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Monday, February 18, 2013
Which sport reigns supreme in each major league city? - Hardball Talk
Three of the more interesting cases:
Philadelphia: I really don’t know. All sports, to be sure. But it may very well be a baseball town more. There are no shortage of Philly people here, so you tell me. Gun to my head I say the Phillies and Eagels are close, but I don’t know if that’s been the case for all that long a time.
...
Minneapolis: I assume the Vikings. Gleeman should weigh in, though. Youth hockey may trump it all.
Milwaukee: It’s over 100 miles to Green Bay, but I bet it’s still more Packers than Brewers. If you disqualify the Packers for distance it’s the Brewers by default. Still a great baseball town, though. It’s not the Brewers fault that people go Packers crazy.
still hunting for a halo-red october (in Delphi)
Posted: February 18, 2013 at 08:07 PM | 176 comment(s)
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Sounders.
The Phillies clearly were on the rise until the 2012 season, when they disappointed Philly fandom. But then the Eagles s-ucked even worse, and while the Phillies are not as strong as they were, they do have a chance to go to the playoffs if Halladay-Lee-Hammels are what they were in 2011 (and if Utley is Utley, and if Howard is not a carcass, and if the OF produces something, etc., etc.).
The one relevant fact that I see is that the Phillies did prove that they are a financial superpower (or phrased differently, that the Delaware Valley has revenue streams that can be tapped in such a way that the Phillies can be in the upper financial reasons of the industry). And since their TV deal is up in a couple of years (I think in 2015), that bodes VERY well for the Phillies long term.
Nope it's the Wings. Tigers are a strong second though.
Lakers of course lap the field here.
DETROIT: Underrated as an all-sports town, Detroit/Michigan supports all of its teams pretty well, even the Lions (they kinda hate-watch them, but they still watch them). Hockey probably wins in terms of hard-core fans, but I think there might be more breadth of support for the Tigers -- especially when they're good. I think Robert is right that the Tigers are a "strong second."
SAN FRANCISCO: I lived there from 1995-2000 and at the time it was definitely a 49ers town, even though the Giants were better and demographically it would seem that San Franciscans would be more partial to genteel, intellectual baseball than macho, warlike football. Obviously since I left SF, lots of things have happened -- PacBell/AT&T Park was built (I was there for one season) and the Giants won two World Series. So I wouldn't be surprised if SF is now a baseball town. But the Niners are good again...
OAKLAND: Gotta be the Raiders, even though the A's have been more successful and never left for Los Angeles. A's fans are great, but not numerous. Casual/front-running baseball fans probably prefer the Giants now.
TORONTO: Yeah, no doubt it's the Leafs.
The professional sport Atlanta follows the most is SEC football.
I think if the Cardinals ever had an extended losing period (they've frankly had an amazing run of about half a century), the town would be a hockey town. The Blues are huge there.
This is also true of Tampa (though they are torn between the Gators/FSU; they stand united in their hatred of Miami).
Is it skiing? I seem to know of a lot more cyclists, runners, hikers.
Yeah, for spectator sports no one's close to the Broncos.
How do their tv ratings compare to the Seahawks? I'd be surprised if it's close.
Nah, it's always the Niners. They are like the Red Wings in Detroit. They've been good for long periods at a time over many years and have support of the entire bay area. People in San Jose and Walnut Creek are Niner fans. Not necessarily Giant fans.
Assertions about what would happen if the Lions had a great team sound kind of like speculations about what will happen to Portugal when King Sebastian returns.
I don't know by what criteria these types of things can be judged on besides attendance but living in the city, people seemed way more excited about the Giants being in the World Series than the Niners in the Super Bowl, and the Giants were just there two years ago. I think with the Giants recent success they've become a bit more popular. Though maybe it has to do with the Niners moving soon.
It's definitely a Seahawks town, but the Sounders may be a solid #2. If the Mariners ever did something interesting it might be a different story.
Toronto? Toronto?! TORONTO?!?! Now, the Raptors have never really had success, but the Jays couldn't get passed 'em (and the Argos certainly can't, despite a ton of success, though perhaps they're a special case).
