As a Kansas City girl, I’m on the receiving end of a fair share of Wizard of Oz jokes. It mostly happens when I travel. Inevitably, the people I meet aren’t especially well-versed in Midwestern geography and don’t recognize that Kansas City is, in fact, in Missouri. I laugh and give them props for having the right idea. It doesn’t bother me.
Dorothy said it best: There’s no place like home. Though a lot of travel bloggers adopt a nomadic lifestyle, my home has always been Kansas City. As much as I travel, I always know where I’m returning to.
Sporting Kansas City defender and KC native Matt Besler recently wrote a book titled No Other Home; one of the topics he addresses is his decision to remain in Kansas City even after his career attracted international acclaim.
This got me thinking: Why do I continue to call Kansas City home, when I could live anywhere? Depending on where you live, you may be wondering why anyone would want to call Kansas City home. So I thought I’d share a few of my favorite things about my hometown.
That skyline view.
That Midwestern friendliness. My friends from the east coast noticed it immediately when they visited; passing strangers will smile at you, drugstore cashiers will strike up a conversation, and drivers rarely honk their horns. Life moves at a little slower pace and everyone is a little less on-edge as a result.
Affordability. Free parking and cheap drinks. Need I say more?
Exciting sports teams. Kansas City sports fans don’t have much to complain about in recent years. The Chiefs have had winning seasons for the past 4 years with 2 playoff appearances; the Royals won the 2015 World Series; Sporting KC have made the playoffs for 7 straight seasons and won 3 trophies in that time; and FC Kansas City have won the championship twice in the last 4 years.
#Culture. Plenty of concerts, large and small, make stops through Kansas City. We can thank the best radio station in the country, 96.5 the Buzz, for a lot of them. Our larger-than-life shuttlecock statues at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art have gained something of a cult following, becoming an unofficial city symbol. On Sundays in the summer, they’re surrounded by hundreds of yogis participating in a free lawn yoga session.
Underdog mentality. Most people don’t know much anything about Kansas City. Kansas Citians have therefore adopted a collective underdog mentality. We’re convinced that the rest of the country just doesn’t get how great KC is, and if they only gave it a chance, they’d understand. We will defend our city to the death from any critics. But at the same time…
Intense pride. We all kind of feel like we’re in on a big, shared secret. You see the Kansas City pride anywhere you look – on murals painted in the Crossroads district and on Heart KC shirts that everyone seems to own. In the end, we really don’t care whether you like Kansas City or not. We know that we love it.
Home is where the heart is. Personal reason, but valid all the same: my family and a lot of my friends live in Kansas City. I could be happy anywhere, but my home base will always be wherever they are.
What do you love about your hometown?
-Cathy
*Pre-order No Other Home by Matt Besler on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2w4pq4t.
Originally Published on October 30, 2017.
Leave a Reply