It’s election day in Chicago, which means it’s the day citizens of this Third Coast Second City bring out their dead to partake in the American right to screw themselves at the polls.

Since its incorporation on March 4, 1837, Chicago has been the place for people who want to be punished. There are the winters, the Cubs and the Bears, the Daley Family, the pot holes, and, of course, the crime. And by crime, I mean the politicians and the police. Yes, the city has its positives, too. There’s the lake and its shoreline, the architecture, the Blackhawks, Stephanie Izard, the excitement of not knowing whether the improv show you’re about to see is going to be incredible or give you cause to wish for a swift and vicious cancer to eat you and every player on stage alive.

Chicago, we don’t deserve better — we’ve done this to ourselves for almost two hundred years — but we should want better. And if we’re as tough as we brag to be, we can have it.