NEWS: Neal Pollack's Chicago Noir

Chicago, make no mistake, is a city that sleeps. At night, in the dark, we drift into dreams of our city, our streets, our neighborhoods and intersections. And we have nightmares.

Breathtaking buildings cast monstrous shadows on the pavement and a body of water threatens from the east. Abandoned stockyards echo not-so-ancient screams and stench and factories guzzle smoke into the starless, inked sky. A saxophone dribbles against the walls of an empty L station--the rails shudder and shake as phantoms travel. Ghost signs haunt buildings. The faded stencils of forgotten companies tell us we'll never know the whole truth. We feel like jazz and we taste bourbon.

Nelson Algren whispers into our ears from Division Street and James Farrell warns us of what's ahead--and the endless alleyways cross our eyes into blindness. We sleep and we fear who's still awake: the degenerate drunks, the drug-addled men of scruff, the musicians and hired muscle; the cops who take bribes and the toughs who turn their heads. The inevitable crime found in wayward streets in the middle of the middle of the night lurks like a jealous lover. And there's a man who smokes a cigarette on every street corner, hissing one word: noir.