There is something special about living in the city of Chicago. It takes a special person, I think, to live and work here. To the rest of the world, Chicago is a city that is always cold, always filled with crime, loaded with sports teams that never win, and corrupt. The fact of the matter is, all of that is true, but Chicagoans just don't care. In fact, we take a kind of pride in it, really.

If you read the book “Devil in the White City” and hear the descriptions of what Chicago was like, even back then, you tell me if that is the kind of city you'd want to move to deliberately. I am willing to bet your answer would be no. But those of us who call this place home and, in particular, those of us who were born and raised here admire those who lived here before us and look back upon those crazy times almost with nostalgia.

One thing that Chicago has always done better than anyone else is crime. I know that our current mayor, particularly now that he is so high on trying to get the 2016 Olympics here, doesn't want that aspect brought out, but Chicagoans appreciate it. What we truly appreciate is the working class nature of some of our most infamous criminals.

Look at the guy in “Devil in the White City.” Sure, he was a monster who brutally murdered women and, possibly, even children. But he built an entire building with chambers and rooms in it for killing. He didn't just lurk about the World's Fair and kill women in dark alleys like Jack the Ripper. No, this guy designed and had built an entire building made for killing. Now, that's a working class attitude a Chicagoan can appreciate.

John Wayne Gacy was a monster in anyone's book. No one would ever admire or admit that he did anything good. And, yes, he did dump bodies in rivers, but he also buried a large amount of them under his own house. He even dug up part of the concrete floor of his garage and poured cement over one of the bodies. Again, that is a blue collar and working class attitude that Chicagoans can at least acknowledge.

Our biggest and brightest criminal was, of course, Al Capone. Al may have had more money than just about anyone at one point, but he still had his working class roots. He was admired by people back then. Heck, there was a time when he was encouraged to try running for mayor. I bet he would have won. He was overweight and indulgent and he still loved to sit in the stands and watch a baseball game and drink illegal beer. That's a true Chicagoan for you.

People talk about our weather. They seem to think that it's cold all the time here. Of course, I am sitting here writing this in June and we have had maybe a handful of days where the temperature has arisen above 70 degrees so far. It has been cold and rainy here the entire week in which I am writing this column. However, it is not like there are polar bears walking down Michigan Avenue and shopping at Bloomingdales.

When you tell people you are from Chicago they first ask about the crime and, depending on how the sports teams are doing, they ask you about the sports teams. Then they ask how you can live in a place that's so cold. Sure, during the winters here it gets brutal, and there is a lot of snow. Sure it seems like the sun vanished in November and doesn't come back until April. But the problem is that only part of the year is taken up by winter. We do have summer. In fact, we sometimes have all four seasons. Sometimes we have all four in the same day.

Chicagoans take pride in surviving those harsh winters that everyone else likes to complain about. That's the thing about Chicagoans. Everyone else in the world likes to complain and complain loudly. Chicagoans complain to each other, but if you are from out of town and start complaining about Chicago, a Chicagoan is likely to punch them in the face. We are allowed to complain about our lot in life, but we don't want other people whining and moaning about it.

We have football in a stadium that is entire open-air. We fans go out there to a stadium with no roof, on the lake, in the middle of winter. When the breeze comes off of that lake, it's like being in the arctic. Do we complain? No, we just drink beer and then have drunken idiots who take their shirts off and then probably wonder why their nipples have fallen off from frostbite the next day.

Chicago is a city run by corruption and we know that. Sometimes the local news and the papers like to suddenly act surprised that the only way you can get a city job here is by who you know. Everyone else who has been living here their entire lives know that already. Hell, I knew that when I was fifteen. The news guys just have to fill pages and hours during slow new days.

The city itself is surrounded by a state that is notorious, especially these days, by the corrupt. We have had corrupt governors here for as long as anyone can remember. Again, it is almost a source of pride. Sure, we may have corrupt people, but dammit, our city looks good and we have great sports teams and just shut up about it.

Chicago has great museums. They have some of the best restaurants in the world and I will put any of them up against any restaurant in New York. We have live shows that may not be as good as New York, but I bet it's better than L.A. In L.A. they start complaining when the temperatures go down to 50 degrees and freak out if you get three cloudy days in a row. In Chicago we just laugh. When it gets up to 50 degrees in the winter here we get out our shorts and flip flops and start jogging along the Lake.

Here in Chicago we survive the cold. We deal with the crime. We keep moving forward and we don't complain. Well, maybe we complain to our neighbor, but we don't complain to the rest of the world. We even deal with heat.

Yes, it does get hot here. In August, we routinely get days in the triple digits for weeks. Remember, in the late 90s we had a summer that got so hot, for so long that hundreds of people died. They ran out of room to store all of the bodies. How did it happen? Well, it happened a lot in the poorer neighborhoods. The people there were not going to open their windows and let any air inside. Why? Well, because there is a lot of crime here. In Chicago, we do crime better than just about anyone.

But then again, I think we already covered that.