I think the most accurate way to put it would be that Chicago is a baseball town but its most popular team is the Bears because fan loyalty isn't split between two teams like it is with baseball.
Detroit is underrated is an all-sport city. The Wings might be number one in the city but that's because they are so well-run that they've been really good for like 25 years. I don't know that they'd have a ton of support if they ever struggle. The Lions have one playoff victory and they are still very well-supported. I actually think if the Lions could ever be consistently good, it'd be a football town.
So much this. If the Lions were ever any good, they would own Detroit. Own it. (Imagine if the Lions had been as successful as the Red Wings the last two decades: perennial contender, numerous playoff wins, a Super Bowl title or three. Detroit sports radio would never talk about anybody else, ever.)
It would be interesting to see what would happen to the Red Wings' level of support if the team drifted into mediocrity, as they seem to be doing this mini-season. Not their 70s/80s level of suckitude -- just mediocrity. Hell, they haven't even been able to sell out playoff games lately.
Nobody cares about the Pistons.
And the Tigers -- well, they've been solid contenders for six of the last seven years now, and should be for at least the next couple. This has never really happened for this franchise before; the only other time you could've said, "Detroit can win the World Series" for more than a few years would be 1983-88, or perhaps in the 1930s. They're winners, and they play in a relatively new ballpark. Let's win it all this year, boys...bless you.
Yeah. My question is, which cuisine reigns supreme in each major league city. My guesses:
Baltimore - crab cakes, Boston - chowdah, New York - bagels, Tampa Bay - the Early Bird special, Toronto - moose, Chicago - wind, Cleveland - regret, Detroit - bullets, Kansas City - barbecue, Minneapolis - lutefisk, Dallas - beef, Houston - more beef, Los Angeles - self-satisfaction, Oakland - can't afford food, Seattle - coffee, Atlanta - grits, Miami - mojitos, Philly - cheesesteak, Washington - pork, Cincinnati - chili, Milwaukee - cheese, Pittsburgh - steel, St. Louis - bad beer, Denver - weed, Phoenix - dust, San Diego - not a real place, San Francisco - Rice-a-Roni
It is the "local" food most talked about, but I have lived here many years (in three stints - the latest since 1991)and I have never even seen it.
Oh and the Twins have a special place here for winning two championships, but it is a Vikings town.
The Reds have always been a solid #1 in Cincinnati, though the Bengals have never been really good at the same time the Reds were really bad. The NBA and WHA have come and gone, but it's always been Reds>Bengals>everything else.
Oh, SF is most definitely the Giants' town now. Even with the Niners going to the Super Bowl, the enthusiasm didn't come close to the Giants' run in 2012.
OAKLAND: Gotta be the Raiders, even though the A's have been more successful and never left for Los Angeles. A's fans are great, but not numerous. Casual/front-running baseball fans probably prefer the Giants now.
The Raiders have their die hard core group, but if I had to rank the East Bay's preferences right now:
Giants>A's>Warriors>Raiders
Ratings and average attendance are horrible ways of measuring popularity though. They depend far too heavily on relative scarcity of the games. I mean, if we are going to play that game, baseball is going to come in dead last almost everywhere.
No,the bulk of the Phillies games are on a Comcast-owned sports channel. Comcast does not own the Phillies(yet).
San Diego - fish tacos
St. Louis - toasted ravioli
Chicago - deep dish pizza
Milwaukee - brats
Toronto - poutine? Or is that just a Montreal thing? Tim Horton's?
Pittsburgh - stuffed sandwiches
Cleveland - pierogies
Dallas - Tex-Mex?
San Francisco - Italian? Sushi?
That's my assessment, supported by the non-binding Moradini-Kittle-Ditka Test I conducted a few years back.
The Redskins moved to DC in 1937, and from that day forward there hasn't been a single year that they haven't "owned" the city, even when they were the NFL's laughingstock in the 50's and again in the Snyder era. The Griffs/Shorts/Lerners never seriously challenged that supremacy until 2012, and even during the 70's when the Bullets were among the elite of the NBA, they only sold out their regular season games against the Knicks, Celtics and Lakers. Maryland basketball suffers from the same problem that any team other than the Redskins does: It's way too dependent on team success. For the Nats to make a breakthrough, it's going to take a long run of playoff appearances and at least one or two championships.
