America is awesome in its vastness and prosperity and openness.
To complicate the story a bit, the other political side often forgets that New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, etc. are America, too, and equally a part of what makes it great.
What I love most about America, at its best, is that it is vast enough, and prosperous enough, and open enough to allow people to live the Waffle House/Buc-ees lifestyle and the farmers market/artisanal coffee lifestyle while still being part of the same project. (And some of us like both lifestyles!)
I am very much an enjoyer of the “ethnic markets great restaurants million museums bus routes old rowhomes” life I lead in a big city.
I also find the near-anti-patriotism of some others who enjoy that lifestyle to be weird, off-putting, and ultimately deeply detrimental to our national project.
Yeah I was having this thought. Like as much as I make fun of Portland, one of the reasons I love Uber driving so much is I like taking tourists around town. I like recommding coffee shops and donut shops and breweries and pointing out "this is a vegan strip club" and "this is a skate park that was built without permission."
"The business was operating well past the midnight cut off for indoor service in New York City, with investigators finding no evidence of substantial food being served..."
...and,
"...to be a bar, you had to have food available—soups, sandwiches, etc. More than just hors d'oeuvres, chicken wings, you had to have some substantive food."
My recollection is that at ASU*, bars could not be within a certain distance of a church, and whether you were "a bar" or "a restaurant" was defined by what fraction of your sales were food versus booze. Several successive establishments failed in a very attractive church-adjacent property because they could not keep their food sales high enough, and they ended up losing their liquor license or whatever.
*obviously not an ASU law per se, but I don't know if it was the state of Arizona, Maricopa County, or the city of Tempe, or if I'm misremembering the whole thing anyway
My memory is fading me, does this apply to all bars? I don't recall that when I lived there, but of course when I was there I was a college student that just remembers getting sauced at such places. I do know the food rule applies to strip clubs in Idaho, but not bars in general.
Google AI says that it doesn't apply if your license is only for serving beer and wine, but does apply if you're licensed to serve hard liquor. In the latter case, you need to offer patrons at least five meal options, at least three of the five must be prepared on site (not reheated), and appetizers don't count as a meal.
We Northwesterners are far, far away from Waffle House territory. We were the last ones to even get Chik-Fil-A. And Dunkin' Donuts knows it's going to have a daunting task to try to return fire on infiltrating the ancestral land of Starbucks.
By most accounts, Chik-Fil-A is actually pretty good...but I'll never get to know, because in SF it's still beyond the pale to even consider eating at such a bigoted establishment. Don't you know they hate the gays!
Not that long ago people were losing their damn minds over local Starbucks competitor Philz Coffee deciding not to necessarily always have pride flags up - makes some customers uncomfortable, you see - and I just wanted to ask people if they patronize an overpriced coffee chain because they like the coffee or because they think they're, like, striking a blow for LGBT rights. Log Cabin Republicans buy lattes too.
Chik-Fil-A's food is not bad, but in fairness, whenever I'm in the city, there is an innumerable number of places I would much rather want to eat at, regardless of non-food takes.
On the flipside, I find that if you live in a city and you get to eat at the innumerable places on a regular basis, every once in a blue moon you get a hankering for Chick-Fil-A.
I never see Chick-Fil-A in urban areas, but I like the food, they're a great value, and the employees always seem to care about what they're doing, unlike most other fast food in the US, so I'm always happy to avail myself of them on a car trip that takes me past the suburban areas or highway exits where they tend to exist.
When I was a little kid, the only one I knew was in the mall food court. I didn't start seeing standalone ones until years later.
Yeah, the long lines at the Chick-fil-A on 34th Street in Manhattan confuse me. Even if you want/need cheap food fast, there are lots of other choices.
LOL in my world, we gays joke to each other about it. "What are you doing for lunch?" "Oh, I'm going over to the student center to get some Hate Chicken."
It's not equal. Like ~80% of America lives in urban areas and it's been over half since 1920. Certainly the dynamism, culture, etc has always been concentrated in cities. Real America has never been rural America. Rural America kinda sucks!
Thanks for that. I was surprised at the number, but then realized it was from the census which only does urban/rural classification with a rather broad conception of urban.
>census which only does urban/rural classification with a rather broad conception of urban.<
Which is the correct way to do it IMHO.
If you're living in a metropolis of several million people...you're urban. That's true even if you live in a single family house. One big reason it doesn't really make sense to make a big picture "urban vs. suburban" divide in the US is that, even in our biggest cities, there are wide swaths that could be described as "suburban." San Francisco is the only exception I can think of.
Urban by metro area typically includes far more land area that “appears” rural than anything else. For a reasonably representative example, about 90% of the DC MSA land area is classified as rural.
Most of the DC population lives in urban or suburban areas, but the MSAs are typically huge and not dense.
At least in my county, “small town” would be a more apt description for a decent portion (~75% urban on the census).
Library, stores, grocery, churches, schools in walking distance, narrow houses or townhouses, an occasional apartment building, but you can walk through the main area in 5-10min and probably be within a 10-20min drive of a farm.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing that some parts of a city are classified as suburban if that’s how housing is arranged (though Philly does have a huge number of row houses even in the heart of the city), but I’ve never lived in a city and don’t have strong opinions there.
One of those groups is more right than the other because reality isn't subjective. The things that actually make America great don't happen on farms in ohio. A Russian peasant can have a fine life of course but "real America" happens in cities
I don’t know how you can have even to rural America and say it sucks. Have you ever been to Vilas County WI in July? Texas hill country in March? Western slope CO? Jesus there is just so much of rural America that is fucking amazing. Finger lakes NY? Ever been there?
I have not been to the Finger Lakes, but I live only a couple of hours away. Will be an empty nester in the fall, and the Finger Lakes is at the top of our list.
Oh, that looks lovely. Thanks! We were thinking of the Dr. Konstantin Frank winery solely because my daughter has a cat named Konstantin. We may need to rethink.
You guys are all lame and can't take a joke. A guy makes one throwaway comment and comes back to 6 comments from lame flyover states. Having spent the bulk of my life in rural America it is simply an inferior version of America. Facts are facts
I come from West "By G-d!!" Virginia. And I love West Virginia. It's a beautiful place, with good people. If your car broke down in West Virginia, someone would offer to drive you to the nearest service station. If your car broke down during a snowstorm, that West Virginian would probably offer you their coat. I was born in West Virginia, and spent my first 30 years living there. I'll be the first to say it is a very rural place, and I don't live there anymore. And as much as I have enjoyed living in places like Cincinnati and Tampa and now Chicago, when I retire and go home to live out the rest of my days, I can think of worse places to go than West Virginia. #MontaniSemperLiberi #WestVirginiaPride
My mother's side of the family is from West Virginia and I spent Spring Break there every year in childhood. I'm a city girl very deep down and it's too rural for me to live there, but it was the first such place I ever encountered and I'll always have a profound appreciation for it.
It's a good idea to remember every once in a while what this stuff looks like from the outside.
What I want to believe is that the United States is so big and so wealthy that it has something and someplace for every taste, but what I keep finding is that the parts of the country that might satisfy my preferences have become either luxury goods reserved for the farmers' market set, or shockingly dysfunctional, or both. I am of solidly middle-class means and all I'm really after is an American version of an outer-ward Tokyo life, where you get a modest but comfortable apartment with some convenience stores and a pharmacy and a mundane chain supermarket within a few hundred meters' walk of your front door, and a train station somewhere thereabouts connecting you to a transportation watershed that will ultimately get you anywhere else you may need to go. America pioneered the skyscraper and the subway as well as the vast universe of consumer variety that postwar Japan is reflecting back at us, so these things are, as you say, part of the project, too.
I like Waffle House and crunchwraps (though I didn't know they were specifically designed to be eaten while driving) and ranch and the like just fine, but I also like dense, cozy environments and I don't like driving. I'm not upset that the America of wide open spaces and dozens of gas pumps exists and I even enjoy a visit every now and then, but I'm sad that the kind of America I want for myself seems to have disappeared, and I'm having trouble finding my place. My dream is for this association of "city living" with the socioeconomic extremes of either wine bars or food deserts to be broken, so people with more of a Waffle House budget are once more free to choose it if they want, too.
Are you related to me? This is exactly how I feel. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can afford to retire to a semi-affordable city like Chicago or Minneapolis someday, but who knows.
I am gradually becoming more curious about Chicago in particular. I've never lived in the Midwest before, but it's as big as it gets while being, as you say, "semi-affordable," and I love the two-flat floor plans. I just want to take a very good look at the mechanics of a representative cross-section of its neighborhoods before drawing any conclusions, because I've fallen for the "walkable as in you can hit some fun restaurants and catch a commuter train to work, but of course you drive to the grocery store, the hardware store, Target, etc." trap before.
