IT BRINGS ME NO PLEASURE to say that Lake Shore Drive must die. But: Lake Shore Drive must die.
I’ve been driving on Lake Shore Drive for as long as I’ve been legally allowed to operate a car. I’ve drifted along it in the dark through post-adolescent emptiness and lulled roiling toddlers to sleep on its curves and undulations. It has brought me close to the sublime and close to death. I have dissociated my way across a city on it. I cannot count the number of jolts of inspiration that have struck me on its clear straightaways. For the past eighteen years, it has been my efficient and regrettable way of getting from home to work: I can drive thirty-five minutes—skirting the city’s most densely populated areas and the gut of downtown—and cross a span of Chicago larger than Manhattan. The same trip takes about three times as long on public transit.
The road was born Leif Ericson Drive, in 1927. In 1946 it was rechristened Lake Shore Drive. Since 2021, it has been officially named Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive, after the Bla…