Given the lack of fan support for the White Sox, I don't see this as that good an argument.
I can't see what's so surprising about a team with 5 recent Super Bowls dominating a city's attention, or what's unusual about that team being given a run for its money by a team that's won 2 World Series in 3 years, playing in a jewel of a ballpark. That sort of transition could happen just about anywhere.
Poutine is Quebec-based.
For Toronto cuisine, it's REALLY hard to nail down as it's the most diverse city in the world, and with that comes an insane selection of food choices.
You could easily make a case for Chinese/Thai/(Other Asian), Italian or Greek (the Danforth area is a Mediterranean feast), West Indian (especially during Caribana).
But if you really had to pick one, I'd default to Tim Hortons coffee & donut/bagel.
Very much Sourdough in my opinion. But yeah SF is my favorite city inthe world and the food is great.
I'd personally split the difference...
I would agree with Jim - Chicago is first and foremost a Bears town. No team gets as much and as deep city-wide attention as the Bears, and when/if the Bears are good - it tends to outshine everyone else.
Once upon the time - and frankly, on the way if not all the way back since Dollar Bill passed - the Hawks were somewhat immune to this... They had their loyal - and for hockey in the US, deep enough - niche and nothing disturbed that. I get the sense that over the last few seasons - the support has gotten wider, but I'm not so sure the depth is all the way back (probably getting there, though).
The Bulls are city's favorite bandwagon team; once Jordan left, the UC became pretty much a place for people to entertain clients during basketball season.
I think that if you were to strip out the 'scene' folks -- I would suspect that the Sox and Cubs really aren't all that far apart in terms of support (and I say this as a Cubs fan), it's just that virtually every 'casual' fan in the city tends to go north side. My bet would be that if you had some sort of litmus test -- let's say, name the everyday lineup, starting rotation, manager, and say -- top 3 prospects; the Cubs and Sox probably come out near even on the numbers. It's really more a matter of the fact that pink hatters, trixies, and frat boys head to wrigleyville almost exclusively (and I say that as a not-completely reformed frat boy).
It pains me, but I guess I'd say that Chicago is probably best described as a football town... not to the extent it overshadows baseball, but if you had to rank 'em - hard not to put the NFL at #1.
Oddly enough, despite tons of effort by Northwestern to make the Wildcats 'Chicago's B1G10 team'... despite the fact that Evanston is very easily accessible by CTA, despite playing games occasionally at Soldier Field and Wrigley (with a regular series supposedly to come), despite a relatively decent number (for its size - NU is only about 8k undergrad, with the Law and Med campuses in Chicago adding another k or so) of alums in the area, and despite having a pretty solid ~15 years now of fielding competitive -- or better -- teams, Wildcat football just hasn't caught fire. It's actually rather difficult to find a regular NU bar to watch fb and bb -- but you'd have no problem finding ND, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan/MSU, IU, et al watering holes.
As for food, the burrito, sourdough, cioppino, Joe's Special, crab Louie, crab in general, and the martini are pretty good food items that come from San Francisco. Better than many other cities!
This is such a bad list that it cannot be left uncommented on.
Baltimore - crab (not sure if crab cakes, since crab boils are just as, if not more, imitiably regional)
Boston - chowder is not a Boston-particular dish. If anything, more identified with Portsmouth. I'd say, however, that clams in general are very Boston. But not the chowder preparation.
New York - bagels are a fine choice; historically, oysters (believe it or not).
Tampa Bay - grouper sandwich
Toronto - [Dont know, have never been, but wouldn't be surprised if something from its immigrant communities]
Chicago - vienna beef; could be italian beef.
Cleveland - doesn't have a regional delicacy I'm aware of, but slavic cuisine in general.
Detroit - middle eastern food. Mmmmm, Shatila.
