"A town divided"

Northwest Indiana is on Chicago time. A lot of people there commute to Chicago for work. It's a 30-minute drive to see the Bears as opposed to three hours to go watch the Colts play. The Bears are on television every game while the Colts, until the local cable package picked up the South Bend CBS feed, have never been. There are no network affiliates in the area outside of the Chicago stations. Most kids growing up there probably think that the governor of Indiana is Richard Daley.

I fail to understand how people here are trying to "glom" off of Chicago.

We used to go to Chicago bars in my single days. Invariably, some girl from some far west or north suburb would say, "You came all the way from Indiana???" And invariably we'd check a map later and discover she was from farther away than us from Chicago. A law firm my brother interviewed with in Chicago a few months ago turned him down because, "We were just shaky on you living so far away in Indiana." It takes him 15-20 minutes to get downtown.

People in New Jersey don't get critcized for being New York sports fans. Yet Indiana people are hayseed wannabes for pulling for Chicago teams.

And no one I've ever known has said, "I'm not from Northwest Indiana, I'm from Chicagoland." I think it's usually, "I'm from Northwest Indiana, near Chicago."

P.S. These stories might seem silly to some of you, as I can tell by the smart alec comments about how Mars or San Diego are also equidistant from the two cities, but they're perfectly legitimate. The fan bases do bump against each other, sometimes in the same home.

 

When my wife worked for the Munster Times, she got the same comments, particularly from her family. You work all the way in Indiana? Given she worked nights, it was a 20- to 30-minute drive from Oak Lawn (south suburb) to Munster, though fortunately she was gone before IDOT recently tore up every expressway on the south side. The train ride to Chicago from Chesterton -- halfway to South Bend -- is a little bit shorter than, say, the ride to Tinley Park (southwest suburb). People don't understand this is they are just driving by the gutted steel mills and downtown of Gary, but a lot of northwest Indiana is actually fairly nice, though it is strange to be driving U.S. 12 through bucolic dunes and forests, then suddenly come upon an enormous Bethelem Steel plant.

 

Wholeheartedly agree. Way too much time.
We could have woken up this morning with an NFL champion and turned our focus toward Febuary's NCAA hoopsfest.
And perhaps put more focus on Phoenix's remarkable NBA surge.

 

And the Indianapolis Star's web site right now says Grossman of "Bloomington South High School." Sigh.