Five ways cash and power can help you beat the crowds in Chicago

Jean Paul Sartre famously declared that “Hell is other people.”

By that standard, traveling through busy Union Station is about to get a little less hellish — but only if you’ve got $10 to spare.

The Legacy Club, where passengers can pay for a comfy chair and a little peace and quiet while they wait for their train, opened Monday, and is the latest place where Chicago swells can insulate themselves from the hoi polloi.

Short of moving to the state’s wealthiest suburb, Winnetka (average median household income: $202,000) and never leaving your house, here are four other ways well-heeled Chicagoans can ensure they never rub elbows with their poorer neighbors.

On the train

A luxury waiting room is all well and good, but it’s not going to help you once you need to get moving. Then you’ll be wishing you had your own private rail car.

While such luxury is these days typically the reserve of royalty, the U.S.’s last private rail car, Car 553, runs between Chicago and Kenosha on Metra’s North line. For a $900 annual fee, plus a Metra pass, around 70 members can ride into the city in their own rail car, which is hitched to a regular Metra train.

The service has run on and off for more than 80 years. An earlier incarnation had a barber’s chair, friendly games of Bridge, and remained in the downtown station throughout the day, so wives could shop and drop their purchases off with the porter, but that stopped before World War II.

Today’s service is less luxurious, but still a step up from public transit. Member Jan Carlson explained the appeal to the Tribune’s Richard Wronski in 2009:

At the game

Sitting in the cheap seats at Soldier Field ain’t cheap. Regular season single game tickets start at $106 a pop.

Still, regular working stiffs sneak in. So if you want to take in the action and the atmosphere at a civilized reserve from your fellow fans, you’ll want an executive box. The “best experience in the stadium” starts at $28,800 for 20 tickets and 5 parking passes. That gets you into one pre-season game and one regular season game. Food is extra.

But you do get a private elevator to the suite level. And, according to the Bears’ marketing material, the knowledge that 35% of your fellow attendees will “classify themselves as Presidents, Vice Presidents, C-level executives or owner of their companies.”

At a concert

Even rich folk get the Blues. And sometimes they like to listen to the blues, in comfort, surrounded by people who understand their problems. The House of Blues “Foundation Room” club has them covered. Members can drink at a private bar and eat in a private dining room, then watch the show from their own balcony.

The private road