is facing similar fire cataclysms. New York rallied after 9/11. Rudy Giuliani and even Old Richard J. were never perfect, but they knew how to lead and run cities.
First, they made them safe with enlightened policing.
Second, they always protected business, commerce, and transportation.
Third, they understood the importance of a tough judicial system that protected the citizens not the criminals.
Lastly, and most important, hire the best and the brightest. It’s always been true in business and it’s true in the administration of any endeavor.
Since antiquity cities have survived if they were safe, vibrant, authentic, resilient, and sustainable. Cities like all of us must keep reinventing themselves or they become irrelevant.
They are the anchors of distribution for all interstate commerce. They are laboratories of innovation. Cities must endure, or we go down with them.
Recently I was flying home to Chicago, and for the first time ever, I couldn’t shake a feeling of dread I felt approaching Ohare from the lake on a beautiful evening.
The once incomparable Ohare airport has become third world. The city is rudderless. The infrastructure is crumbling.
Living with this type of leadership in our major cities is like waking up from a disturbing nightmare. I remember in the past always feeling my heartstrings tug as I knew I was coming home to a safe, exciting destination that for me held limitless opportunities. It was a city we all in our own individual ways have helped to build and make better.
For those of us from Chicago it was always where we loved to return. I want my grandchildren to always feel the same way. I want them to inherit a place to grow and pursue their dreams.
I want them to appreciate all our major urban centers as part of the American fabric. I want them to be safe and cheered to be back among Chicagoans, where a common bond exists.
It’s more apparent when you travel and return. Traveling is thrilling but being able to return to a place you love is a blessing.
When you look at a city, it’s like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it.
– Hugh Newell Jacobsen
-30-
Jimmy Banakis is a life-long restaurateur. He was an honorary batboy for the White Sox in 1964. He attended Oak Park River Forest High School, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Chicago-Kent Law School. He claims the kitchen is the room he’s most comfortable in anywhere in the world. He published an extremely limited-edition family cookbook. He’s a father and grandfather, and lives in Downers Grove Il.
Comments 31
Oh yes. Truth and so sad that people do not appreciate the truth anymore. Trump is trying to bring back the old days and to my amazement the Voters do not seem to care and want the Socialist and so many destructive folks controlling our once best Country in the World. So sad folks. Wake up. We gave our Country away to the brainwashed, and uneducated folks. They robbed our Country and sad that no one seems to care only a few. I grew up in those days Sir, grew up in Oak Park and oh yes I remember well the old days were Freedom rang.
Beautifully written. Captures the essence of the struggle for our country.
Too true, I knew two of these cities well [going back to the 60s] and it breaks my heart to see them now. Like New Orleans, Chicago’s location will always save it from oblivion, though much of its importance could flee to Houston. NYC remains the commercial hub of the North East with no real rival. Come-backs are always possible.
BTW, I haven’t taken George Will seriously since he predicted [in 1994] that we were in the midst of a series of one-term presidents as in the late 1800s. He’s almost as bad as Paul Krugman as a seer.
Kass, when are you going to put this guy on The Chicago Way so we can hear him ?
I second the motion.
Well Done Jimmy – outstanding article – more please.
Harry Mark Petrakis step aside! Beautiful prose, Sir.
Going back at least ten years now, I remember the hordes of “children” who would arrive at the Red Line Chicago Avenue CTA stop and proceed eastward to provoke mayhem and thievery on the stores and shops of Michigan Avenue. Still living in the city at that time I said to my oldest son that if they do not nip this now we will become like Detroit in short order. They did not and we became Detroit. Old man Daley use to station “traffic” cops on the corners of Michigan Ave. and the cross streets, no more. All the great stores have fled. The jewel “Boul Mich” is ancient history. I am waiting for the tire shops, wig stores, tattoo parlors and Middle Eastern convenience stores to replace the once grand commerce. “They are coming, listen to me!”
Excellent column, it’s too bad the people who need to read it probably won’t.
My family was in Chicago when it was Fort Dearborn. We had builders, musicians, and yes – even politicians. We came from Scotland, Ireland, the Alsace, Austria, and Serbia, and even Canada.
And we’re gone. All of us have given up and fled. Oh, some only to the outer suburbs, but most to other states. Driven out by what you describe.