I hear good things about Minneapolis, too, though I know less about it, and I'm less sure of its non-driving chops given that even the much larger Chicago may be more car-oriented than I hope for.
Either way, it's very difficult to communicate these preferences without people reading it as a yearning for artisanal wine bars and Brooklyn polycules. What I actually want is some kind of normie-ish life in a dense place where not driving isn't seen as an affectation.
I believe Matt has made the following point before: if you visit Chicago in the summer, you will wonder why everyone doesn’t move there. When you visit in February, you’ll understand.
I've been there in December. I think I could take that deal, as long as I don't have to drive in winter conditions. I'm pretty desperate for normie urbanism in the United States at this point, and I tend to spend most of my time indoors anyway.
I love Chicago. Most underrated city in the country, in my opinion. But believe me when I say Chicago in December does not begin to approach Chicago in February.
> I hear good things about Minneapolis, too, though I know less about it, and I'm less sure of its non-driving chops given that even the much larger Chicago may be more car-oriented than I hope for.
You already nailed it--car-free life in either of these places would be something of an affectation (Chicago somewhat less so). I'm sure it's viable, in a narrow sense, but desiring full carlessness would be viewed akin to desiring lack of personal transportation freedom. Inconceivable outside of some fairly narrow demographics.
Ex lives in pretty inner-core Chicago, highly transit-oriented, and their view of driving is still "any time we need to go get something substantial, or go to an awkward location, or whatever, we can just borrow her in-laws' car for the day".
That's what I was afraid of, though how much it bothers me depends on the degree. I'm not opposed to occasionally using a car to go somewhere unusual or bring home something large or heavy, but I don't want to rely on it day to day for things like normal groceries, and I'd like to be in a milieu that don't find such a preference strange.
I have/had relatives in both cities without cars who got along fine. I don't think it is considered an affectation unless maybe you are in a higher socioeconomic group. My daughter lives in non-downtown Chicago (Kenwood), and none of her friends have cars, but they are all 20-somethings. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that neighborhood because, although it is easy to get everything you need within easy walking distance, it is kind of cut off from the rest of the city - a long ride to downtown if you don't get the express bus, and sometimes the Southside trains can be rough at night. It is much easier to get around to the rest of the city from the Northside, but, obviously, more expensive.
I like the winters, but I lived in Wisconsin for 5 years, and I currently live with a kid who thinks 60 degrees F is too hot. As they say in Minnesota, "there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes." I even like the lake in the winter!
But nowhere, even NYC - where over half of the residents own cars - is like, say, Taiwan or the UK. Why in the world did we build our cities and towns the way we did when so many people can't drive? I live in a small city that has better public transit than most, and it is still really hard to get around without a car, even if you live in a walkable neighborhood like I do The longer I live here, the more I realize that SO MANY PEOPLE don't have cars, either because they can't afford one or they can't drive for medical or age reasons. This shuts them out of a lot of life. It is the main reason my son wants to leave the country after traveling a bit, and I can't say I blame him, although I would miss him.
You are speaking truth. I'm glad we can have all sorts of places here. But I hate that the places I like are extremely undersupplied because they're explicitly illegal in most of the country.
If you can settle for the transit being bus rather than train, there are a LOT of places that meet that wishlist in the Connecticut river valley (roughly, from Brattleboro VT to Hartford.) I could find you a dozen places within a mile of my house that met that description, and Boston and NYC are both feasible daytrips by public transit. (The hard part is a few hundred meters to a generic supermarket. The supermarkets that are in the denser areas here are not chains, their customers are mostly immigrants.)
Honestly a Buc-ee's is weirdly impressive even as a cosmopolitan vegan. I go to the one near Warner Robbins AFB in between Orlando and Atlanta. Just the spectacle of it is something else even if I just want like an Alani and a granola bar because a wall of jerky and people screaming about brisket on the board isn't food I'm going to eat.
That is what I was going to say. As someone who lives in a 'boring' commuter suburb or a major US city, I have mainly only experienced the national conversation to be about how the coastal 'elite' and urban people are not real Americans, etc. I have rarely in my social circles or in mainstream media, etc. seen critiques against 'real' America. I happen to like both. But the idea that the hate and insults are one-sided is way off.
They usually aim to keep the post short enough that the whole post shows up in the email. The link won’t work for people who aren’t signed in, but the email probably has the whole text and the images.
Strongly concur. Halina, sorry that I fired off an off topic comment right away and then peaced out for 2 hours, as my mom and her husband came over for happy hour right when the article published. But this was an outstanding read, and is about as devoted to Slow Boring Thought as it gets.
Up here in upper midwesternville, it was one of those weeks that was so fucking good (on the job and off) that you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, like you've got a brain tumor or something.
>That feeling [of patriotic pride] is not evenly distributed in America right now
You don't say.
>Over the past few decades, a slice of American elites has drifted into what you might call cultural semi-detachment. Though they reside physically in the United States, they are aesthetically and aspirationally elsewhere.
Speaking only for myself, n = 1, but: I became a U.S. citizen in 2018. And I was damn happy and proud of it! Yes, it was during Agent Orange 1.0, but back then it was easy to dismiss his election as a one-off, a fluke, "not who we really are." And after the naturalization ceremony Husband and I went to a goddamn Cracker Barrel and ordered a stack of delicious fluffy all-American pancakes, and I told the waitress that this was my first meal as an American, and she smiled and congratulated me.
And we all know what happened later.
So, yeah. If my patriotic fervor is at a low ebb these days, it's not because I'm a sneering, elitist, overeducated, organic fairtrade soymilk matcha latte-sipping, culturally semi-detached shitlib who hates Real America(TM); it's because tens of millions of my fellow citizens saw fit to elevate a degenerate fuckwit who had already committed enough wrongdoing to sink the career of any other politician ten times over.
I'm glad that European visitors enjoy Bucc-ee's and Waffle House, and I look forward longingly to the day when we again have a POTUS I can feel proud of, or at least not utterly ashamed of.
BTW, I'm a walkable urbanist at heart, but even I must admit that Bucc-ee's slaps! Highly recommended if you're driving between Austin and Houston. They've got pickled quail eggs in a jar!
I hear this, but personally I feel in some ways more patriotic today than I was pre-Orange. The center of American identity IMO isn't Buc-ees or Waffle House or any other consumer brand (and, as an aside, it's interesting that Buc-ees and Waffle House are brands that are basically specific to one region, so I'm not sure how much celebrating them is really a sign of American pride so much as regional pride). Instead, it's what you might call American grade-school civic ideals - "four score and seven years ago," "we hold these truths to be self-evident," and all the rest of it. Pre-Orange it's not that I didn't believe in that stuff, but I think I saw it as being a little trite or corny. But today they mean a lot more to me. The actually-existing earthly institution called the United States may at the moment be reflecting those ideals more poorly than ever before, but to me that just means The Real America is in captivity. Wherever it is, that's my country and I love it more than ever.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with some nuns (one of whom is my aunt) back in the pre-Francis days. Their order was one of the ones the Vatican “investigated” for something or other (while they are mostly retired now, they were social workers/teachers/etc, my aunt served as a prison chaplain for many years). Being an extremely lapsed Catholic, I could never understand how they remained faithful to a church that seemed to consider them second-class citizens. They became very emotional, saying with some ferocity “it’s not *their* church. It’s *our* church.
I think of this conversation often, for a variety of reasons, including the point it seems to me that you’re making. It’s not *their* country. It’s *our* country.
Yeah, basically America is an idea. The very fact that the other side rejects the notion of America being an idea is proof positive that they don't really represent America. And you can't kill an idea, or at least it's extremely difficult. You can take over the government, but the idea is still out there and will never die.
I agree with all this but I am meeting more people who are more than not patriotic; they actively want America to lose. For example, they root for any team that is playing against the USA in the World Cup, they refuse to go to any event that might remotely have to do with the USA (i.e. they won't go to a Navy Band concert even though they weren't even playing any patriotic songs) and they base they support for countries on how anti-American they are (e.g., Iran and Hamas). When I told them I was planning to visit friends in TX or FL (even the liberal areas) they looked at me like I was some sort of a monster and that it's our duty to make sure everyone turns their back on this country, even if has nothing to do with Trump.
Milan notes that Amazon is very popular, something that's been known for a while. I currently find this interesting because recently I have been around several anti-Amazon people. A few are riffing on their grievances against Jeff Bezos, but overwhelmingly the complaint is that they feel that Amazon is too big and has too much market concentration. This ranged from pretty left wing friends of mine, to the Real Blue Collar Americans that recently built my deck. For the latter, oddly enough Amazon and Walmart were bridges too far, but not Home Depot and Lowe's. Go figure
The criticism that I think is attaching more and more, and which Jeff and co. ought to really be thinking about, is the sheer volume of crap available from the rain forest website.
Something you say about Costco is that anything you get there is going to basically be a quality product. You might regret a purchase because you ended up not needing or using the thing in the way you planned when you put it in the cart, but you never regret it on account of the product just being crap.
You could try and remove the most egregious 3rd party sellers, but Amazon's probably more worried about competition from Shein/Teemu than it is Costco.
Revealed preference seems to be the average person wants more, cheaper, plastic crap.
I'm not predicting Amazon's imminent demise or anything, but I think the danger is not whether they offer cheap crap, but whether all products are even fit for purpose or geniune/as-advertised.
Yeah I bought some "Oral-B" dental floss and the printing on the package was...off somehow? Looked cheap, like maybe not authentic. I have to ask myself, is this safe to put in my mouth every day? Probably. But I don't like having to ask these questions.
Applies to Google too - at some point both of them decided that either the war on slop was unwinnable, or allowing the slop merchants to ply their trade on the platform was too short-term profitable to pass up, so now finding anything you want on either site requires wading through oceans of garbage.
For me, the wade is still worth it with Amazon. I have basically given up on Google for everything but my email and collaborative documents, and if I had access to a time machine, I'd revert the email too (transition costs are still too daunting at present).
I keep meaning to set up a new email address at a custom domain, managed by google for simplicity's sake. After it's fully switched I could pick it up and move elsewhere. But it would take a few years to establish it and it's daunting to start a task that'll take years to pay off.
Setting up the email and domain is very easy with Cloudflare. Then you can point the email at your Gmail until such a day you transition providers. I’m doing that currently and it’s great.
I've heard that line before and it's always been wacky to me. Are there any more competitive markets than durable goods, logistics, cloud computing and digital streaming? Half the money in the economy must be spent trying to get a bigger share of those four.
The percentage they make on audiobooks (60%) vs what gets paid to authors and readers (20% each) is pretty fucked up, at least. Once the infrastructure is there, it’s there.
For some reason, I can’t like that. But Kindle’d near monopoly on ebooks hurts authors a lot. So much concentration in the book market where buying out the competition is far more common than trying to compete
I hate Amazon because they won't sell (well rent, because libraries don't own digital stuff for the most part) their Audible Exclusives to libraries, even at the extremely inflated rates that libraries pay for digital books and audiobooks. But I realize that is a very niche complaint.
It's not literally true that you can easily avoid crap by removing anything shipped from China, or merely made in China but sold under some fake brand name you've never heard of, but it gets you damn close. As a Real Blue Collar American, despite not having many dollars, I simply can't justify the waste of time required to delve through all the garbage on Amazon. Time is money, friend, and one shouldn't trade a lot of the former just to save a bit of the latter. Baffling that a company so good at logistics and web infrastructure still has such a shitty search function, with a hostile UI full of dark patterns. I'm happy to pay more to shop at places that aren't so obviously Out To Get Me, where I don't need to put on the Hat of Maximal Skepticism from the get-go. Shopping should be fun, not a homework assignment under duress.
Amazon has done a horrible job (or maybe not only encourages) terrible products and fraudulent products to overwhelm the marketplace. Like Walmart before them, the force companies to hit price points to be competitive in a way that forces production out of higher wage and labor protected markets and drives quality down.
The counter is if you want to pay more, you can get quality things, but identifying them and finding them is harder than getting crap.
The excitement about seeing a yellow school bus reminded me of a conversation I had recently with someone who was studying abroad. She said that those school buses and Solo Red Plastic drinking cups were considered the iconic symbols of America.
Well, that is disheartening! My kids used to count red solo cups on Sunday mornings when they were little. The more cups, the better the Saturday night parties, I guess.
Glad to see the fun posts on some great things in the US are still gaining in popularity.
And this is a great write up on it. Thanks! It is maddening how much so many online posts are effectively convinced everyone is terrible and hates life here in the US.
More than the tourists, even World Cup stars are out and about enjoying America. Lamine Yamal went on a Walmart run to pick up some groceries. Lionel Messi apparently was spotted at a Buccees eating a brisket sandwich.
The pitch at the heart of the American suburban lifestyle has always been that everyone can live like a rich man - own your own land, drive your own car. If you don't have to live in a superstar city where everyone else is trying to live, it's a very comfortable life.
That is awesome. That's why I'm so stoked for the 2028 Olympics. All the athletes are being housed in UCLA dorms and I live a stone's throw (well, a long stone's throw) away from them and I don't even care about going to any events. I just want to hang around the village and campus and see these folks.
In early 2023 or thereabouts, after the announcement that Messi was going to join Inter Miami there was headline news here about him being spotted grocery shopping. You know, just pushing his shopping cart up and down the aisles, checking it out.
I guess that means that the comment section is basically Deadwood for the time being, very well, here are the 10 top reasons why Sharty is literally worse than Hitler....
#hottake: Wu cutting off his "queue*" and being like "Now America!" is a great moment of civic nationalism, it should be celebrated on this Fourth of July
*In Old China it would be considered an act of treason against Qing Dynasty, punished by death by torture.
People don’t remember Obama as a big sports-panderer, but I *VIVIDLY* remember in the 2006 Super Bowl when he bought that ad to make a “special announcement”, where he said a bunch of pablum that made it seem like he’d declare early for the 2008 primaries, and instead pulled out a Bears hat and declared his deep allegiance — all with PERFECT comedic timing.
The fact that the man could take and make a joke probably won him a LOT more normie votes than most other factors. This is something progs and centrists alike should consider. Call it “jocularism”.
By comparison, Mamdani’s not as smooth of an operator, but buying nosebleed tickets was a master stroke move. The people who were able to buy them were not remotely the hoi polloi, but damn if he didn’t buy genuine solidarity points with just such a simple move of participation and performance.
This is the ONLY politics I will do all night, Joseph.
OK, I had to look that up because I felt like I would *definitely* remember Obama buying a Superbowl ad and endorsing a team during it. It was actually in December 2006, so playoffs (I think?) rather than Superbowl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmWlrtpqp40
Red China has a Paramount Leader, North Korea has a Great Leader and a Dear Leader, Iran has a Supreme Leader. I will like to be known as "Precious Leader."
It's kind of funny that the hardest-core USMNT fans are generally (moderate) coastal libs. While both red-state right-wingers and black people mostly could not care less how the USMNT does, albeit for different reasons.
Most of the social media about the World Cup is about denied visas, here’s a post with over 4M views showing the Somali referee denied a visa returning home to a hero’s welcome: https://x.com/nahuelzn/status/2064755138640728307
As nice as the experience tourists who made it have, it’s survivorship bias and America is coming out of this looking pretty bad when there are many more stories of people having visa issues often after paying thousands of dollars in contrast to how even authoritarian countries rolled out the red carpet for fans and on occasion when they denied entry to people, FIFA punished them (like when FIFA moved a tournament from Indonesia to Argentina because Indonesia stuck to its ban on Israelis).
If the Somali ref had ties to terrorist groups then why did we give him a visa in the first place as he had a valid visa. He has reffed for high profile games in Africa without event.
If it's not true he could clear it up by asking for an appointment at the US Embassy to clear it all up. He'd have to answer whatever questions he was asked, fulsomely and truthfully, of course.
Wikipedia is telling me that this Gainesville was founded multiple decades before the more famous Gainesville. Obviously that won't matter to Gator fans, though.
In Orange County I always take people to Crystal Cove.
In LA, I usually do the La Brea Tar Pits, and the walk from Fern Dell up to Griffith Observatory a bit before sunset (so you can get great Thai food at Jitlada when you get back down).
And now you can ride the subway from the tar pits to Thai town! (Though the connection is slightly annoying and roundabout, unless you plan to stop in K-town for lunch.)
I like to take tourists to that San Juan Capistrano/Dana Point part of Orange County. That real rich people deep South OC that you see on TV, where it's still just tons of whites and everyone looks great.
I like the early drive down, Mission San Clemente, then Heritage BBQ next door. Then beach. Then you say something like: California has the best beaches in the world. And then they get mad, but you live in California so you're like lol.
This also works in San Diego if you book a night at Coronado.
I'm in west LA and go to the beaches all the time and they're great but I grew up in Florida and think the beaches are better there (except for letting cars drive on them).
I was so excited to go to In-N-Out when I went to California for the first time (I was driving from the east coast). I tried to go to the one in Las Vegas, but I went there too early and a guy dressed as Spiderman in the parking lot told me it didn't open until lunch, so I kept driving down I-15 and went to the one in Barstow.
There's one by my house now in the Portland burbs, but it's so new the line is consistently over an hour so I'm more likely to go to one when I visit California than the one by my house.
I live near Boulder, Colorado, so this is kinda easy mode. Within two hours driving: The Pearl Street Mall, Rocky Mountain National Park, The Pikes Peak cog railway, a concert at Red Rocks, (seasonally) the livestock show, CU-Boulder campus, Vail.
I live in northern Wisconsin. I'd take them to Kwik Trip, pick up a case of Spotted Cow, then take them boating on the river. Then they're going to have to sleep off the beer and sun, so in the morning I'll take them to get lemon hotcakes and send them on their way.
Of course we have Culver's. And Lake Superior is maybe a 2-3 hour drive, so it's doable but not especially close. It's also probably more impressive to look at but much less fun to boat on.
You've given me 7-10 days and some schedule flexibility, and a lot of energy.
They're arriving the first Friday of the State Fair; we'll let them cool their jets after a long day of travel. Saturday is the State Fair--first Saturday, so a good big crowd, the prize fruits and veggies are fresh, and the animals are all still there. This is an all-day affair. Early Sunday morning, drive up to Duluth and do the zoo (excellent), the aquarium (same), the rail museum, and the the William Irvine. Tuesday morning, Duluth Grill for breakfast, then drive up and put into Brule Lake in the Boundary Waters (big enough to be interesting, lots of fun islands, only portage if you want to). Just one night. Pull out Wednesday afternoon, dinner burgers at Gordy's, and drive back down to the Cities. Thursday morning, tour campus and do the Mill Ruins park and museum. Thursday evening is the Gopher football home opener. Friday, more canoe time in the Chain of Lakes, bike the river between downtowns, then visit the Capitol. See them off on Saturday.
I have actually been to the Minnesota State Fair and it lives up to the hype. I've been to other big fairs in other states too and have found them to be pretty cookie-cutter: the same generic fried food vendors and so on. But Minnesota's is different.
I try to go every year. My folks fly in from the west coast every two or three or five years; we do other stuff, but they're coming for the Fair. It's approaching the status of family tradition.
Related: I had cause to go to downtown Boston yesterday, and it's wall-to-wall Scots here for the match tomorrow night. Apparently they're a *lot* of fun to hang out with, though I had too much housework to do last night that I didn't get the chance.
Sidenote: I ended up in rural Scotland once (I haven't been many places) and I found the locals to be very friendly and hospitable. My kid barfed and we pulled over to clean everything up, and this mom invited us in to her house to wash up.
I live in Los Angeles so there's really not much, but the same place I take all my visitors: Pierce Mortuary, a five minute walk from my house where they can see Marilyn Monroe's crypt (and right next to her, Hugh Hefner).
I'm hardly a soccer expert, and I could certainly consider the legitimacy of needing to guzzle to some high quality H₂O, but I still can't help but think that a "hydration break" is a euphemism to introduce media timeouts to soccer.
Drinks breaks midway through the half are routine in hot weather. The change for this World Cup is that instead of the usual rule where they measure the temperature and humidity on game day and allow the break if the heat index is high enough, they're just doing them in every game.
They'd have them in more than half the games anyway because it's the US in June, but having them pre-planned probably is just a media timeout.
I do think that if they're going to have them, they should be consistent across all games for fairness. And I'm fine if they just called them media timeouts, or at least I'm used to them. But it sounds like media timeouts would be controversial in soccer?
Very controversial. I just listened to two soccer podcasts and they think it’s the beginning of the end of the beautiful game. Part of what makes soccer unique is that there are no timeouts within a half. This new rule effectively kills that uniqueness, and it’s a clear cell out to advertising revenue. Of course, par for the course for FIFA, I mean, ThiefA.
I’ve been to Waffle House once. Not only were the staff arguing with each other instead of working, the food tasted like it was a minimally refined petroleum product. I’m happy Freddy found it things to like, but Waffle House equals good food isn’t something I’ve heard even its fans claim.
Great post.
America is awesome in its vastness and prosperity and openness.
To complicate the story a bit, the other political side often forgets that New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, etc. are America, too, and equally a part of what makes it great.
What I love most about America, at its best, is that it is vast enough, and prosperous enough, and open enough to allow people to live the Waffle House/Buc-ees lifestyle and the farmers market/artisanal coffee lifestyle while still being part of the same project. (And some of us like both lifestyles!)
I am very much an enjoyer of the “ethnic markets great restaurants million museums bus routes old rowhomes” life I lead in a big city.
I also find the near-anti-patriotism of some others who enjoy that lifestyle to be weird, off-putting, and ultimately deeply detrimental to our national project.
How anyone can live in Philadelphia and not understand the majesty of America as an ideal is beyond my comprehension.
I think this is a broken aspect of general news media. It is expected and encouraged for leadership to criticize the cities you listed.
Say something bad about Seattle? Yeah, libs are out of hand and they should learn to not be like that.
Say something bad about a red district? How fucking dare you!?
Yeah I was having this thought. Like as much as I make fun of Portland, one of the reasons I love Uber driving so much is I like taking tourists around town. I like recommding coffee shops and donut shops and breweries and pointing out "this is a vegan strip club" and "this is a skate park that was built without permission."
"this is a vegan strip club"
What, you go to ogle the women like they're slabs of tofu?
In Oregon, if you serve alcohol, you also have to serve food. So strip clubs generally have food.
"Are you that hungry?!? Rwandan refugees won't eat that s-" https://www.facebook.com/ChrisRock/videos/chris-rock-never-scared-strip-clubs/90222952429/
That reminds me of,
"The business was operating well past the midnight cut off for indoor service in New York City, with investigators finding no evidence of substantial food being served..."
...and,
"...to be a bar, you had to have food available—soups, sandwiches, etc. More than just hors d'oeuvres, chicken wings, you had to have some substantive food."
My recollection is that at ASU*, bars could not be within a certain distance of a church, and whether you were "a bar" or "a restaurant" was defined by what fraction of your sales were food versus booze. Several successive establishments failed in a very attractive church-adjacent property because they could not keep their food sales high enough, and they ended up losing their liquor license or whatever.
*obviously not an ASU law per se, but I don't know if it was the state of Arizona, Maricopa County, or the city of Tempe, or if I'm misremembering the whole thing anyway
Yep, that's the explanation I give people.
My memory is fading me, does this apply to all bars? I don't recall that when I lived there, but of course when I was there I was a college student that just remembers getting sauced at such places. I do know the food rule applies to strip clubs in Idaho, but not bars in general.
Google AI says that it doesn't apply if your license is only for serving beer and wine, but does apply if you're licensed to serve hard liquor. In the latter case, you need to offer patrons at least five meal options, at least three of the five must be prepared on site (not reheated), and appetizers don't count as a meal.
A common question I get is “you mean the strippers are vegan?”
In the few times I’ve gone to a stripper joint , I’ve never gone for the food.
I love my Left Coast lifestyle and my Waffle House dang it
But there are no Waffle Houses! Or do they stop at Cali's northern border?
We Northwesterners are far, far away from Waffle House territory. We were the last ones to even get Chik-Fil-A. And Dunkin' Donuts knows it's going to have a daunting task to try to return fire on infiltrating the ancestral land of Starbucks.
By most accounts, Chik-Fil-A is actually pretty good...but I'll never get to know, because in SF it's still beyond the pale to even consider eating at such a bigoted establishment. Don't you know they hate the gays!
Not that long ago people were losing their damn minds over local Starbucks competitor Philz Coffee deciding not to necessarily always have pride flags up - makes some customers uncomfortable, you see - and I just wanted to ask people if they patronize an overpriced coffee chain because they like the coffee or because they think they're, like, striking a blow for LGBT rights. Log Cabin Republicans buy lattes too.
Chik-Fil-A's food is not bad, but in fairness, whenever I'm in the city, there is an innumerable number of places I would much rather want to eat at, regardless of non-food takes.
On the flipside, I find that if you live in a city and you get to eat at the innumerable places on a regular basis, every once in a blue moon you get a hankering for Chick-Fil-A.
I never see Chick-Fil-A in urban areas, but I like the food, they're a great value, and the employees always seem to care about what they're doing, unlike most other fast food in the US, so I'm always happy to avail myself of them on a car trip that takes me past the suburban areas or highway exits where they tend to exist.
When I was a little kid, the only one I knew was in the mall food court. I didn't start seeing standalone ones until years later.
Yeah, the long lines at the Chick-fil-A on 34th Street in Manhattan confuse me. Even if you want/need cheap food fast, there are lots of other choices.
Chick-fil-A’s spicy chicken biscuits are the Platonic ideal, but you have to hit it in the morning
I realized last weekend that our church had a ton of pride flags, but did not display the national colors in any form or place. Gotta work on that.
"There's a war going on, you guys..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKVNMdSZPOM
I love my Chik-Fil-A here in deep blue west LA.
Come to LA, where the Chick-fil-a in Westwood Village seems particularly gay-friendly, at least judging by some of the excellent employees.
No idea why they had to close it for remodeling.
It looked great.
Maybe they're afraid of the imminent opening of Raising Canes.
