10. Curious City
Curious City is basically the Stuff You Should Know for Chicago.
Each episode of the WBEZ program seeks to answer a quirky question about the origins of Chicago’s neighborhoods, customs and history.
The latest episode puts to the test the popular notion that “Chicago is the largest Polish City outside of Warsaw.”
The simple answer to that is no, it’s not.
It may have been true 35 years ago, but many Polish people have since moved out of the city proper to the suburbs.
By sheer numbers, both New York and London have thousands more Poles than Chicago. The U.K. in particular has seen a huge influx of Polish immigrants in recent years.
But that doesn’t mean that Chicago still doesn’t have a claim to fame for their Polish heritage, as I’m sure my Chicago friends Jordan Kardasz, Kevin Sobczyk and Kathy Bryja (among others) would attest.
Even if Chicago doesn’t can’t claim the most Poles outside of Poland, it does have the highest percentage with nearly 20% of the population of Polish descent.
On top of that, the entire area is heavily influenced by Polish culture. At my last job, I remember driving south to cover a subject at the suburban Chicago restaurant Old Warsaw, owned by the family of “Beauty and the Geek” star Drew Sawa (pronounced Sa-va). They were serving blintzes, pierogi, potato pancakes and other Polish dishes.
Before the 1986 Super Bowl, Mike Ditka famously called the Chicago Bears a “Grabowski” team.
“Some teams are fair-haired. Some aren’t,” he said. “Some teams are a Smith, some are a Grabowski . . . We’re a Grabowski.”
Da Coach wasn’t actually a Grabowski, but he wasn’t really a Ditka, either.
He was born Michael Dyczko.
