Chicago (Budapest, Hungary)

[Gabor Fencsik]

Barry Popik writes:

> I just drove by a bad section of Budapest.  The driver said it's
> full of prostitutes.  "We call it Chicago," he said.  Maybe I missed
> something when I last visited Chicago.

The driver is repeating a misconception widely shared in Budapest.  In
fact, the name of that particular rough section of the town has nothing
to do with the morals of Chicagoans, real or imagined.  The district
was originally called Chicago because it was built in a grid-shaped
pattern, with equidistant streets running east-west and north-south.
The earliest written occurrence of the term is from 1908, soon after
the district was developed.  It became a rough neighborhood about 20
years later.

Of course, like most Europeans, Hungarians assume without question that
everyone in Chicago carries a submachine gun, and the town is still
being run by Al Capone.

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Gabor Fencsik