Kansas City - barbecue or steak
Minneapolis - personally the folks from there I know eat way more hotdish than lutefisk
Dallas - steak,
Houston - sort of lies at the intersection of many food traditions. Chili, mexican. I understand from my friend there's are surprisingly strong Cajun influence there now.
Los Angeles - fast food / burgers
Oakland - I think we can make an allowance for East Bay in general, right? In that case, locavorism
Seattle - coffee
Atlanta - I actually think of Atlanta more as the locus of chain dining than a focus on southern food. Though if anything, soul food.
Miami - latin food.
Philly - cheesesteak / or diner food
Washington - Another tough one, as it lies at the intersection of lots of regional cuisines but isn't really whole-hog part of any. Ethiopian food?
Cincinnati - chili or custard
Milwaukee - fish fry. Sausage.
Pittsburgh - polish food
St. Louis - toasted ravioli or the concrete/blizzard
Denver - too young to have a cuisine. if anything, big game?
Phoenix - border food / sonoran cuisine.
San Diego - fish tacos
San Francisco - bread (i'm partial to dungeness crab, but that's just me I think)
With a sustained run of success over the rest of the decade (and a World Series title or two),
the Nationalsany major league franchise excepting, probably, the Blue Jays could very well dent intothe Redskins'the currently dominant franchise's dominance.Blackhawks 7,266
Cubs 3,771
Bears 3,026
Bulls 1,083
Sox 1,862
Concur... I'm always amazed at how difficult it is to get a really good italian beef outside of Chicago, considering it's not exactly a particularly difficult thing to get right. If Vienna also includes dogs - then absolutely concur. The toppings get the most press as being uniquely Chicago - but people overlook the importance of a good dog to start with (though admittedly, the evils of ketchup on a dog are a lot more fun to argue about).
Good deep dish/stuffed is a close second, but unlike a fine dipped beef -- I've been able to find acceptable quality of stuffed pizza outside of Chicago.
EDIT: I might also give a shout-out to being able to find a good polish sausage, but that's a bit tougher to plant a flag on without unraveling the wide variety of sausages and clearly defining the turf.... obviously, good brats are plentiful in Wisconsin, you can find a good Italian in plenty of places, and lots of smaller burgs do a pure polish sausage well. Still, I think Chicago ought to be at least in the discussion for jack-of-all trades "best sausage", with blue ribbons in at least a couple variants.
Oh, and for D.C. cuisine -- the half-smoke, of course, direct from Ben's Chili Bowl (U Street and Nationals Park).
Agreed on all counts. It is remarkable how hard it is to find italian beef outside Chicago. I never can understand why.
Yeesh . . . I've always found Atlanta food to be pretty gross, even compared to other southern cities (not a patch on Birmingham, for instance, despite being richer and larger)
I agree with this. Particularly once the program gets its finances together, I think there's no reason why Maryland shouldn't be a mid-tier B1G program; though if the realignment is (as they are hinting) geographical, Maryland will be stuck in a damn hard division.
beer? coors is in golden, the american craft beer thing practically started in boulder, and new belgium is in fort collins.
agree with this. In Milwaukee it is easy to find, in Indy, it has proven elusive. I'm really surprised the Italian Beef hasn't fully taken hold the way a cheesesteak has coast to coast.
re: Milwaukee, definitely fish fries and frozen custard to go with Sausage.
What is locavorism? Oakland would be Caspar's hot dogs.
I'll cosign this assessment. Zonk's pretty spot-on in every regard, actually.
The Blackhawks' domination of licenses plates makes sense; generally, die hard Hawks fans are Die Hard Hawks Fans, with every other sport coming in a very distant second.
With the baseball/football split, you get a lot of people who grew up both a Bears fan and a Sox or Cubs fan, and don't really favor one sport's team over the other. I know that's how I am, and how very many of my friends are (on both sides of the Sox/Cubs aisle).
Then you're doing it wrong. There are hundreds of great places to eat in Atlanta, at all price ranges.