(I know just which employees you're referring to! Very sweet guys.)
No self-serve soda fountain is a pretty big knock in my view. Food is decent enough though.
My gay and trans kids go to Chik-fil-a all the time.
LOL in my world, we gays joke to each other about it. "What are you doing for lunch?" "Oh, I'm going over to the student center to get some Hate Chicken."
There are no Waffle Houses, but a lot of Denny’s.
Not a remotely sufficient substitute... but it is what it is.
The closest Waffle House is in Arizona off I-10. That's where I got my mug.
California does now have Cracker Barrel, though.
I’m in the Memphis area at least three times a year, and without fail I eat at Waffle House a few times
It's not equal. Like ~80% of America lives in urban areas and it's been over half since 1920. Certainly the dynamism, culture, etc has always been concentrated in cities. Real America has never been rural America. Rural America kinda sucks!
It is more like 25 rural, 25 urban, 50% suburban.
Thanks for that. I was surprised at the number, but then realized it was from the census which only does urban/rural classification with a rather broad conception of urban.
>census which only does urban/rural classification with a rather broad conception of urban.<
Which is the correct way to do it IMHO.
If you're living in a metropolis of several million people...you're urban. That's true even if you live in a single family house. One big reason it doesn't really make sense to make a big picture "urban vs. suburban" divide in the US is that, even in our biggest cities, there are wide swaths that could be described as "suburban." San Francisco is the only exception I can think of.
Urban by metro area typically includes far more land area that “appears” rural than anything else. For a reasonably representative example, about 90% of the DC MSA land area is classified as rural.
Most of the DC population lives in urban or suburban areas, but the MSAs are typically huge and not dense.
At least in my county, “small town” would be a more apt description for a decent portion (~75% urban on the census).
Library, stores, grocery, churches, schools in walking distance, narrow houses or townhouses, an occasional apartment building, but you can walk through the main area in 5-10min and probably be within a 10-20min drive of a farm.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing that some parts of a city are classified as suburban if that’s how housing is arranged (though Philly does have a huge number of row houses even in the heart of the city), but I’ve never lived in a city and don’t have strong opinions there.
I was about to cite the example of my Lower Merion neighborhood as complicating any effort to draw a strict definition.
"Rural America kinda sucks!"
You know what? There are folks in rural America say the same thing about urban America. And they're just as wrong as you are.
One of those groups is more right than the other because reality isn't subjective. The things that actually make America great don't happen on farms in ohio. A Russian peasant can have a fine life of course but "real America" happens in cities
I don’t know how you can have even to rural America and say it sucks. Have you ever been to Vilas County WI in July? Texas hill country in March? Western slope CO? Jesus there is just so much of rural America that is fucking amazing. Finger lakes NY? Ever been there?
I have not been to the Finger Lakes, but I live only a couple of hours away. Will be an empty nester in the fall, and the Finger Lakes is at the top of our list.
If you like white wine Hermann J. Wiemar is excellent although it doesn’t have the views of some of the other wineries.
Even just driving around though the whole area is gorgeous! Enjoy!
Oh, that looks lovely. Thanks! We were thinking of the Dr. Konstantin Frank winery solely because my daughter has a cat named Konstantin. We may need to rethink.
Both make excellent wines if you can fit them both in!
Facts don't care about your feelings
I don't get the need to bash rural america. It doesn't actually suck and that kind of divisiveness sucks whichever direction it's aimed at.
You guys are all lame and can't take a joke. A guy makes one throwaway comment and comes back to 6 comments from lame flyover states. Having spent the bulk of my life in rural America it is simply an inferior version of America. Facts are facts
Hey man I'm not the one responding to each and every reply
Casts Lisa from the graveyard for 3 black mana.
In this economy? You could save a couple mana by using Reanimate instead...
The only thing I like about the IRS being defunded is it'll be easier to cheat on my Commander Tax.
I come from West "By G-d!!" Virginia. And I love West Virginia. It's a beautiful place, with good people. If your car broke down in West Virginia, someone would offer to drive you to the nearest service station. If your car broke down during a snowstorm, that West Virginian would probably offer you their coat. I was born in West Virginia, and spent my first 30 years living there. I'll be the first to say it is a very rural place, and I don't live there anymore. And as much as I have enjoyed living in places like Cincinnati and Tampa and now Chicago, when I retire and go home to live out the rest of my days, I can think of worse places to go than West Virginia. #MontaniSemperLiberi #WestVirginiaPride
My mother's side of the family is from West Virginia and I spent Spring Break there every year in childhood. I'm a city girl very deep down and it's too rural for me to live there, but it was the first such place I ever encountered and I'll always have a profound appreciation for it.
It's a good idea to remember every once in a while what this stuff looks like from the outside.
What I want to believe is that the United States is so big and so wealthy that it has something and someplace for every taste, but what I keep finding is that the parts of the country that might satisfy my preferences have become either luxury goods reserved for the farmers' market set, or shockingly dysfunctional, or both. I am of solidly middle-class means and all I'm really after is an American version of an outer-ward Tokyo life, where you get a modest but comfortable apartment with some convenience stores and a pharmacy and a mundane chain supermarket within a few hundred meters' walk of your front door, and a train station somewhere thereabouts connecting you to a transportation watershed that will ultimately get you anywhere else you may need to go. America pioneered the skyscraper and the subway as well as the vast universe of consumer variety that postwar Japan is reflecting back at us, so these things are, as you say, part of the project, too.
I like Waffle House and crunchwraps (though I didn't know they were specifically designed to be eaten while driving) and ranch and the like just fine, but I also like dense, cozy environments and I don't like driving. I'm not upset that the America of wide open spaces and dozens of gas pumps exists and I even enjoy a visit every now and then, but I'm sad that the kind of America I want for myself seems to have disappeared, and I'm having trouble finding my place. My dream is for this association of "city living" with the socioeconomic extremes of either wine bars or food deserts to be broken, so people with more of a Waffle House budget are once more free to choose it if they want, too.
Are you related to me? This is exactly how I feel. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can afford to retire to a semi-affordable city like Chicago or Minneapolis someday, but who knows.
I am gradually becoming more curious about Chicago in particular. I've never lived in the Midwest before, but it's as big as it gets while being, as you say, "semi-affordable," and I love the two-flat floor plans. I just want to take a very good look at the mechanics of a representative cross-section of its neighborhoods before drawing any conclusions, because I've fallen for the "walkable as in you can hit some fun restaurants and catch a commuter train to work, but of course you drive to the grocery store, the hardware store, Target, etc." trap before.
I hear good things about Minneapolis, too, though I know less about it, and I'm less sure of its non-driving chops given that even the much larger Chicago may be more car-oriented than I hope for.
Either way, it's very difficult to communicate these preferences without people reading it as a yearning for artisanal wine bars and Brooklyn polycules. What I actually want is some kind of normie-ish life in a dense place where not driving isn't seen as an affectation.
I believe Matt has made the following point before: if you visit Chicago in the summer, you will wonder why everyone doesn’t move there. When you visit in February, you’ll understand.
The same applies to Minneapolis.
I've been there in December. I think I could take that deal, as long as I don't have to drive in winter conditions. I'm pretty desperate for normie urbanism in the United States at this point, and I tend to spend most of my time indoors anyway.
I love Chicago. Most underrated city in the country, in my opinion. But believe me when I say Chicago in December does not begin to approach Chicago in February.
(laughs in Canadian)
i moved from NYC to Chicago a few years ago. The word is getting out how great it is here. We would love to have you!
> I hear good things about Minneapolis, too, though I know less about it, and I'm less sure of its non-driving chops given that even the much larger Chicago may be more car-oriented than I hope for.
You already nailed it--car-free life in either of these places would be something of an affectation (Chicago somewhat less so). I'm sure it's viable, in a narrow sense, but desiring full carlessness would be viewed akin to desiring lack of personal transportation freedom. Inconceivable outside of some fairly narrow demographics.
Ex lives in pretty inner-core Chicago, highly transit-oriented, and their view of driving is still "any time we need to go get something substantial, or go to an awkward location, or whatever, we can just borrow her in-laws' car for the day".
That's what I was afraid of, though how much it bothers me depends on the degree. I'm not opposed to occasionally using a car to go somewhere unusual or bring home something large or heavy, but I don't want to rely on it day to day for things like normal groceries, and I'd like to be in a milieu that don't find such a preference strange.
I have good news for you, we have lots of homes within walking distance of grocery stores in Chicago (though we should build even more)
I have/had relatives in both cities without cars who got along fine. I don't think it is considered an affectation unless maybe you are in a higher socioeconomic group. My daughter lives in non-downtown Chicago (Kenwood), and none of her friends have cars, but they are all 20-somethings. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that neighborhood because, although it is easy to get everything you need within easy walking distance, it is kind of cut off from the rest of the city - a long ride to downtown if you don't get the express bus, and sometimes the Southside trains can be rough at night. It is much easier to get around to the rest of the city from the Northside, but, obviously, more expensive.
I like the winters, but I lived in Wisconsin for 5 years, and I currently live with a kid who thinks 60 degrees F is too hot. As they say in Minnesota, "there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes." I even like the lake in the winter!
But nowhere, even NYC - where over half of the residents own cars - is like, say, Taiwan or the UK. Why in the world did we build our cities and towns the way we did when so many people can't drive? I live in a small city that has better public transit than most, and it is still really hard to get around without a car, even if you live in a walkable neighborhood like I do The longer I live here, the more I realize that SO MANY PEOPLE don't have cars, either because they can't afford one or they can't drive for medical or age reasons. This shuts them out of a lot of life. It is the main reason my son wants to leave the country after traveling a bit, and I can't say I blame him, although I would miss him.
You are speaking truth. I'm glad we can have all sorts of places here. But I hate that the places I like are extremely undersupplied because they're explicitly illegal in most of the country.
If you can settle for the transit being bus rather than train, there are a LOT of places that meet that wishlist in the Connecticut river valley (roughly, from Brattleboro VT to Hartford.) I could find you a dozen places within a mile of my house that met that description, and Boston and NYC are both feasible daytrips by public transit. (The hard part is a few hundred meters to a generic supermarket. The supermarkets that are in the denser areas here are not chains, their customers are mostly immigrants.)
After finally visiting a Buc-ee's, it has its own artisanal market style, just way different than how the cosmopolitans would define it.
Honestly a Buc-ee's is weirdly impressive even as a cosmopolitan vegan. I go to the one near Warner Robbins AFB in between Orlando and Atlanta. Just the spectacle of it is something else even if I just want like an Alani and a granola bar because a wall of jerky and people screaming about brisket on the board isn't food I'm going to eat.
Warner Robins AFB, alas.
That is what I was going to say. As someone who lives in a 'boring' commuter suburb or a major US city, I have mainly only experienced the national conversation to be about how the coastal 'elite' and urban people are not real Americans, etc. I have rarely in my social circles or in mainstream media, etc. seen critiques against 'real' America. I happen to like both. But the idea that the hate and insults are one-sided is way off.
I was just thinking the same the regarding your last point.
Your best piece so far. Wonderfully well written and insightful.
Agreed great job Halina. Wish it were free so I could send it to people.
When I made a similar lamentation recently, I was told that we can forward emails? Have not confirmed but worth a try...
They usually aim to keep the post short enough that the whole post shows up in the email. The link won’t work for people who aren’t signed in, but the email probably has the whole text and the images.
Strongly concur. Halina, sorry that I fired off an off topic comment right away and then peaced out for 2 hours, as my mom and her husband came over for happy hour right when the article published. But this was an outstanding read, and is about as devoted to Slow Boring Thought as it gets.
I came here to post the same. This was a great read.
absolutely popped off with the title too!
Up here in upper midwesternville, it was one of those weeks that was so fucking good (on the job and off) that you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, like you've got a brain tumor or something.
This post is a perfect cherry on top. USA USA USA
My marina still hasn't gotten my boat in the water. I am drinking away my frustrations.
I would be mad and you could print it in the papers that I was mad.
>That feeling [of patriotic pride] is not evenly distributed in America right now
You don't say.
>Over the past few decades, a slice of American elites has drifted into what you might call cultural semi-detachment. Though they reside physically in the United States, they are aesthetically and aspirationally elsewhere.
Speaking only for myself, n = 1, but: I became a U.S. citizen in 2018. And I was damn happy and proud of it! Yes, it was during Agent Orange 1.0, but back then it was easy to dismiss his election as a one-off, a fluke, "not who we really are." And after the naturalization ceremony Husband and I went to a goddamn Cracker Barrel and ordered a stack of delicious fluffy all-American pancakes, and I told the waitress that this was my first meal as an American, and she smiled and congratulated me.
And we all know what happened later.
So, yeah. If my patriotic fervor is at a low ebb these days, it's not because I'm a sneering, elitist, overeducated, organic fairtrade soymilk matcha latte-sipping, culturally semi-detached shitlib who hates Real America(TM); it's because tens of millions of my fellow citizens saw fit to elevate a degenerate fuckwit who had already committed enough wrongdoing to sink the career of any other politician ten times over.
I'm glad that European visitors enjoy Bucc-ee's and Waffle House, and I look forward longingly to the day when we again have a POTUS I can feel proud of, or at least not utterly ashamed of.
BTW, I'm a walkable urbanist at heart, but even I must admit that Bucc-ee's slaps! Highly recommended if you're driving between Austin and Houston. They've got pickled quail eggs in a jar!
I hear this, but personally I feel in some ways more patriotic today than I was pre-Orange. The center of American identity IMO isn't Buc-ees or Waffle House or any other consumer brand (and, as an aside, it's interesting that Buc-ees and Waffle House are brands that are basically specific to one region, so I'm not sure how much celebrating them is really a sign of American pride so much as regional pride). Instead, it's what you might call American grade-school civic ideals - "four score and seven years ago," "we hold these truths to be self-evident," and all the rest of it. Pre-Orange it's not that I didn't believe in that stuff, but I think I saw it as being a little trite or corny. But today they mean a lot more to me. The actually-existing earthly institution called the United States may at the moment be reflecting those ideals more poorly than ever before, but to me that just means The Real America is in captivity. Wherever it is, that's my country and I love it more than ever.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with some nuns (one of whom is my aunt) back in the pre-Francis days. Their order was one of the ones the Vatican “investigated” for something or other (while they are mostly retired now, they were social workers/teachers/etc, my aunt served as a prison chaplain for many years). Being an extremely lapsed Catholic, I could never understand how they remained faithful to a church that seemed to consider them second-class citizens. They became very emotional, saying with some ferocity “it’s not *their* church. It’s *our* church.
I think of this conversation often, for a variety of reasons, including the point it seems to me that you’re making. It’s not *their* country. It’s *our* country.
Yeah, basically America is an idea. The very fact that the other side rejects the notion of America being an idea is proof positive that they don't really represent America. And you can't kill an idea, or at least it's extremely difficult. You can take over the government, but the idea is still out there and will never die.
Let the losers have their confederate loser flag. We're retaking the ol glory for ourselves
I agree with all this but I am meeting more people who are more than not patriotic; they actively want America to lose. For example, they root for any team that is playing against the USA in the World Cup, they refuse to go to any event that might remotely have to do with the USA (i.e. they won't go to a Navy Band concert even though they weren't even playing any patriotic songs) and they base they support for countries on how anti-American they are (e.g., Iran and Hamas). When I told them I was planning to visit friends in TX or FL (even the liberal areas) they looked at me like I was some sort of a monster and that it's our duty to make sure everyone turns their back on this country, even if has nothing to do with Trump.
Cracker Barrel rules. So do Olive Garden, Marie Callender's and Coco's.
Marie Callender’s, I think, is also Perkins, and I agree with you
https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/why-everyone-loves-amazon
Milan notes that Amazon is very popular, something that's been known for a while. I currently find this interesting because recently I have been around several anti-Amazon people. A few are riffing on their grievances against Jeff Bezos, but overwhelmingly the complaint is that they feel that Amazon is too big and has too much market concentration. This ranged from pretty left wing friends of mine, to the Real Blue Collar Americans that recently built my deck. For the latter, oddly enough Amazon and Walmart were bridges too far, but not Home Depot and Lowe's. Go figure
The criticism that I think is attaching more and more, and which Jeff and co. ought to really be thinking about, is the sheer volume of crap available from the rain forest website.
Something you say about Costco is that anything you get there is going to basically be a quality product. You might regret a purchase because you ended up not needing or using the thing in the way you planned when you put it in the cart, but you never regret it on account of the product just being crap.
You could try and remove the most egregious 3rd party sellers, but Amazon's probably more worried about competition from Shein/Teemu than it is Costco.
Revealed preference seems to be the average person wants more, cheaper, plastic crap.
I'm not predicting Amazon's imminent demise or anything, but I think the danger is not whether they offer cheap crap, but whether all products are even fit for purpose or geniune/as-advertised.
Yeah I bought some "Oral-B" dental floss and the printing on the package was...off somehow? Looked cheap, like maybe not authentic. I have to ask myself, is this safe to put in my mouth every day? Probably. But I don't like having to ask these questions.
That is a huge postal policy failure
Applies to Google too - at some point both of them decided that either the war on slop was unwinnable, or allowing the slop merchants to ply their trade on the platform was too short-term profitable to pass up, so now finding anything you want on either site requires wading through oceans of garbage.
