I lived in Bloomington, that ****stain of a town, for a year. I can talk **** about the place because I lived through it.

Edit: to add something useful to this thread - I have gone to a few LBS in Chicago and found most of them to be helpful. Kozy's on Halstead treated me just fine when I went in there, Marcus' shop is great, and Performance on Halstead wasn't bad either.