Good luck with that, but those don't seem to be particularly realistic expectations. There's nothing the "B1G East" has to offer that the ACC didn't. (And a lot that it doesn't, most notably the basketball rivalries with Duke and Carolina.)
The B1G's foray into DC and New Jersey is a play on cable TV channel bundling (*), which is doomed to fail and end. It's the perfect example of buying at a top, so we have to hand it to Maryland and Rutgers for selling at a top.
(*) Which is to say, that when Maryland and Rutgers have to bring in people actually interested in them, as opposed to the millions of NY and DC homes who temporaily have to buy a bunch of other stuff to get the Big Ten Network, or who have to pay for the Big Ten Network even though they never watch it, the play will be exposed as the folly that it is.
Chipotle.
You need to get out more. I ####### love food, and I love eating, and I love eating everywhere. and Atlanta is definitely below average as American cities go in terms of food. Hell, its below average in its own state; I generally have much better food elsewhere in Georgia, as long as decor isn't your thing.
Thirded. Detroit would blow up if the Lions ever made a serious run. Go back and and rewatch the home playoff game against Dallas in 1991 -- Summerall and Madden regularly noted how loud it was in the Silverdome and there were times you can barely hear them over the din.
Given how well Delaney and company handle network creation to start with and really exceeded anyone's expectations, I'm not betting against anything they do... Given the B1G's struggles on the gridiron, the fact that the conference is probably making bigger TV buck than much more successful (on the field) conferences has to mean something.
I'm not saying that bundling ISN'T doomed in the long-term, but I very much expect that the conference is well/better positioned to adjust and adapt as necessary... that's the beauty of essentially building it yourself as opposed to essentially sourcing it via contract. I know they switched a year or so back from a 51% conf majority share to FSN 51% majority (which I didn't like), but the conference still has, I think, a far greater control of its media distribution destiny than any other conference.
Atlanta is, as noted, a college football town first and foremost. It's 90% of what they talk about on sports radio. The Falcons have probably overtaken the Braves recently. The Braves have a pretty strong following, though the fanbase is more the Southeast than Atlanta proper (thanks to all the transplants). The Hawks haven't garnered much interest since they traded Dominique away. And hockey...well, there's a small but loyal fanbase and unfortunately the teams were never good enough to expand that fanbase.
So....College Football > NFL > MLB > NBA > NHL.
and Ledo pizza... extra cheese and pepperoni.
I believe "prospectors" is the most well-known cuisine in the area.
I was only referring to Washington in my comment, but the generic point is also unarguable.
Except that is completely ridiculous because Tim Hortons is nothing close to unique to Toronto. They are ubiquitous all across the country. It would be like saying the signature cuisine of any particular yank city is a big Mac and large fries.
Maple dip and double double may well be the Canadian signature,but like in so many things, Toronto can #### right off in claiming it for itself.
Agreed. It's a great baseball town (and a great basketball town), but the Bears are so obviously and clearly #1 it's not even a question.
The Bulls are city's favorite bandwagon team; once Jordan left, the UC became pretty much a place for people to entertain clients during basketball season.
And yet, the Bulls still consistently led the NBA in attendance in the period post-MJ and pre-Rose. So while there's plenty of bandwagoning (and that happens for colleges when NU or NIU or UI are rarely successful at something), the Bulls are not as bandwagonny as you say here, IMO.
Well sure. NY isn't just all bagels either. Its what your city is "known for."
I once half-heartedly came up with a menu for a baseball-themed restaurant once with a sandwich representing each MLB team. I think it was something like:
Baltimore - Crabcake sandwich
Boston - Lobster roll
NY Yankees - Lox on bagel
Tampa Bay - Grouper sandwich
Toronto - ???
Chi. Sox - Italian Beef Sandwich
Cleveland - Polish boy
Detroit - Gyro
Kansas City - BBQ Brisket Sandwich
Minnesota - Fried Walleye sandwich
Anaheim - California avacado on croissant
Oakland - ???
