Chicago is a city of contradictions, of private visions haphazardly overlaid and linked together.
In Chicago, we may not think the Picasso presiding over the Richard J. Daley Center plaza is art, but we know it's a big Picasso and it's the city's Picasso, and when the Cubs made the play-offs, the sculpture wore a baseball cap just like everything else.
Nor is it out of character that Chicago's grandest achievement- a largely manmade arc of lakefront parks and beaches - began as a mistake. from waste thrown into Lake Michigan a 75-year-old dump.