I remember hearing the Cashman and West piece, American City Suite, in the early 1970s at college. Listen – although they wrote it for New York, it is Chicago. But listen all the way through… the end is where we are now, sadly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oDCnoRG15w
Jimmy nails it like no one else. Clear eyed and pragmatic we’d better heed his words of wisdom. Unfortunately I think we are pass the tipping point.
It’s sad to think of what’s happening to this country. We are already being out-numbered by these college educated communists. Once our generation passes, what’s going to stop them?
I fear for my children and grandchildren.
Joe Raducka
Sir:
You say some great things here. I am reading one of George Will’s books right now and can’t believe he would want to conduct such an experiment with fellow citizens.
Exceptionally well written.
Great column that put into words what so many of us feel.
I still have a sliver of hope that the “great course correction” isn’t too late, but it gets more difficult every time I hear the mayor or governor speak.
Mr. Banakis, great article. Would you consider running for mayor?
Why?
Excellent column! Well written and hits the nail bang on the head! Thank you, sir.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
This started before Barack Obama, but took off when he started his political career in Illinois and soon after became President. A guy who never passed a bill in the US Senate become the face of the woke, race baiting generation that we now have in the country like JB Pritzker, the guy who had trust funds in office shore accounts before he was born. Gavin Newsome who let Pacific Palisades burn. Tim Waltz who recently posted a tribute honoring George Floyd, a drug addicted career criminal. Pritzker is a guy who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. He has ruined this state with his taxes and woke policies. The state budget has grown from 39 billion when he took office to almost 60 billion since he took office. His priorities are abortion, gerrymandering, and transgender mutilation of children. Then we have the ass-clown Mayor Brandon Johnson, who thinks he is the mayor of black people but no one else. He has driven the city into the ground with his socialist policies. He neglects underserved communities to spend millions on migrants and now he wonders why Chicago’s finances are a mess. He hates the police. Our public education system is in shambles. He is the CTU’s stooge. He wants the rich to pay their “fair share” but doesn’t understand that people will continue to leave the city and state. He does nothing to promote commerce and business in this once great city. Thank you Jimmy Banakis for your well-written article. My thoughts exactly. Wake up everyone and do something.
I don’t necessarily love New York or LA. Agree however, that they have for sure seen better days. But a certain element there feels they have to “fly over us” – the same element that is killing them, ironically. All my sons, all four (two mine, two hers) wish to live and work in Chicago. Last night at Harrigan’s on Halsted I told my son that he has a huge opportunity to help this city, to lead.
He said “Pagey, I wonder what this town will be like 30 years from now” I said “I first came to this bar when I was your age 30 years ago – hasn’t changed”. Like Ms Devine said this week on the podcast, she said – paraphrasing – look at history. Learn from it
Great letter today, TY!
Clarification – her sons’ father is 100% Greek and they are estranged. They are his sons, and, as a man, I do my best to be a placeholder until they can no longer be estranged
1. Excellent remembrance article. When in medical school we’d work late into nite dissecting our cadaver. Smelling of greasy formaldehyde we decided to get a bite around 2am. There was this great 24/7 Greek American restaurant/bar across from Cook County hospital (I never call it stroger, a crook). Then there Whiteys and Blackies pizza places nearby. Finally, the Polish sausage place at 14th and Halstead originally called Kingfish Levinsky (sp), a former fighter who opened it,
2. NYC beats Chicago and LA by far in the vast array of different cuisines. Chicago can’t compare, even now. Most of the new different cuisines are forcelistist snob liberals. I would never eat there.
3. Stop with Commie crap. These new guys on block don’t even know what Commie theory is. If anything they are more socialist.
4. You state these 3 cities ‘are becoming dystopias. They ARE dystopias. The city of Chicago we knew is gone: dead and buried. Never to be again. No matter how much bitching you do. Look at population demographics. Case closed.
Jimmy,
Well put. But I remind you that elections have consequences. Mayor Pannix and Governor Dumbo didn’t just fall into office. They were elected – by an uniformed and apathetic electorate perhaps, plus the Chicago “machine,” but elected nonetheless. Now we must deal with fleeing citizenry, crumbling infrastructure, higher and higher taxes, deteriorating school systems, rampant crime, unsafe streets – with no end in sight. Paul Vallas, even though he is a democrat, knew how to run a city, manage its budgets, and rebuild the education system. I fear he was our last hope. I just don’t see anyone on the horizon that could come forward soon enough to undo all the stupidity and mismanagement that’s befallen our once great city. Any suggestions???
