DAY FOUR: that most beautiful sentence

It is a Crime that I didn’t get into esports soon enough to catch Season Six worlds quarterfinals in Chicago. It is a Crime that as soon as I moved out of Houston, it got both a namesake LCS team (Clutch Gaming) and a geolocated Overwatch League team (Houston Outlaws), which I not-so-secretly-now root against because How Dare They Do This To Me. It is a Crime that in the great war of choosing to make North America’s esport home NYC or L.A., no one even thought about putting it in the Midwest.

So here are five reasons why Chicago deserves its own esport team.

One. We have awesome city-specific branding.

It looks better than Washington Justice already.

Yeah, sure, Texas is the Lone Star State, and California sure does love that bear, but have you ever met a city that was prouder of its flag than Chicago? In fact, is there a city other than Chicago that can even spit out its city flag?

The Chicago city flag is a work of design perfection. I can point you to the Wikipedia article that will break down all the symbolism, but for the moment I just want you to appreciate how good it looks. It’s familiar American imagery, with a twist: sky blue stripes and red six-point stars. It’s simple enough for tattoos, but bold enough that it’s instantly recognizable even if you warp it, alter it, or make fun of it.

Overwatch League, you don’t even need to help us with the branding. We got it on lock. Okay, so we don’t need another OWL team that’s red, white, and blue themed. But if there are two teams that are red/black and red/yellow, surely you can give Chicago sky blue and bright red, at least.

Two. There are so many sports bars in this city and they have five thousand TVs.

Chicago is home to a NFL team, a NHL team, two MLB teams, and a MLS team that I have never heard of anyone watching. One of Chicago’s suburbs is home to the Big Ten Conference headquarters. And for some for some reason people love roller derby in this city.

Where there are sports, there are people who watch it. And where there are people who watch sports, there are sports bars.

So. Many. Sports. Bars.

Did you know that the Big Ten Conference actually has 14 teams? I feel betrayed.

There are sports bars in Chicago with over 100 TV screens. There’s a sports bar, sometimes more than one, for every one of the Big Ten schools, and then some. I cannot even keep up with all the sports that are shown at The Globe. There are upscale sports bars. There is, uh, the Cubby Bear. There are gay sports bars! There are probably lesbian sports bars, or maybe it’s just whatever bar is sponsoring the Windy City Rollers that night. And I will tell you that I 1) legitimately saw the League of Legends x Gordon Hayward commercial on a TV in a sports bar in (sigh) Evanston and 2) once saw OWL on ESPN+ on a TV in downtown Chicago. Yes, it was wild.

My point is, there is no reason to let 5 Deadly Venoms and Waypoint Cafe or Clutch Gaming have all the fun. There are so many bars here, and I promise you I can get one of them to host a viewing party.

Three. We are full of salt.

I’ve never met a city that had a bigger chip on its shoulder or was saltier about…practically everything. If you want to see some passive-aggressive salt, just throw a group of Chicago natives-and-or-residents together with some beers (Does Goose Island still count as a craft brewer? Daily salt intake #1!) and watch them duke it out on the following:

• Cubs or White Sox? No matter how you answer this question, you are wrong. Are you a North Sider or a South Sider? Night or day games? What do you think about Wrigleyville? Where were you when the Cubs won the 2016 World Series, and did you care? God forbid you be the worst of all Chicagoans — the one that doesn’t care about baseball.
• Neighborhoods, or as the Eater recently put it, “it’s North Center, not Lincoln Square.” Is New Chinatown now the Old Chinatown? West Loop? Fulton Market? United Center?? At what point is Bucktown Wicker Park? And for god’s sake, did we really have to have both Lincoln Park AND Lincoln Square?

I refuse to link to the judgmental neighborhood map of Chicago and the best one that was ever made is sadly in a personal email.

• New York. And specifically, how Chicago is not New York City. What side of this debate you fall in will depend on whether you were forced to relocate to the Midwest because of a significant other, forced to relocate to the East Coast because of a significant other and then forced them to move back, and whether someone in your group is from D.C., which you are allowed to freely shit all over.
• Pizza. See point above about New York City. Does Chicago deep dish pizza suck? (Yes, but Pequod’s is pretty good.) Is it pizza or a weird lasagna that you’re supposed to eat with your hands? (Yes.) Does Chicago have good pizza and people just like to make fun of Chicago’s pizza scene because every single time an out-of-town visitor comes to Chicago they force you to go get deep dish with them even though you try to explain that getting deep dish pizza would not even rank above “getting hit by a car” in terms of your favorite Chicago culinary experiences but do they ever listen to you, no, they do not? (Sorry, that one got away from me a little.)

You can’t tell me the best things in esports aren’t the rivalries. OWL has the Battle For L.A. LCS has Rift Rivals. Fighting games has the FGC. Starcraft has uh…Brood War vs SC2, I guess. The best things in life (fries, fried chicken, pie crust, and esports) are made with salt. Come to Chicago. We have plenty.

Four. L.A. is too nice. Chicago is not.

One time in Chicago, the weather report told me I should look out for “thundersnow,” which is a combination of weather phenomena I didn’t even know could happen together.

Just a typical Monday.

Ask some LCS/now-LEC pros why NA sucks, and one of the things they’ll bring up is that L.A. is too nice. Berlin is always gloomy, the food sucks, it’s overcast, and, well, Germans are the definition of no-fun, right? On the other hand, L.A. is sunny all year round, stuffed the gills with good food, and hell, there are beaches.

You know a place where fun truly comes to die? Winter in Chicago. When I first moved here my 1L year of law school, I left my apartment to get coffee from the nearby McDonald’s. On the way back, I slipped on a patch of black ice, and some coffee fell on my coat sleeve. It instantly froze. Years later during the Snowpocalypse, I was inundated with videos of my friends throwing boiling water outside of their windows, which instantly turned to powdery ice. Yes, that is what passes for fun when it’s well-below zero in Chicago.

Chicagoans accept cold winter like a fact of life. We tell each other things like, “oh, well, at least it’s not hailing and going to drop below -15 today.” At some point after November, there’s no point in going anywhere that requires you to be outside. Life in Chicago during our six months of winter is just endless jumping from warm interiors to warm interiors. Just going to the gym — if it’s outside your apartment building — can be a life-or-death proposition.

I can’t prevent pros from playing Fortnite or WoW instead of League. But I can tell you this — if NA LCS were in Chicago, they sure will be indoors grinding something during spring split.

Five. I’m here, goddamn it.

When I moved to Chicago, one of my oldest and best friends said in celebration, “Now I can never leave Chicago.”

Less than a year later, she left me to work for the Overwatch League.

@/natenanzer, you owe me (a personal apology).

(This post is part of 12 Days of Esports for 2018.)