One more time, with feeling!

He argues that the Windy City doesn’t exist, in spite of arguments made by residents and visitors: “They really believe that the city stands there, in all its legendary green-rivered, fire-prone glory, and that once every 100 years, when it rises out of Lake Michigan, you can visit it.” Among Hodgman’s other dubious assertions: The 27 million people who visited the Columbian Exposition in 1892 were never seen again, and the Chicago River reversed direction in 1900, when it turned blood-red and was accompanied by a hailstorm of snakes.