“They’re shooting some movie outside of my apartment.”

“40 degrees is not cold!”

“Take Eisenhower, then hop on the Kennedy.”

“Take LSD to get there.”

“Did you see today’s Groupon?”

“Omg, you have a car!”

“7-7-3 2-0-2 boop-boop-boop-boop Luuunaaa.”

(The above are some of my favorite quotes from local improve star Robert Bacon’s YouTube best “Sh—Chicagoans Say”. You can check out that full 2:30 minute video here. It’s great.)

While in front of a Maxwell Street Polish stand*, I experienced a jarring epiphany. A girl stood calmly putting ketchup on her hot dog, and it got me thinking. What makes us Chicago? I mean, what makes us really Chicagoans? As a Chicago lifestyle blogger, could I (!) not actually be Chicago enough?

Do the terms and acronyms we throw around measure our Chicagoality? Or is it the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of our pizza and hot dog consumption? Is Chicagoality even a word?

No. Of course not. It’s not a word. And like most things, there’s a flowchart specifically designed for the purpose of measuring how deeply the city’s blood runs through our veins. No, really. I just made it. Here it is.

How Chicago are You?

We are all Chicago. Some of us are just more Chicago than others.

*This is one of the many enlightened moments I’ve experienced in front of this particular polish stand. Others include:

“These rats are eating for free the same polish I just paid for. Who’s winning here?”

“Why are the fries better here, but the polishes better at their competition next door? Could it be possible that both stands share the same owner? Is this nothing more than a ruse designed to coerce folks into paying for fries? Genius!”

“It takes me at least a day to defrost and clean my fridge. How do these 24 hour stands find the time to clean their fridges and fryers? Oh, look a rat…”