Great column Mr. Banakis. I loved, lived, went to school and worked in the city. I was fortunate got to grow up with a great bunch of people who were all first generation kids.
City wasn’t perfect, but show me another city in the world where our parents who came from nothing were able to thrive, instill the love for the country and make us successful.
The south east side with the light soot from the mills on the cars, the great jobs at the mills the soot was a sign of prosperity. The stock yards with the smell and stench, jobs at the butcher of the world. The factories on Cicero, Western, mundane jobs but people etched out a living.
We lost those jobs but the City of Chicago always rebounded. It always recovered and found away. She at least gave us a good education, and provided for us, to achieve the middle class.
Today at nearly seventy to see its demise, in this time to be afraid to ride the CTA to St. Peter’s, the Art Institute, the Bean, State Street, Lincoln Park Zoo Xmas lights, the great live Plays, and all the other city attraction’s is a disgrace.
Lost in my generation.
I wholly agree with the four points we need in our leaders. It’s what makes them leaders, beyond simple politicians.
Unfortunately, I’m a bit of a pessimist and agree with George Will because the majority of people in our cities need “off the charts” bad to bite them in the a** to bring them back to their senses and vote intelligently. The smart people have already left to avoid the nadir. But the pendulum will swing back, eventually.
Mr. Banakis, thank you for writing this beautiful essay. When I grew up at 2726 North Nordica with my family in the middle apartment and my aunt and uncle and cousins in the top floor of our 3 flat (Grandpa and Grandma Bellino were intending to live in garden apartment but my Grandma Philomena passed away) we were Chicago through and through. DesPlaines might as well have been Paducah, KY. We had everything we’d ever want near Grand and Harlem. Plus Armand’s was in its excellent infancy! It saddens me now that my kids and grandkids will never know that sense of deep rooted community. George Will is a fool. We already know what happens to NY if Mamdami becomes mayor. It’s the best of times (Trump’s miraculous comeback); it’s the worst of times (Marxist democrats destroying everything). But who prevails is yet to be determined. Thank you again from one Jimmy to another!
There were three cities long ago in Ancient Greece, Athens, Sparta and Macedonia. 10,000 years ago, there were Atlanteans in the Aegean who defeated the Scythians. But Greek had few comedies aside from Aristophanes’ The Clouds. And its wisest man chose hemlock rather than exile to make a final point about corrupt Greek democracy, where women and slaves couldn’t vote and a disingenuous Elysian Sophistry movement replaced the pre-Socratic mathematicians. Then there was the Peloponnesian War in which the Spartans betrayed Greek honor by paying for Persian support. Greek mythology is interesting, but Greek life was hardscrabble, with olives and wine their cash crop. Alexander was no better. Your Bildungsroman ignores the fact your restaurant’s hookers, cops on the take, gamblers and gangsters does not speak well of the past. Crime is down to 1960s levels. Obama didn’t start a race war. Marxism is not communism, but labor activism. You carp and cavil about the new American with the New Men. Wait until 10/30/25 and see what becomes of your racially insensitive ways. The foreigner is not your enemy.
Your spewing of psuedo-intellectual jizz reveals the leftie lightweight that underlies your attempt to form an intellectual response to the realities of the present realities in the present City of Chicago. Crime is not down, Obama and his leftist ilk from Chicago’s southside planted and fertilized the seeds of racism and racial discord in America, Marxism is the fundamental definition of communism, and and as a life long labor member, we were never Marxist in our activism. Another lost little boy from the suburbs who probably never got his hands dirty doing real man’s work, you sir are the real “foreigner.”
You should read ” A Confederacy of Dunces”. I’m pretty sure all of the drivel you wrote is reminiscent of the main character in the book. “..read Boethius!…”
Not you Mr. Jennings. I’m responding to Vognar the wanna be comedian.
So Jimmy tell me how Mamdani’s vision is all that much different than Mr. Trump’s as he strives for government partial ownership of Intel, MP Materials, or even Nippon Steel (as a condition of US Steel ownership via “golden shares”?)