Chicago, city of the famously big shoulders, is also one of wide, flat, long blocks. If you’re a New Yorker or a Washingtonian, and I tell you some destination is three blocks away, you think, “OK, that’s nothing.” But in Chicago, they live life on a brawnier scale.

I had known this but had completely forgotten it when I booked an Airbnb for me and TNR colleague Alex Shephard in a neighborhood near Chicago’s United Center. On the map, it looked like a few blocks, more or less a straight shot down Ogden Avenue. In mileage terms, which I stupidly had not checked, it was about a mile and a half—on the margins of acceptable for walking to the convention around 6 p.m., but for heading back at 11 p.m. with a sore back after sitting in an uncomfortable seat for four hours, it might as well have been in Indiana.

I thought walking to the arena was a good idea because, aside from squeezing in a daily constitutional to fight the effects of the greasy food and excess booze that are inevitable consequences of convention week, I had learned from experience that, while conventions are generally fun and I know I’m privileged to be able to attend, they can be logistically challenging. If you’re important or rich or both, you have your own entry points, your own skyboxes (which were on a level the rest of........

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