For me, the wade is still worth it with Amazon. I have basically given up on Google for everything but my email and collaborative documents, and if I had access to a time machine, I'd revert the email too (transition costs are still too daunting at present).
I keep meaning to set up a new email address at a custom domain, managed by google for simplicity's sake. After it's fully switched I could pick it up and move elsewhere. But it would take a few years to establish it and it's daunting to start a task that'll take years to pay off.
Setting up the email and domain is very easy with Cloudflare. Then you can point the email at your Gmail until such a day you transition providers. I’m doing that currently and it’s great.
Amazon has a counterfeit problem. You have to be really careful. It’s like shopping in a bizarre.
In theory the product scores should take care of that, but their reliability has been on the decline.
I've heard that line before and it's always been wacky to me. Are there any more competitive markets than durable goods, logistics, cloud computing and digital streaming? Half the money in the economy must be spent trying to get a bigger share of those four.
I'm guessing if I shared this article of Matt's to them they would think it was complete nonsense. https://www.slowboring.com/p/what-market-does-amazon-monopolize
The percentage they make on audiobooks (60%) vs what gets paid to authors and readers (20% each) is pretty fucked up, at least. Once the infrastructure is there, it’s there.
For some reason, I can’t like that. But Kindle’d near monopoly on ebooks hurts authors a lot. So much concentration in the book market where buying out the competition is far more common than trying to compete
I hate Amazon because they won't sell (well rent, because libraries don't own digital stuff for the most part) their Audible Exclusives to libraries, even at the extremely inflated rates that libraries pay for digital books and audiobooks. But I realize that is a very niche complaint.
It's not literally true that you can easily avoid crap by removing anything shipped from China, or merely made in China but sold under some fake brand name you've never heard of, but it gets you damn close. As a Real Blue Collar American, despite not having many dollars, I simply can't justify the waste of time required to delve through all the garbage on Amazon. Time is money, friend, and one shouldn't trade a lot of the former just to save a bit of the latter. Baffling that a company so good at logistics and web infrastructure still has such a shitty search function, with a hostile UI full of dark patterns. I'm happy to pay more to shop at places that aren't so obviously Out To Get Me, where I don't need to put on the Hat of Maximal Skepticism from the get-go. Shopping should be fun, not a homework assignment under duress.
I'm pro Amazon but also would be happy to find out Bezos had bone cancer. We can get the product without the founder just fine.
Amazon has done a horrible job (or maybe not only encourages) terrible products and fraudulent products to overwhelm the marketplace. Like Walmart before them, the force companies to hit price points to be competitive in a way that forces production out of higher wage and labor protected markets and drives quality down.
The counter is if you want to pay more, you can get quality things, but identifying them and finding them is harder than getting crap.
The excitement about seeing a yellow school bus reminded me of a conversation I had recently with someone who was studying abroad. She said that those school buses and Solo Red Plastic drinking cups were considered the iconic symbols of America.
I remember when I was in France seeing a person walking along the sidewalk with a baguette. I was like, "that's actually a thing!"
Well, that is disheartening! My kids used to count red solo cups on Sunday mornings when they were little. The more cups, the better the Saturday night parties, I guess.
Around here I count discarded pairs of shoes with one heel broken off.
https://500px.com/photo/1124027542/img_1551-by-ken-in-mia
Glad to see the fun posts on some great things in the US are still gaining in popularity.
And this is a great write up on it. Thanks! It is maddening how much so many online posts are effectively convinced everyone is terrible and hates life here in the US.
More than the tourists, even World Cup stars are out and about enjoying America. Lamine Yamal went on a Walmart run to pick up some groceries. Lionel Messi apparently was spotted at a Buccees eating a brisket sandwich.
The pitch at the heart of the American suburban lifestyle has always been that everyone can live like a rich man - own your own land, drive your own car. If you don't have to live in a superstar city where everyone else is trying to live, it's a very comfortable life.
Messi lives here tho
I don't think there is a Buccee's in Miami
Closest one is in Daytona Beach. Which isn't all that close.
Apparently it was a Buccees in between Miami and the Argentina team's base in KC.
He must have had a hankering for some brisket.
That is awesome. That's why I'm so stoked for the 2028 Olympics. All the athletes are being housed in UCLA dorms and I live a stone's throw (well, a long stone's throw) away from them and I don't even care about going to any events. I just want to hang around the village and campus and see these folks.
> it's a very comfortable life
With the caveat that you will spend a large portion of that life in a car, which isn't easy or cheap.
Spending time in a car is much more dignified than spending time on a train, getting sneezed on; or on a bike, sweating.
I couldn’t agree less
Some German friends of mine ran into Arnar Gunnlaugsson (manager of the Iceland team, I'm told) at Target in Auburn, AL.
Target's great. I hope Coach Gunnlaugsson got an Icee and a box of popcorn up front after shopping.
In early 2023 or thereabouts, after the announcement that Messi was going to join Inter Miami there was headline news here about him being spotted grocery shopping. You know, just pushing his shopping cart up and down the aisles, checking it out.
Hat's off to Ben on his new gig: https://x.com/BenKrauss5/status/2065495007935828247
I guess that means that the comment section is basically Deadwood for the time being, very well, here are the 10 top reasons why Sharty is literally worse than Hitler....
If you're going to list it, list it in David Letterman style.
Fair enough, had a trouble getting a flight back though https://youtu.be/KB47hA8n3pI?t=250
Wu voice: Cock…SUCKER!!
#hottake: Wu cutting off his "queue*" and being like "Now America!" is a great moment of civic nationalism, it should be celebrated on this Fourth of July
*In Old China it would be considered an act of treason against Qing Dynasty, punished by death by torture.
Does that make Halina Al Swearengen or Sheriff Bullock?
The real question is, will Joseph America be rooting for America tonight? Or is the sportsball “not his sport”?
Official watch thread here.
Is there a sport happening this evening?
People don’t remember Obama as a big sports-panderer, but I *VIVIDLY* remember in the 2006 Super Bowl when he bought that ad to make a “special announcement”, where he said a bunch of pablum that made it seem like he’d declare early for the 2008 primaries, and instead pulled out a Bears hat and declared his deep allegiance — all with PERFECT comedic timing.
The fact that the man could take and make a joke probably won him a LOT more normie votes than most other factors. This is something progs and centrists alike should consider. Call it “jocularism”.
By comparison, Mamdani’s not as smooth of an operator, but buying nosebleed tickets was a master stroke move. The people who were able to buy them were not remotely the hoi polloi, but damn if he didn’t buy genuine solidarity points with just such a simple move of participation and performance.
This is the ONLY politics I will do all night, Joseph.
OK, I had to look that up because I felt like I would *definitely* remember Obama buying a Superbowl ad and endorsing a team during it. It was actually in December 2006, so playoffs (I think?) rather than Superbowl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmWlrtpqp40
You are correct!
So be it, David.
I will do three times as much politics to make up for it.
Paraguay is playing a soccer match.
Ah. I have not had the occasion to visit Paraguay. But, I would patriotically volunteer to be its president.
Joseph America, Hegemon.
Red China has a Paramount Leader, North Korea has a Great Leader and a Dear Leader, Iran has a Supreme Leader. I will like to be known as "Precious Leader."
Precious World Leader Joseph America; a shoujo series.
https://sl.bing.net/gagNX1sMf9w
Apparently they forgot to show up tho.
Indeed there is. Dodgers are playing the White Sox, a battle of two first place teams!
God Bless America 🇺🇸
Land Of The Nations Of The World
Stand beside Her
And guide Her
As she scores three fucking goals on Paraguay!
We are assholes
We are crazy
We are morons
Shore to shore!
God bless America
We’ll score
Goals
On YOU
It's kind of funny that the hardest-core USMNT fans are generally (moderate) coastal libs. While both red-state right-wingers and black people mostly could not care less how the USMNT does, albeit for different reasons.
A USA foul overturned into an opponent foul for diving will give many Americans warm fuzzies.
Second goal! 🥅 🇺🇸🫡🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
MURRIKA! First goal!
https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/2065602752906936739
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Gelllllder…
LAND gelderland Gelderland!
Simpsons Did It: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLC48ljmZ78&t=19s
And the way it ends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcZzlPGnKdU
Most of the social media about the World Cup is about denied visas, here’s a post with over 4M views showing the Somali referee denied a visa returning home to a hero’s welcome: https://x.com/nahuelzn/status/2064755138640728307
As nice as the experience tourists who made it have, it’s survivorship bias and America is coming out of this looking pretty bad when there are many more stories of people having visa issues often after paying thousands of dollars in contrast to how even authoritarian countries rolled out the red carpet for fans and on occasion when they denied entry to people, FIFA punished them (like when FIFA moved a tournament from Indonesia to Argentina because Indonesia stuck to its ban on Israelis).
