That comes off the vacation list...

Growing up an hour and change out of midtown, I was neither immune to nor rapt by the charms of America's First City. I did the occasional touristy thing - the Statue, the Empire State - but didn't have to gawk and gape at "all them tall buildin's". For me, the city (and let's be honest here...it's this country's only city) was a great destination for all it offered: food; music; theater; sports. It wasn't distant, so I didn't think of it as a special treat. It just was.

Now, thousands of miles away in the midst of exurban sprawl, the city is a distant beacon of civilization. I don't get there nearly often enough, and rarely have enough time to enjoy it properly. And I feel much more like a tourist (though it's not like I'm going to see Phantom, or whatever ALW pabalum is playing this year.) But now, I'm not sure I need to visit anymore.

Apparently, New York isn't the mecca I believed it to be. There are zero "national monuments and icons". Bloomberg needs to stop begging for money and stop whining that HomeSec has "just started to distribute it as normal pork" before he endangers our fine friends in Wisconsin and Nebraska. All that talk of haraam is just going to engender more hate.