Sycamore/DeKalb, Illinois; About as anti-social as DuPage County.

[traveller]

Sycamore is a city, more like a farming community in DeKalb County, located some 60 miles west of Chicago. About 9 miles southwest of Sycamore is DeKalb and Northern Illinois University. Both are surrounded for over 20 miles in all directions by endless corn fields, with the nearest Chicagoland suburban area being St. Charles, some 20 miles east of Sycamore.

And at the same time, both Sycamore and DeKalb equal two of the most anti-social, toxic, disconnected, and soulless cities in North America. They are actually as bad as DuPage County even. There is no social atmosphere in Sycamore or DeKalb. Conversations there are exclusively business-related, just like in the Chicago Metropolitan area, especially Chicago's collar county area.

In October 2004, my parents and I went to Sycamore for their annual pumpkin festival. There was a lot of 3-D artwork made exclusively from pumpkins and squash set up in front of the courthouse. There was also a parade. I was walking around saying "Hi, how are you" to everyone, and aside from a group of NIU cheerleaders passing out flyers for an event of some sort at NIU, only 3 other people even said "Hi" back to me. The rest of them either ignored me or they gave me that cold, mean look like they wanted me to go away. The locals there were even anti-social with my parents, too.

Sycamore is a quiet city where crime seems almost unheard of, and those people were acting like they think they're in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood.