Help convince my love to move to the city (Chicago: apartment, hotel)

[Misidea]

This is not the typical post you may be expecting.
I am a native to the city. I was born in Harvey and I grew up in Melrose park. My father was a charter captain on lake michigan and drove a bus for CTA for 10+ years. My mother grew up in the city and met him on his bus route.
My family moved away from the city to upstate new york, and then to Arkansas. I have longed to come back ever since then. I am now 23 years old, living in middle Wisconsin with my good friend and room mate.
I moved to Wisconsin from Arkansas to get closer to Chicago. There is nowhere else I have ever been that has ever felt like home the way the city does.
Two years ago I met a woman online, she lives in South Carolina. We are the love of each others life, i have spent time with her in SC, and I find it lacking much the same way Arkansas is, compared to the city. She hates it there, and wants to move.
I took her on vacation to Chicago last month, she was not as enthused as I had hoped, but she said the city was somewhere she could live.
We packed our things and booked a hotel in the city. We are apartment hunting and job seeking, it has not been easy but we persist.

Now that the background is laid, the problem;
She feels as though Chicago is exactly the same as South Carolina, the same people, the same attitudes. That we would be working the same jobs and living in the same apartment with access to the same kind of food, entertainment and goods. She does not believe there is anything different about the city, she feels that the people everywhere are mean and that "everyone judges you."
Of all the problems I expected to face on this journey, this one really caught me by surprise.
I ask you, fellow Chicagoans, please help me convince her that the city is more than that. I feel that perhaps I am too close to the source, and I would like to show her that the people of the city are not like that. I have three days or so, I think I'm going to take her to Navy Pier, maybe the aquarium, anywhere I can think of to help show her the city is not like any where else in the world, that the city can be Home.
I ask for your honest answer;
What is it that makes the city home?

[noid_1985]

Chicago =/= South Carolina...Yeah first take her to the tourist destinations like the ones you mentioned above- then maybe you guys should take look at some neighborhoods and mingle with the inner city folk

[Drover]

Take her to a restaurant in Little India and ask her if you'd meet people like that and eat food like that in South Carolina. Do the same for Little Saigon, Chinatown, Greektown, Little Village (highly recomnend Nueva Leon), Little Italy, Jackowo ("Little Warsaw" if you will), Humboldt Park, Koreatown/Little Lebanon, et cetera.

For someone who doesn't want to be judged and/or just wants to be left alone, there's no greater place to be than a densely populated city like this one, and one that has a transient population as well. Nobody judges me because nobody knows me or cares about me. I have a handful of neighbors I speak to because I run into them at least on a weekly basis. Other than that, the people who live next to me, who live across the street from me, who live caddy-corner from me, etc., probably wouldn't recognize me if our carts bumped into each other at the grocery store. I sure wouldn't recognize them. So how are we going to judge each other? And if someone does judge me, what the hell do I care? In 30 seconds, I'll probably never see that person again.

There are just soooo many people of so many different stripes in this town that we simply don't have time to judge each other. We've got our own lives to live; unless you give us a reason to, we won't care about yours enough to judge you. Pretty much the only time you will be judge is if you insist on being judged.

[BrandonSi]

I don't know what part of SC she lives in, but I lived in SC for a long time, and my parents retired there, and if you don't go to the polo grounds or attend the right parties, you get "judged" by others. IMHO, it's worse than Chicago.

I think she needs to develop a connection to Chicago. Do you have friends who live there, can you guys go out and have some drinks and bond with those friends? Often the hardest part of coming to a new place is not having that familiar support network. If you don't have many friends, I'd recommend checking out the Yelp Chicago boards, they have a ton of events and it's a great (and usually free/cheap) way to meet a large number of people.

[noid_1985]

Agreed Yelp boards are very helpful

[Steve-o]

If she thinks Chicago is the same as SC, she needs to remove her blindfold and get off the mind-altering hard drugs.

[NYrules]

How does Chicago differ from a small town in SC? I think Glenn Frey says it best in his song from the 80s "You belong to the city"

You're out of your room and down on the street
Movin' through the crowd and the midnight heat
The traffic crawls, the sirens scream
You look at the faces, it's just like a dream
Nobody knows where you're goin'
Nobody cares where you've been

That is the truth... NOBODY CARES WHERE YOU'RE GOING, NOBODY CARES WHERE YOU'VE BEEN... Thats because everyone is so wrapped up in their own lives, that they can care less about you. Chicagoans aren't a bunch of "busi bodies" they way people are in small town USA where everyone is poking their noses in everyone else's business.