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Go, Pokémon Go!! is Thorsten Sahlin’s second piece for Cult of AMERICANA

It’s been roughly a year and two months since the release of the phenomenological hurricane, Pokémon Go. Admittedly, I bought into the hype hard. It was the perfect amalgam the modern smartphone technology to which I am reluctantly dependent, and the nostalgia my generation (xennial, millennial) revels in. This combination contributed to the massive success PG achieved at its inception. In its first month, PG set the record for most revenue grossed by a mobile game in its first month, most downloaded in its first month, most international charts topped simultaneously by a mobile game in its first month (downloads, and revenue), and fastest mobile game to gross 100 million dollars. Clearly, I was not the only one under its spell. Despite its success, my interest waned quickly, as did the interest of basically everyone else I knew. The glitz of it all faded when we realized that it was a serious time investment, and let’s be serious, if you’re in your late 20’s/early 30’s, if you’re lucky enough to not be off work and outside, hurling poké’ balls via flicks of your smart phone is probably the last thing on your mind.

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This piece was originally published in the February 14, 2016 edition of Write City Magazine, the magazine of the Chicago Writers Association.

After living in New York City for 26 years, I got a dream job in Chicago I simply couldn’t turn down. I wasn’t sure what the move would entail—my initial associations with Chicago having to do with Al Capone, the Bears, house music—but some preliminary Google searching assured me that Chicago was simply a “smaller, cleaner, friendlier version of New York.”

Across the blogosphere Chicagoans compared their city to New York on nearly every level, from neighborhoods—Pilsen, the new Williamsburg—to amenities—if you like Per Se, you’ll love Alinea. Deeper Web searching yielded even bolder claims to the ways “Chicago is infinity times better than NYC,” “kicking New York’s ass.” These claims rested on the premise that Chicago offers pretty much everything NYC does but without all the stressors. Or as one blogger put it, it’s “NYC Lite.” What New Yorker wouldn’t love the Big Apple scaled to size and rendered livable?
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