New Chicago travel show promotes neighborhood-led tourism

El mejor lugar para cobertura bilingüe de noticias y cultura latina en Chicago. | The place for bilingual coverage of Latino news and culture in Chicago.

Can Chicago tourism be reimagined as more than city skyscrapers and deep dish pizza? Choose Chicago thinks so.

Its new travel show, “The 77: City of Neighborhoods” hopes to uplift neighborhoods as prime travel destinations in Chicago beyond downtown. The series was unveiled earlier this month as part of broader efforts by the city’s tourism marketing agency to support community-led neighborhood tourism.

Hosted by Rob Fojtik, vice president of neighborhood strategy at Choose Chicago, the series journeys through five distinct communities: Humboldt Park, Little Village, Uptown, Bronzeville and Pullman/Roseland.

“I think our neighborhoods really are a proof point that our diversity, our history — even if it’s challenging — has created this amazing, beautifully vibrant city where we have so many different cultures calling Chicago home,” Fojtik said.

Longtime community residents might recognize their favorite bites on the screen, from the jibarito at Papa’s Cache Sabroso in Humboldt Park to a vegan messab at Demera in Uptown or a handmade old-fashioned doughnut in Roseland.

Choose Chicago

Though food is a central component of each episode, aimed at increasing tourism and investment in the community, it is not the main objective of Choose’s Chicago’s marketing.

“If you get a million ads to come to the best restaurants in this neighborhood, but think that neighborhood has nothing going on, you’re not going to go there,” Fojtik said.

The goal is to shift the narrative of neighborhoods that have long been siloed through a “community-led” approach, Fojtik said.

Every episode includes a deep dive into that neighborhood’s history and culture as told by the people who live there.

“[Tourism] needs to be in the service of the folks who live there because otherwise you do see displacement [and] gentrification,” Fojtik said.

From community interviews with 26th Ward Ald. Jessie Fuentes, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center’s José E. López, urban historian Shermann “Dilla” Thomas and many more, the series explores the city’s hidden culinary gems as well as hard truths, like disinvestment and gentrification.

Choose Chicago

Little Village resident Jennifer Aguilar, who participated in the series, agrees that storytelling is crucial to how a community is perceived. In her role as executive director of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce, Aguilar is tasked with promoting dozens of family-owned businesses in the 26th Street corridor, which has boasted the second-highest tax revenue in Chicago after the Magnificent Mile.

“It’s important to do a lot more storytelling to show people that, despite the violence, there’s also much bigger things [in the community],” Aguilar said.

With many of Little Village’s brick and mortar shops owned by Mexican and Latino community members, Aguilar hopes that increased tourism will stave off business closures and preserve the community’s cultural essence.

“Our target audience for tourists is other Mexicans in the Midwest and other Mexicans throughout the country … so they make the trip all the way over here to get their essentials and enjoy feeling like they’re in Mexico,” Aguilar said.

Aguilar’s clear that tourism should not come at the expense of displacing Little Village residents, which has been an ongoing issue in recent years.

“That’s why we were very intentional with talking about the possibility of gentrification and putting it in [the Little Village] episode,” Aguilar said, “so that whoever sees it and wants to come visit knows that it’s not an invitation for you to come live here.”

All 30-minute episodes of “The 77: City of Neighborhoods” are now available for viewing on YouTube and the Choose Chicago website, with upcoming community screenings in the next two weeks.