Having only returned on midnight of Monday, I’m still catching up with my life. With the impending move, posting may be light for the next few weeks.

Summer is often a time for traveling, so I decided to try something new. I picked a bunch of cities that came to mind and then wrote down whatever occurred to me for each city. If you want, use this list and see what comes up for you. If you have a blog, post it and provide a link in the comments! The list is below, and my answers are in the expanded entry.

Atlanta
Oakland
New York
Philadelphia
Indianapolis
San Francisco
Tampa
Cleveland
Green Bay
Nashville
Pittsburgh
Los Angeles
Chicago
New Orleans
Miami
Dallas
Houston
Memphis
Washington, DC
Detroit

With each city, please answer with what you think of whenever that city is mentioned.

1. Atlanta: Summer Olympics; General Sherman; humid; Emory University
2. Oakland: earthquakes; across the bay from SF; baseball
3. New York: Big Apple; September 11; World Trade Center; culture; bustling; history; I Love New York; Broadway; Greenwich Village; the Village Voice; home of family friends; origin of Covenant House Ministries; financial power; Wall Street; skyscrapers; Mayors Koch, Giuliani; the mob; site of Law & Order, N.Y.P.D. Blue, Hill Street Blues
4. Philadelphia: City of Brotherly Love; set of a depressing movie; the Liberty Bell
5. Indianapolis: car racing
6. San Francisco: Haight-Ashbury; queer culture; mild weather; hills; trollies; earthquakes; Rice-a-Roni; high cost of living
7. Tampa: hot; humid
8. Cleveland: tangled in rush hour traffic on my way moving to Texas
9. Green Bay: cheese, cold; the Packers
10. Nashville: country music; site of The Homeless Guy blog
11. Pittsburgh: steel; unemployed people; Bruce Springsteen
12. Los Angeles: smog; L.A. Law; riots; traffic jams; expensive
13. Chicago: venerated by Carl Sandburg; site of The Jungle; windy city; columnist Mike Royko; Great Lakes; University of Chicago
14. New Orleans: the big easy; humid; Mardi Gras; alcohol; Jazz Festival; water; the French Quarter; food; site of many Anne Rice novels; Cajun food; zydeco music
15. Miami: flat; huge; anonymous; site of Hurricane Andrew; one sister’s home for 20 years; Dave Barry; Cuban culture
16. Dallas: drove through it once on my way to Austin; haven’t returned; the show Dallas, J.R.; the airport; site of J.F.K.’s assassination
17. Houston: my fiancé’s home town; big oil; floods; insane drivers; damn hot; NASA
18. Memphis: Elvis
19. Washington, DC: the Washington Post; seat of the U.S. government; worst crime rate in the nation; participated in a pro-choice march there in 1989; site of the Vietnam memorial
20. Detroit: cars; layoffs; Michael Moore’s movie Roger and Me; United Auto Workers Union