Musician and comedian Al Scorch thinks he got the “last gasp” of an old school childhood growing up in the 1980s and ‘90s on Chicago’s blue collar Northwest Side.
“Pre-cell phone, pre-internet … where you’re just kind of running around the neighborhood in a pack with your friends all summer,” Scorch said. “You’re coming home when the streetlights turn on. You’re calling up your friends’ houses on their landline.”
That “last gasp” was more like a deep inhale that shaped Scorch into a Chicagoan’s Chicagoan with an imaginative sense of humor and authoritative knowledge of the city. He’s been exhaling Chicago-centric creative projects that have gained him tens of thousands of followers in the decades since. Now, he’s embarking on a major endeavor: to read the entire municipal code of Chicago aloud for a podcast in an iconic Chicago accent.
The accent is an exaggeration of his own vernacular, honed in alleys and parks growing up with friends who would imitate the adults in their lives as comedic relief.
“It was this way of making fun of these adults who would be kind of jerks to us,” Scorch said. “You know they’d be like, ‘Don’t-ch-you kids go messin’ ‘round wit’ my garbage cans!’ And you’re just like — that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Scorch plans to release weekly episodes reciting the code, which governs everything from how tall you can grow your parkway plants to how the city defines bodily autonomy.
It’s Scorch’s latest in his catalogue of love letters to Chicago, from an Emily Dickinson-stylepoem about hot dogs, a 2015 get-out-the-vote video called the “City Hall Shuffle,” a series reviewing historicChicago Park District bathrooms in an iconic Chicago accent and nowMunicipal – the code of Chicago.
“It’s part of being an artist in the city,” Scorch said. “Growing up here and staying here, it creeps into your creative work. All these characters I do are a part of me.”
In PDF form, the city code spans 3,205 pages, including the appendix, with any given page containing 1,300 words. At an average speed, reading it in full could take 32,050 minutes, or 534 hours, or 22 full days, though many pages include tables or lists that could reduce that time. Scorch has read about 115 minutes so far, but he is determined.
“When you’re creative, there’s a little bit of compulsion. You’re like, ‘I had this idea, and I have to do it,’” Scorch said. “I thought, ‘I need to read the entire municipal code of Chicago aloud,’ so I guess I have to now.”
Perfecting the accent
On a recent afternoon, Scorch sets up his makeshift recording booth in the vintage clothing store he partially owns. It’s a folding table and a high quality microphone surrounded by railings after railings of clothes that act as a sound buffer.
He’s working on Chapter 10-28, structures on and under public ways.
Flattening his vowels, flexing his nasal muscles, occasionally trading a “th” for a “d,” and adding some hissing “s’s,” he recites dry legalese on how to get a canopy permit.
“[T]hat the construction of such marquee or canopy shall … be subject to inspection by the Department of Buildings, and the permittee shall pay to the city all cost of such supervision and inspection,” Scorch reads.
The episodes are exactly this. No more and no less.
The podcast came to fruition after social media users raved about Scorch’s put-on accent that went viral in his reviews of Park District bat-ch-rooms.
“My new sleep aid,” one user writes. “I find this soothing,” says another. “Whenever I miss my grandpa, I’ll just come listen to you talk,” someone says.
Scorch wanted to give people a long-form way to listen and, as an artist, he saw the chance for a supplemental, recurring source of income. Some of the podcast is free on streaming services, but the rest is on Scorch’s paid Patreon account.
Listeners use his podcast to fall asleep, to relax, to remember home or to laugh.
Becky Clough is an assistant public defender who grew up in Beverly and listens to the podcast a couple times a week while doing office work, like writing case briefs. It helps her unwind, and she finds it nostalgic and funny.
“There’s something that’s, as a Chicagoan, so familiar about ‘a guy,’ right?,” Clough said.
“Like your dad or your uncle that’s really into, say, cars, and you have one issue with your car, and you’re in the alley and the garage door’s open and you just want this one thing fixed, but then they keep going and going and going … and then all of a sudden you know more about, like, your vehicle than you ever intended to. It gives me a little of that flavor,” she said.
Others, like Ald. Nick Sposato (38th) who oversees the Northwest Side area where Scorch grew up, have a different take on the project.
“I can’t imagine many people watching that,” Sposato said in his own notoriously thick Chicago accent.
“I could see them watching the bathroom videos, but reading the entire municipal code? I don’t know. Not something I could do.”
Asked if he thought Scorch’s accent sounds authentic, Sposato said: “I can’t recognize these Chicago accents. Everybody tells me, ‘Nobody’s got a Chicago accent like you.’ I’m like, ‘What accent are you talking about?’”
Mixing comedy and conscience
While his bathroom reviews and his aspiration of reading the entire city code have garnered attention, Scorch is an accomplished recording artist and songwriter. He has a residency at the Hideout running through 2026.
And as any Chicagoan, Scorch is politically informed and engaged. He starts a recent social media post by jokingly saying “Thanks everybody for laughing at all the stupid videos I make,” before asking viewers to buy tickets to an upcoming show that raised money for the Illinois Coalition on Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
“All these family separations and abject cruelty and horrendous treatment of human beings — they’re helping those families deal with it, so please come out,” Scorch said.
Scorch has also used his musical and comedic talent to weigh in on Chicago’s red-hot mayoral races. His 2015 music video promoted then-candidate Jesus “Chuy” Garcia in his race against incumbent Rahm Emanuel. He promoted Mayor Brandon Johnson over Paul Vallas in a similar 2023 video. He’s also behind the viral song “Paul Vallas Hates House Music.”
Scorch thinks Chicago’s intrinsic politics behind the policies is what makes his podcast interesting.
“The civic government and the municipal body is such a part of Chicago culture, and it’s a huge part of our identity,” Scorch said.
Reading the code, it’s easy to see how lobbyists have shaped laws or how ordinances have upheld systems of power and patronage, which he joked “really gets my dander up.” But it’s also a living document that’s constantly changing.
“At the worst times, [it’s] graft and quid pro quo and unfairness,” Scorch said.
“But it’s also this beautiful, collective document of self-governance that has been updated and changed and rewritten by thousands of people over hundreds of years. … People can change it for the better.”