Seattle - Smoked salmon sandwich
Texas - Steakburger
Atlanta - Fried chicken sandwich
Florida - Cuban sandwich
NY Mets - Pastrami on rye
Philadelphia - Philly cheesesteak
Washington - Pulled pork sandwich
Chicago Cubs - Chicago Dog
Cincinnati - Chili dog
Milwaukee - Bratwurst
Houston - ???
Pittsburgh - Stuffed panini
St. Louis - Chicken parm with toasted ravioli
Arizona - Tex-Mex club
Colorado - Denver omelette sandwich
LA Dodgers - Banh mi
San Diego - Fish taco sandwich?
San Francisco - Crab on sourdough
The last stretch the Red Sox were mostly not in the running, the Bruins and Celtics were awful and the Patriots were wildly inconsistent.
Similarly, my theory remains that Boston isn't a particularly strong football market. At some point the Patriots will be bad again. Now fans will have the 2001-20xx stretch (3 SB wins, 5 wins, 7 AFC title games and counting..) to be nostalgic about, something that wasn't true during those years the franchise was thinking of leaving which might sustain them.
Hockey..well, after years of alienating fans, maybe the B's have turned it around. Jeremy Jacobs isn't particularly liked, but lots of folks in New England have hockey in the blood and that has to count for something.
In some places these differences make more sense. Fish tacos in San Diego. Green Chili in New Mexico/Colorado. Chowder in New England. But you would think beef and bread (or bread crumbs) would be pretty universal.
Now, my experience is far more Chicagoland than Chicago, but I'd say that the Bears are the only team that everyone pulls for, but the passion for the baseball teams is equal to or greater than the passion for the Bears.
And I rarely meet anyone who cares about the Bulls.
The same complaint can be made about a lot of the suggestions. When assigning cuisines to a city in the context of MLB teams, that Port Hope has more Tim Hortonses per capita is neither here nor there, eh? Even if Montreal were still around, they'd be better represented by Poutine at the Peeler's or something like that, so it'd still stick.
In the '60s they didn't even sell out to those teams. When I was at Hopkins, four of us walked in for a Bullets-Lakers playoff game and were able to buy tickets for contiguous seats. Not center court, to be sure, but about 15 rows off the hardwood, behind one of the baskets. (IIRC, Jerry West got his usaul 40, and Gus Johnson - Bullets' flashiest player - shot about 25% from the floor and clanged every one of his foul shots as the home team went down.) I think even the old AHL Clippers outdrew the Bullets in those days. However, the town belonged to Johnny U and company, even after Robby arrived and the Orioles became good.
Although I can just as easily get it here in vancouver, of course.
Even more bizzarely, for some reason breakfast sausage is a particular hotbed of regional differences. You've got your goetta, scrapple, taylor ham, sausage gravy - all within, what, a 300 mile radius?
I hope Primanti's can franchise to the world, but no. The origins of Pittsburgh's food wheelhouse run from Germany and Italy east to Poland and Lebanon. There's also a neverending quest for a good fish sandwich.
If I had to pick an "Atlanta" specific food, in line with Chicago dogs or NY pizza/bagels, I'd probably go with either a Varsity chili dog or, per RoyalsRetro @75, a Chic-Fil-A chicken sandwich. But to your point, which was my original point, anyone who visits Atlanta and complains about the food just isn't looking very hard. (My new favorite low- to mid-priced fare is Bone Lick BBQ's ribs. On the higher end, dinner at Miller Union in early summer, when the spring harvests are coming in from the surrounding area farms, is unreal. And Curly's Fried Chicken is the best fried chicken I've ever had, anywhere.
The only point I'd make here is that college football so vastly outstrips anything else that it needs to be sort of in a zone of it's own. College football, most universally SEC football, is to Atlanta as the Maple Leafs are to Toronto. Yes, other sports draw well enough (barring hockey, which can only ever generate about 8000 loyal fans - enough to warrant the minor league team in Gwinnett, but not enough to support an NHL franchise) if they're winning, but nothing gets close to football Saturdays.
The Braves do suffer, attendance wise, from the very dispersed fan base.
as for dominant franchises, i think with the death of jerry buss and the general cr@pitude and surliness of the current laker squad, the lakers and the dodgers are going in opposite directions. its up to the dodgers to start winning.