The US bans a Somali ref because of alleged ties to al-Shabaab: bad
Indonesia bans the entire Israeli team: good
Canada bans a Ghanaian striker bc he is awaiting trial for rape: not sure yet, need guidance
If the Somali ref had ties to terrorist groups then why did we give him a visa in the first place as he had a valid visa. He has reffed for high profile games in Africa without event.
The US is probably (but may not be) lying about the al-Shabaab thing.
The Indonesians are barbarians, what do you expect?
Canada, as you say.
If it's not true he could clear it up by asking for an appointment at the US Embassy to clear it all up. He'd have to answer whatever questions he was asked, fulsomely and truthfully, of course.
You think modern Europeans (the subject of this post) think denying entry to a Somali with alleged terror ties is bad?
That's just the online "America bad" reaction. In truth they wish they did the same thing.
I love Freddie, but let's get on thing very clear: He drove through Gainesville, GEORGIA.
I demand an immediate correction of this obvious stolen valor.
Wikipedia is telling me that this Gainesville was founded multiple decades before the more famous Gainesville. Obviously that won't matter to Gator fans, though.
Alright lightheartedposting: if a Eurotourist was visiting your area, where would you take them?
Huntington Gardens in Pasadena! They are absolutely gorgeous.
San Diego Zoo is magnificent, well worth a visit.
In Orange County I always take people to Crystal Cove.
In LA, I usually do the La Brea Tar Pits, and the walk from Fern Dell up to Griffith Observatory a bit before sunset (so you can get great Thai food at Jitlada when you get back down).
And now you can ride the subway from the tar pits to Thai town! (Though the connection is slightly annoying and roundabout, unless you plan to stop in K-town for lunch.)
I'm more familiar with Long Beach, which I still think has one of the best Aquariums in the country.
If we're Orange County posting, definitely Sunset Beach and also the town of Orange.
Also taking them to In'N'Out seems kind of obvious.
I like to take tourists to that San Juan Capistrano/Dana Point part of Orange County. That real rich people deep South OC that you see on TV, where it's still just tons of whites and everyone looks great.
I like the early drive down, Mission San Clemente, then Heritage BBQ next door. Then beach. Then you say something like: California has the best beaches in the world. And then they get mad, but you live in California so you're like lol.
This also works in San Diego if you book a night at Coronado.
I'm in west LA and go to the beaches all the time and they're great but I grew up in Florida and think the beaches are better there (except for letting cars drive on them).
I was so excited to go to In-N-Out when I went to California for the first time (I was driving from the east coast). I tried to go to the one in Las Vegas, but I went there too early and a guy dressed as Spiderman in the parking lot told me it didn't open until lunch, so I kept driving down I-15 and went to the one in Barstow.
I think In'N'Out canonically opens at 10:30.
There's one by my house now in the Portland burbs, but it's so new the line is consistently over an hour so I'm more likely to go to one when I visit California than the one by my house.
Then a stroll around old town, it's fantastic. Or go east for Chinese food in the SGV or West to Griffith Park. California!
I live near Boulder, Colorado, so this is kinda easy mode. Within two hours driving: The Pearl Street Mall, Rocky Mountain National Park, The Pikes Peak cog railway, a concert at Red Rocks, (seasonally) the livestock show, CU-Boulder campus, Vail.
Probably should go to either The Fort or the Buckhorn Exchange for a meal too.
Yeah, fish in a barrel there.
I live in northern Wisconsin. I'd take them to Kwik Trip, pick up a case of Spotted Cow, then take them boating on the river. Then they're going to have to sleep off the beer and sun, so in the morning I'll take them to get lemon hotcakes and send them on their way.
You guys got Culver's up there?
Also, you close enough to take them to Lake Superior?
In my experience (native Michigander here) visitors are rightly awed by the Great Lakes.
Unsalted and shark-free.
Well, one out of two (allegedly): https://www.wbez.org/curious-city/2016/07/01/getting-to-the-bottom-of-lake-michigans-legendary-shark-attack
It's a marketing slogan and therefore it can be totally orthogonal to the actual truth.
I've seen Lake Michigan from Chicago. I've never been to more rural parts of the Great Lakes shore. I'd love to visit the UP.
Culver’s was founded (and still headquartered) in WI. The original location isn’t far from me, and I sometimes hit it after paddling.
It’s a glaring omission from Mary’s plan, but depending on where she is, the Culver’s density can be low up nort. So maybe there isn’t one nearby.
Of course we have Culver's. And Lake Superior is maybe a 2-3 hour drive, so it's doable but not especially close. It's also probably more impressive to look at but much less fun to boat on.
Madeline Island? The Driftless Area? Lake Superior? Maybe all the way to the Porcupines? Come on man.
Even some Americans can't fathom Kwik Trip!
https://youtube.com/shorts/B9TCKdcIJao?is=k04hbViGaeIa2VaG
Nah man, case of Grain Belt.
You've given me 7-10 days and some schedule flexibility, and a lot of energy.
They're arriving the first Friday of the State Fair; we'll let them cool their jets after a long day of travel. Saturday is the State Fair--first Saturday, so a good big crowd, the prize fruits and veggies are fresh, and the animals are all still there. This is an all-day affair. Early Sunday morning, drive up to Duluth and do the zoo (excellent), the aquarium (same), the rail museum, and the the William Irvine. Tuesday morning, Duluth Grill for breakfast, then drive up and put into Brule Lake in the Boundary Waters (big enough to be interesting, lots of fun islands, only portage if you want to). Just one night. Pull out Wednesday afternoon, dinner burgers at Gordy's, and drive back down to the Cities. Thursday morning, tour campus and do the Mill Ruins park and museum. Thursday evening is the Gopher football home opener. Friday, more canoe time in the Chain of Lakes, bike the river between downtowns, then visit the Capitol. See them off on Saturday.
I have actually been to the Minnesota State Fair and it lives up to the hype. I've been to other big fairs in other states too and have found them to be pretty cookie-cutter: the same generic fried food vendors and so on. But Minnesota's is different.
I try to go every year. My folks fly in from the west coast every two or three or five years; we do other stuff, but they're coming for the Fair. It's approaching the status of family tradition.
Texas' was great.
Small, and very quiet. Sad.
Related: I had cause to go to downtown Boston yesterday, and it's wall-to-wall Scots here for the match tomorrow night. Apparently they're a *lot* of fun to hang out with, though I had too much housework to do last night that I didn't get the chance.
Sidenote: I ended up in rural Scotland once (I haven't been many places) and I found the locals to be very friendly and hospitable. My kid barfed and we pulled over to clean everything up, and this mom invited us in to her house to wash up.
Most anti-British sentiment per square foot lmao
English. Anti-English.
The boring, ice cold take is that I would ask them what I would ask Americans: what most interests them, and then tailor the experience to that.
I live in Los Angeles so there's really not much, but the same place I take all my visitors: Pierce Mortuary, a five minute walk from my house where they can see Marilyn Monroe's crypt (and right next to her, Hugh Hefner).
The Big Chicken.
Three Sisters Sanctuary, a magpie creation of trash sculptures: bicycle arches, dragons made out of gears, and opportunistic mosaics.
https://threesisterssanctuary.com/
my. I am about as pro-US as it gets, as a European, but I cannot but read that with a degree of bewilderment.
Sure, food in the US tastes amazing -- because it has sugar all over it. (Just take a look around yourself in any of these places.)
The stores are huge! Because they are in strip malls that you need a car to drive to.
There are many great things about the US, but this form of "abundance" is really not what comes to my mind.
I'm hardly a soccer expert, and I could certainly consider the legitimacy of needing to guzzle to some high quality H₂O, but I still can't help but think that a "hydration break" is a euphemism to introduce media timeouts to soccer.
Drinks breaks midway through the half are routine in hot weather. The change for this World Cup is that instead of the usual rule where they measure the temperature and humidity on game day and allow the break if the heat index is high enough, they're just doing them in every game.
They'd have them in more than half the games anyway because it's the US in June, but having them pre-planned probably is just a media timeout.
I do think that if they're going to have them, they should be consistent across all games for fairness. And I'm fine if they just called them media timeouts, or at least I'm used to them. But it sounds like media timeouts would be controversial in soccer?
Very controversial. I just listened to two soccer podcasts and they think it’s the beginning of the end of the beautiful game. Part of what makes soccer unique is that there are no timeouts within a half. This new rule effectively kills that uniqueness, and it’s a clear cell out to advertising revenue. Of course, par for the course for FIFA, I mean, ThiefA.
What do you have against refreshing water breaks??
Nothing! And nothing against media timeouts either, gotta pay the bills somehow.
I’ve been to Waffle House once. Not only were the staff arguing with each other instead of working, the food tasted like it was a minimally refined petroleum product. I’m happy Freddy found it things to like, but Waffle House equals good food isn’t something I’ve heard even its fans claim.