Nicknames are good for tavern regulars and old-time gangsters. For anyone and anything else they can be downright cringeworthy. Alas, Chicago is an eminently nickname-able city. Maybe it’s because the world associates Chicago with taverns and old-time gangsters, or maybe it’s just our lousy luck that city nicknames accumulate like dibs chairs in January. Sure, they add color to the landscape of our midwestern vernacular, but for every cool Chicago epithet there are at least two or three awkward ones: for every Scarface, a Willie Potatoes.
Well, except for the Magnificent Mile, which just might be the most obnoxious of all Chicago-related nicknames—that cheesy superlative tourists use when they talk about shopping at and around Water Tower Place. “North Michigan Avenue” takes about the same amount of effort to say and completely avoids all the complications of the nickname, which include but are not limited to (1) the awkwardness of hearing tourists ask CTA drivers if the bus running along Michigan Avenue is going to the Magnificent Mile; (2) having to hear other out-of-towners mistakenly call it the Miracle Mile; (3) the even more repellent nick-nickname Mag Mile.
