"We pretty much all left," native son Chris Suellentrop writes in a piece posted today at Grantland, the ESPN-sponsored treasure chest of writing about sports and pop culture.
The "we" refers to smart and talented people like Suellentrop, who works as an editor at the New York Times Magazine. The place they left is Kansas City, a wasteland for anyone who has ever eked out an original thought, in Suellentrop's view.
Suellentrop describes the hard lesson he learned after college, when he took a job at the Olathe Daily News, "a suburban daily near my suburban hometown."
I didn't know yet that if you want to do something reasonably creative for a living and get paid for it, pretty much the only way to do it in Kansas City anymore was to write for Hallmark cards.Yes, and no aspiring writers or actors have ever left Dallas or St. Louis to pursue their dreams.
Suellentrop puts himself in a category with Calvin Trillin and Paul Rudd in the course of making a point about the Sprint Center, "the symbol of Kansas City's aspirations to national relevance and its actual national irrelevance." For Suellentrop, the Sprint Center's lack of a major tenant epitomizes a demoralized sports town. (But Def Leppard is coming!) Twice he uses the phrase "once-great." (He also quotes Wikipedia -- daring!)
It's an occasionally fun, mostly aggravating essay, with a meditation on Billy Smith, the "tree-climbing expert" who appeared in Kansas City Power & Light commercials in the 1980s, inserted in the middle. What say you, fellow members of the Tribe of the Sloping Forehead, who can't figure out a way or a reason to leave Kansas City?
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Kansas City does not have the income to support more than 2 professional franchises, this is a fact that has been known for a long time.
Consider reading the original article with an open mind...rather than the Pitch spin on the article. Chris focuses on KC because that is where he's from & what he knows. I'm not sure it is really bashing KC for not having a sports team as much as celebrating the fact that even though we don't, our Sprint Center is still successful.
The point I took away (from the original article) is that maybe us Kansas Citians should stop having a chip on our shoulder about what we don't have & start being grateful for what makes us unique from the coasts.
If you hate it that badly, don't live here. It's as simple as that.
Kansas City isn't the GREATEST city in America, but I'll be damned if we're the absolute worst. We're not New York or LA... but we're not Detroit, either.
Comments like this are almost not worth responding to. The writer is clearly so ignorant that it would take far more than me simply correcting him to fix said ignorance.
But sometimes, I just can't help myself.
1) The idea that there is no private sector business in KC is just foolish. For starters, Sprint/Nextel is HQ'd here. Futhermore, there are dozens of national-prominence companies that employ thousands in the KC area. And KC's thriving advertising industry is one of the tops in the country in terms of billable revenue. Does it compare to advertising in say, New York? Of course not, but there are more successful agencies with national brand representation than almost any city of similar size.
2) Anyone who believes that the Kevin Garnett trade was one-sided clearly lacks any working knowledge of the NBA. Boston gave up a young and upcoming PF (Al Jefferson, a career 19/10/2 guy) and a slew of players and draft picks. The idea that the NBA actually engineered the trade is right up there with the 9/11 and Obama Birth Certificate conspiracy theorists.
3) Whether or not KC is "in decline" or not is debatable, I suppose. Depends on your definition of decline. The state of Kansas has one of the top 10 lowest unemployment rates right now, and part of that is due to KC.
4) No culture? Only for someone who clearly has no concept of what culture truly is. Again, nothing that compares to NYC, for example, but KC has plenty of culture for a city that has a population just a hair north of 2 million for the entire metro area.
He's right. Kansas City sucks. It's horrible and awful and stupid and crazy and violent and yada, yada, yada...
If you're reading this and you're from the left or right coast and thinking of moving to K.C. Stop! Don't move here. It's horrible here. Stay away. Go away. You won't like it. Move to Dallas. I hear they have lots of fun stuff for you and your family to enjoy. They have culture and sports and the world's greatest BBQ. You'll love it.
