Uh, the title of my talk is Neon River, which is a reference to a metaphor preferred by one of Chicago's most famous writers. Nelson Agren liked to refer to Chicago as a neon wilderness. He once wrote that Chicago was a city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed.A city that was to roll boulevards down out of pig wallows and to roll its dark river uphill. that was to forge out of steel and blood red neon its own peculiar wilderness. Augren's neon wilderness was home to the enduringly down ...