Flag–You're It!

Does your city/town have a flag?  Most medium and up sizes cities seem to.  It's a form of civic branding, I guess.

And some brands images are just stronger than others.

I live in Chicago, and we have a pretty good flag.

There's all kinds of symbolism in the blue and white stripes, and each star stands for an event and each point a virtue.  Yada-yada-yada.  (Link for details.)

And I'm the only one who thinks so, the North American Vexillological Association conducted a survey in 2004, and Chicago came in second.  And then there's the vote of the residents.  To say you see the Chicago city flag everywhere is an understatement.  And I'm not simply talking in front of city hall and on police uniforms, either.  I mean everywhere.

You see it on all kinds of clothing and decorations and tattoos.

And you see its motif riffed all over the place, too:

	This one is for you, Joshua.

It's so common, that a few months ago, when I was talking about how ugly the Illinois flag is, Cora was confused.  I was talking about how it looked like it was drawn by a 5th grader.  I started talking about the clunky eagle and the rock, and it became clean quick that we weren't talking about the same flag.  She'd just seen the Chicago one all over the place, and hadn't see the Illinois one:

that she just presumed that it was the state flag.

But no matter how ugly your city flag is, it's probably not the hot mess that is Chicago's neighbor to the north Milwaukee.

I mean, that would hurt like a mofo to get tattooed on your bicep.