Our United States

Chris Hoppes, furniture salesman, childhood friend, and local Alexis DeTocqueville, has sent along this note. I should mention that it was a private email in response to the blog--I've asked his permission to reprint it here. Hoppes' opinions are not necessarily my own.

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Sorry you had to go to St. Louis. I know it sucks. I
was born there. That was 1968. It sucked then. It
sucks now. However, they have much more experience in
sucking now than they did when I was living there.

My travels this past year have taught me several
things.

1) New York City rocks. The people there are
friendly, which came to me as a shock, but its true.
Great town, great people.

2) Philadelphia is a dirty, smelly scumhole.

3) People in Boston are mean and suffer from an
inferiority complex. The origin of this complex
eludes me.

4) People in Atlanta are desperate to convince the
rest of the country that their city is a place of
culture, filled with educated and urbane people. It
is not, and they are not.

5) If you're white and live in Mississippi, chances
are you're racist. If you're black and live in
Mississippi, chances are you're poor.

6) Every function in Chicago revolves around food.
If you're working, playing, vacationing, chances are,
you end up or start off in an eatery. This is why I
love Chicago.

7) I've been on roughly 200 flights since 9/11. It's
very easy to spot casual flyers in airports these
days. They're the idiots causing a ruckus in the
security checkpoints. The rest of us business
travelers who have to be in airports on a regular
basis want to see them killed.