Just don't move here.
If the level of intelligence and insight in the comments for this article is any indication, K.C. is indeed in steep decline.
Haha, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. First off, Kansas City is one of the cheapest places to live. There's plenty of culture here. If you immersed yourself in it, rather than sitting at home loathing your pitiful existence, you might come to understand it.
On another note, your bashing of the NBA is a little off. The NBA doesn't really engineer trades, If you knew your stuff, you would know that Kevin Garnett was traded for 5 players, cash considerations, along with 2 first-round draft picks. That's seems pretty fair when you look at the value of Garnett at the time and the talent they received. How they managed that wealth of talent is unrelated to the NBA offices.
I also disagree on your view that ESPN is what's keeping the NBA afloat, considering they televise at most 3 games a week. If the league is playing 3 total games a week that would hold true, but they probably get over 50 games a week.
Your view of the intelligence of the people is also a little too narrow. People everywhere are stupid. Go to NY or LA, they have way more stupid people. Ignorant people know no boundaries.
I think you should learn to stop being so cynical and learn to enjoy life. If you found out you were going to die within the next year, I'm pretty sure your view of the world would change.
Tangential to the meat of his essay, does anyone know where to find that Billy Smith PSA? Or where Billy Smith is now?
The part about the kc being a declining city is certainly correct but tying it all to the lack of a silly nba team is just stupid. Kc is certainly a declining midsized city mostly despised by the corn field-and cul-de-sac types that have to zip in and out of it every day on their way to their (mostly) federal government jobs. It really wouldn't exist w/o the federal gov't warehousing thousands of employees here. There really is no private sector to speak of in kc--taxes are too high and tax-free alternatives too close by and readily avaliable. There's also no real academic institutions or culture. Most residents here are not highly educated and seem to hate the guts of anyone who is or wants to be. City gov't is brain-dead and the public schools suck (although that's pretty much true everywhere). It's also violent and dangerous.
The nba is a total sham and it always was. Go back 60 years and it's the same thing with the nba. There's only 6 or 7 elite players in the game at any one time (or more accurately "time period") and if your team doesn't have at least two of those players on the same roster then there's just no point in playing the season. Even then the league office pretty much determines the outcome of the season through the engineering of trades that make no sense (kevin garnett to boston for nothing in return--why?) the fixing of the draft "lottery" and on-court through the ref's who have admitted to fixing games. Most fans seem to get this too--I guess in singing the praises of the leauge sullentrop has neglected to take a peek or two at the stands of your average (or any) nba game on a tuesday in mid february. There's NOBODY there--even in ny and la. And these aren't "no-shows". These are unsold tickets. Plain ol' empty chairs. It's a lousy product played by lazy players in a somnambulant atmosphere. The whole league is totally subsidized through the tv money it gets from espny. Why? B/c espny has a buttload of cash and it can do that kind of thing. There are also social new york times editorial page reasons for it that I won't bother going into. The last thing a city like kc should be concerning itself with is the nba. Sully is just trying to continue drumming up page-views for his espny employer and his employer is trying hard to make it seem like one of its products has any relevancy.
The thing is, Sprint Center isn't a boondoggle. It's one of the busiest arenas in the world and makes a tidy profit. P&L is the boondoggle.
Ah - I see what you're saying, and I agree 100%. I think proximity and similar construction timeframes led locals to associate the arena (a success) with P&L (a failure), even though they are separate entities with separate funding.
Suellentrop is a flop. Let him frolic in his culturally diverse, alternative life style environment. Hopefully he won't get canned by his ethically challenged and financially struggling magazine. Hopefully he won't just be another statistic In the New York unemployment log jam. Hopefully he doesn't get mugged in Central Park. Hopefully when he gets old, his kids don't buy him a one way ticket to Miami (Florida, not Kansas).