Toronto is the only place I've ever seen a Tim Horton's. Toronto is also the only place I've ever been in Canada.
Not exactly. Unlike Canadians, all Americans aren't the same.
Final thoughts on Atlanta as a sports town:
College Football >>>>> NFL/MLB > NBA >>> NHL
I think an MLS team would have a better following, if they played in the Norcross/Chamblee northern surburbs, than hockey. The Falcons are currently ascendant as the favored professional sport, but if the Upton Gambit pays off and Matt Ryan gets injured or something, the Braves could retake that title easily. The Hawks have far too much work to do before they get back into the hunt.
Well, he was a Leaf for 20 years before becoming a donut god. :)
Well, no major league baseball team, so they got left out ;-)
But if we're just talking food, New Orleans is most definitely in my top 5 nationwide... I will say this - I've only ever really had the regional fare in NO, so I don't know to what extent you can find the variety of what you might find in NYC, DC, Chicago, etc - but I'm such a fan of cajun/creole cooking that it's absolutely among my favorites.
I'd still take Chicago after everyone but NYC (admittedly, that's probably also hometown bias and just knowing the places) -- but depending on what I'm in the mood for, I'd probably flip a coin between NO and SF at #3...
Next time you're in town, try Bone Garden. And though it's Korean tacos and not Mexican food per se, Hankook Tacqueria is fantastic.
Right. This is why we're not talking about Memphis BBQ or Oklahoma City fried squirrel, or whatever the hell they eat in Oklahoma City.
oops, i wasn't reading closely and thought it had become a general discussion ...
I guess I'd assume something in the area of steaks -- but you can get a good steak virtually anywhere and that's especially true of any place in between, say, the appalachians and rockies. Even most smaller burgs in the plains/midwest can boast at least one outstanding steakhouse.
Eating food that is local (usually grown within 50 or 100 mile radius) and seasonal.
Agreed with regards to fried chicken being as good an Atlanta food as any.
But the rest of your posts just illustrates the weakness of Atlanta food. Chili dogs; sure, the Varsity is famous, but half a dozen mid-tier US cities think of chili dogs / coneys as their local speciality. Is there any special feature of the Varsity dog compared to, say, a Detroit coney? I don't think so, really, at least in any material way. Whereas the Chicago dog (or the Albany steamed dog, to pick another example) are really different than what's going on elsewhere. The barbecue in Atlanta is OK compared to the North, but inferior to pretty much everywhere else in Georgia - famously, the one thing you can't get in Atlanta is top 'cue. You get the same problem as Charlotte.
And as for the locavore/haute southern stuff like Miller Union, I'm sure its tasty, but its derivative of something that was going on everywhere else in the country (with respect to the locavorism) or Birmingham (with respect to the haute-southern, which was really started by guys like Frank Stitt 20-30 years ago, or even up by DC at the Inn at Little Washington). Other cities have delicious restaurants for foodies as well, but they also have food that is unique or fresh or just at all distinctive. Atlanta is just food, boring food, and there are more and less expensive versions and some talented chefs but ultimately blah.
-- MWE
Respectfully disagree ... I think Chicago's a horrible basketball town, Bulls' attendance notwithstanding. Northwestern averages less than 6,000 per game in basketball, despite playing in the third largest market in the country and having top-flight Big Ten opponents come into Evanston all winter long. I regularly attend DePaul games and their posted attendance figures are an outright lie - they have crowds in the range of 1,500 most nights against Big East opponents.
Basketball and hockey fan bases are extremely regional in Chicago. I live in the Southwest Suburbs - a city unto itself, sort of - and it's all Bears/Blackhawks/White Sox. The Bulls might as well not even exist. People tend to be either Sox fans OR Cub fans, Bulls fans OR Hawk fans. The Bears benefit from the fact that the Cardinals moved to St. Louis back in 1960 and, for some reason (*cough* Halas *cough*), an AFL/AFC team never replaced them. Everybody follows the Bears.
Oh, and by the way, the food is great here. We're chubby for a reason.
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