Chicago Abandoned!

In a rare moment of clarity Chicago's 2.8 million inhabitants poured out of the city today seeking a more temperate climate. Thousands trudged along the city's main arteries through white-out conditions headed for the former prairies. Clinging to scant possessions, often just some sports memorabilia, the haggard masses pushed south and westward without stopping to glance back. Others, hearing rumors of landing craft waiting, crossed a paralyzed Lake Shore Drive only to plunge like lemmings off piers and retention walls into the icy Lake Michigan. Still other desperate Chicagoans fled through the Deep Tunnel System seeking a route to the Mississippi. Being among the first to leave, city officials were not available for comment.

The exodus is said to have been triggered by the National Geographic Society's downgrade of the inhabitability status of the city. The new designation gives the Chicago area a rank of "Tundra with Permafrost." Normally, such a rank would mean the area is suitable for " herds of migrating beasts with abundant fur" (i.e. Pleistocene Era). Locations around the globe that share this designation include Finnmark, Tierra del Hielo, and the interior of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Despite the hardship of leaving it all behind, Chicagoans greeted the news with characteristic sangfroid. " It's a wasteland but its our wasteland." insisted Norma Rodriguez, a former community organizer. "I hardly noticed the weather til they buried my apartment" Rodriguez lived in apartment below street grade and was sealed inside for 48 hours by errant truckload of snow. Carlton Sessions, an airline employee, put down his bundle saying "I can deal with it. But they should at least try to save something, like the Bean or maybe part of Wrigley Field"

Despite early claims that wholesale abandonment of a city by its inhabitants is unprecedented,
some historians are in disagreement. They have noted parallel instances with the Mayans in precolumbian Mesoamerica. Mystery shrouds the reason or reasons why perfectly good cities in a WARM climate were abandoned in the Yucatan at the end of the First Millennium. Some weather experts have suggested that, during this period, the Yucatan suffered repeated hurricanes. This may have prompted the priest caste to downgrade the area to "we're better off in the jungle."

The future of Chicago's buildings, houses and streets remains uncertain. Large business conglomerates which already own segments of the city such as the Skyway, have offered to assume full control. They claim that Chicago scenes are still needed by TV series on HBO and elsewhere and that contracts must be honored.