Chris is right AND Kansas City is a nice place to live. I doubt that Chris is bitter about his life and don't think he's trying to slag off KC as a backwater but like myself (a KC native living overseas), he probably wishes there were more opportunity in Kansas City but lives elsewhere because there's not.
As for the Sprint Center, instead of focusing on boondoggles that try to make KC be something it's not, politicians should focus on quality of life. Make KC safe, affordable and convenient and its unique native culture (which Chris gave homage to) will flourish. No major construction projects required.
You're right that AEG promised a team, a point we've reminded readers on a number of occasions. I was thinking more about the citizenry's feelings about the building.
I don't understand Suellentrop's closing remark. "Each and every one of us just wanted the same thing out of Kansas City
that David Stern wants and hasn't found: ownership and fan support."
I think the fan support for the Chiefs and Royals is impressive for the size and income level of KC and poor results from both teams. Look at the Tampa Bay Rays. Great baseball team, embarrassing fan base. That is a real ownership issue.
It's easy to leave Kansas City and criticize it, but it's impressive when people stick around and improve something they care about.
Here's the thing about native sons like Chris Suellentrop: one day -- be it tomorrow or 20 years from now -- they come slinking back to Kansas City. As Chris might find out, the bridge back is an awful lot easier to cross when it's not on fire.
To be fair, we *were* more or less promised a team by those encouraging us to vote for the arena (AEG, KC Sports Commission, Kay Barnes, etc.). I think those who really put some thought into it saw that scenario to be unlikely given the lack of potential local owners.
Having our busy-but-tenantless arena is actually the best of three possible scenarios right now. Even a relatively solvent franchise would have a hard time making money in this small market (we would be the smallest market with 3 major league teams by a wide margin). Worse, we could have had a jackass criminal (Boots Del Biaggio, anyone?) bring a team, then leave in handcuffs.
The malcontents don't leave to escape Kansas City, they leave to escape their own miserable selves. Apparently, Su Ellen Trop is still bitter with his life, and must demean our great city publicly to feel better about his inadequacies. Similar to what another poster says below, I've been all over the United States and beyond, and while many cities have enticing and exotic qualities, there are few places better to LIVE than Kansas City. Thankfully, being a lifelong Kansas Citian, I am too ignorant to know that I shouldn't be creative, cultured, educated, entertained and happy here.
I think another faulty premise is the idea that the Sprint Center's lack of an NBA/NHL franchise represents a major disappointment. As I look back on 2004, the year voters approved the taxes to pay for the arena, the possibility of getting a team seemed like more of a bonus than the main objective.
Thought-provoking piece, but its premise is faulty. Whether or not a city has a winning pro baseball or pro football team is not the right benchmark for determining if a city is thriving or not. I'd much rather have a thriving economy, affordable housing, low crime, etc. than I would playoff appearances.
I've been to just about every major city in the country. I choose to stay here.
I won't pretend KC is perfect, but the idea that everything is better elsewhere is simply misguided. Other cities are more exciting on the surface when you're living like a tourist. However, those who live there pay dearly for that excitement in the extra time it takes to get around and the extra money you spend putting a roof over your head. KC is an easy place to live, and I genuinely mean that as a compliment.
The only thing annoying about this is that he singles out KC as if it is unique in this phenomenon. Now, more than ever, "culture" is centered around about 5 metropolitan areas. KC, STL, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other similar cities are all about the same in their relevance (or irrelevance) compared to NYC, LA, Chicago, or D.C..
Psssh. We may not have an NBA team, but I guess he missed the memo that we'll soon have a Trader Joe's AND an H&M. Irrelevant no more!
On a serious note, I've had a lot of friends leave town over the past year and I can't help but feel some of that loneliness Suellentrop describes. I wish those friends well, but I also know that not everyone can be an astronaut, not all of us can live in New York. Plenty of those who turn out to be small fish the big city pond come back to Kansas City and contribute great things.
We don't need national relevance, and we certainly don't need to be looked down upon by this astronaut. We're just fine as we are.
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