chingon wrote: ↑Sun Jun 19, 2022 7:41 pm
GRID wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 12:03 pm
chingon wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 8:23 am
JFC, what an old act.
What's wrong with impressing visitors. KCMO is a cool city that I think does impress most people. The central urban part of KCMO. The rest of metro KC? Not at all. What's wrong with thinking that tourists will enjoy KC more if they are not pushed to places like Village West?
And there is also nothing wrong with a big push to get things spruced up around the city. Any city that would host an event like this would spending tens of millions on just basic stuff like making sure key parts of town look good and don't have crumbling streets, sidewalks etc. Maybe KC has a plan for that. I'm just saying I hope they do. And that includes the area around the stadium. If they know Arrowhead is staying or a new stadium is going in there, then why not push for a redevelopment of the adams mark, install new sidewalks and landscaping in the area etc. It looks and feels so crummy around the stadiums.
I mean there is enough time to make I-70 or other routes from the city to the stadiums look less ghetto. 70 looks like hell east of downtown like it has not been improved since the 1960's. If Modot has a plan, get them to expedite it.
I really don't get why this is so insulting.
Fair enough, but there's another side to that coin. I myself can't imagine being impressed by Village West, but wtf do I know? I once had to drive 2 people from New York City around, for reasons that don't bear explaining, through KC worst ghettos, and I kind of embarrassingly apologized, and they were both astounded and had thought we were driving through pretty nice working or middle class neighborhoods and couldn't believe poor people in KC lived in huge, awesome single family houses. I had cousins from abroad here once and you would not believe the lists of places they wanted to go: Cabelas, a race at the speedway, a drive in movie, fast food places, etc. They raved about the blandest KC suburban shit you could imagine: lawns, cul-de-sacs, highways, gas stations.
You, in particular, because you know KC's best, coolest stuff, are unreasonably ashamed of all the normal, boring, unremarkable stuff about it. Everyone doesn't feel that way. And I'm not much on apologizing for KC's flaws, or even feeling some kind of twisted responsibility or shame for them. A lot of people here like it, and a lot of them like it because of things I don't like.
Another example that I think is illustrative: one time my spouse was giving a talk at the University of Leeds, and we had been roadtripping through Great Britain for a couple months before hand, which she told the students. During Q&A, one of the students asked her what her favorite part of the trip was and she said our time in Wales and the room erupted into undisguised disgust. One student stood up and stormed out, huffing. We had though it was incredible, basically undiscovered from a tourist perspective, and a kind of weird wonderland, and the people who lived 2 hours from the region thought it was a backwater full of misshapen louts that they were ashamed to have colonized.
Sure...I guess. I mean of course some people or even a lot of people like the things you mentioned. That doesn't mean it's a majority and it doesn't mean its the proper way to build a city. I know you are trying to justify KC's sort of "bad side", but honestly, I'm not buying it. Village West sucks, so does most of suburban KC whether it's the run down suburbs or the newer ones. I miss KCMO, the Briarcliff to Brookside corridor. The rest of KC honestly leaves so much to be desired, not unlike most American cities.
American suburbs are bad enough, but KC's are spread out even more than normal and KC has too many decaying suburban areas while still building new stuff in the middle of nowhere. I mean KCK is a mess except for the very western edge of it and there are farms between Village West and developed parts of the city. I think KC's burbs are the worst of the worst, but maybe that's why people might even want to see them more?
I don't know, we all have different interests in life I guess.