The Honorary Mentions of Silliness

• The Casino Queen Riverboat and Hotel, in East St. Louis. Some places get around anti-gambling laws by putting the casinos on Indian reservations. Illinois and several neighboring states take a different approach: they put the casinos on riverboats, typically in depressed former industrial towns that have nothing better going on. East St. Louis is a typical example, except their casino has a hotel attached. Good thing, too; it's rumored that if you have a good night in the casino and then drive home, you will be followed.
  • Dining there can be an adventure. There's a cheap buffet, an expensive Fancy Place, a martini bar, and a coffee shop... but not always open, and you often need to wait in line. Nearby East St. Louis offers a lot of railroad tracks, but not many restaurants. Fortunately, the Leclade's Landing district of St. Louis is about a mile away, just across the nearest bridge; it has many fine restaurants which keep normal hours.
• The Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery II, passing through historic Cahokia, Illinois. It is a museum show, travelling Lewis and Clark's route west, in a eighteen-wheel truck.
  • In 2004, St. Louis and points west were very proud of having their 200th anniversary of Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery exploratory visit to the region. The Missouri History Museum in St. Louis had a Lewis and Clark exhibit - which was booked solid with schoolbuses of high school students.
  • So I saw the Corps of Discovery II travelling show instead, in the parking lot of Cahokia High School. Also meant for high school students, but the crowd was much more manageable.
• A grassroots St. Patrick's Day parade, in Belleville.
  • Downtown St. Louis, like many places which try hard to attract tourists, has its official St. Patrick's parade the Saturday beforehand.
  • But many metro St. Louis neighborhoods are having none of that; they have their own parades for the locals and anyone who shows up, on the saint's day itself. St. Louis has a district called "Dogtown" (take that, Harry Chapin) that does this... but the Illinois town of Belleville does this too.
  • Belleville earns a mention here, because it had a very quiet Irish pub, the day after.
• The National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, in Belleville. In very short, it is dedicated to the mercy of Mary of Nazareth upon the world in general and the Canadian tundra in particular; its name is based upon miraculous snow in Rome, Italy in one August in the 4th century AD. The shrine has these attractions.
  • A full-service restaurant. Ask for their wine list.
  • A hotel with dozens of rooms. Free continental breakfast. Very affordable.
  • A good view of downtown St. Louis.
  • An on-site chapel, with two Catholic masses every day.
  • A visitor center and gift shop, with self-service holy water from a tap.
  • Drive-through Stations of the Cross. As mentioned in Oddball Illinois!
  • A museum, featuring a Shroud of Turin replica, and a Golgotha replica and life-size tomb of Christ made out of styrofoam.
  • And at Christmastime, a nativity scene built with Legos.
  Really, it's a very pleasant and relaxing place, they're thrifty to keep the prices low, and I respect their dedication to their mission. And in the words of one bartender of a very quiet Irish pub in Belleville, every place is what you make of it. But... Legos?

I now declare Belleville and East St. Louis to be sillier than any other place that didn't make the main list. But the main list has a "No State Twice" rule. So, I've declared these towns the cutoff point. For your community to make the main list, it must be sillier than Belleville and East St. Louis, Illinois.

And so Our Lady of the Snows, the matron of both Belleville and the northern lands, has had mercy upon the Canadian tundra once again, because otherwise, this next Silly Place would have voted itself back onto the main list by popular demand...

Iqaluit is indeed a proud territorial capital, with a museum and markers for its history. Iqaluit is also the only city ever to vote itself off the Silly Places list! (Like I said, proud.)

But unfortunately, these plagues are upon Nunavut's capital city:

1. Trash. There's more trash along the roadsides than anywhere I've seen outside Alabama. Convenience store owners have signs up saying, "Please respect your community and don't throw trash here."
2. Dogs. Local law requires all dogs above a certain size to be chained up outside of town. This is since a little girl was torn to pieces by people's pets a few years ago, according to a hotel proprietor.
3. High prices. $10 for a small bottle of cough syrup, $18 for mittens. (Canadian dollars, admittedly. But it's still double what an American is probably used to.)
4. Dirt. All over almost every road. All kicked up by...
5. Taxis. Almost half the vehicles are taxis. You'd think more people could walk, in a town two miles long. But I guess it keeps the car usage down.
6. Starving artists. Or at least they have heavy tooth decay. But carvings (very similar to the Collection of the Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec, Canada) go for $30 or less, particularly if you haggle. Right at your dinner table. The local hoteliers and restauranteurs smile upon this, apparently. Or at least they weren't objecting.
7. No wood. Plywood doesn't count; there's plenty of that, in houses and among the trash. But when I walked in a shopping mall with my wooden walking stick, a native looked at me as if I had three legs. A stick of solid wood is roughly as rare there as a stick of solid gold - and much rarer than fur or ivory.
8. Canada's slowest customs house. Ellis Island was probably more efficient. But, in Baffin Island's defense, they only get one international flight per week, staggering in from Greenland. So they don't get much practice.

1. Cable TV. Particularly the Boston channel that used to have "Dilbert" cartoons.
2. An elite coffee shop. Specialty coffee is $15 a pound.
3. Sunup at 2 am. Or sundown at 2 pm, depending on time of year.
4. Ice in the harbor in June. In fact, it was still frozen over in June 1999 when I visited. The supply ships make their annual runs in July and August. Meanwhile, the passenger planes carry mostly cargo.
5. A Pentecostal church. With a wooden angel nailed to the side. With a loudspeaker coming out of the angel's hand.
6. A Territorial Liquor Warehouse. Gotta store a year's worth at once, after all.
7. Fancy Places with home-style cooking, with steak, corn, and mashed potatoes for dinner. Caribou meat is optional.
8. A very small memorial to the English discoverer of Baffin Island, plus a mention in the Baffin Island Visitor Center: "Sir Martin Frobisher came, mined fool's gold, made a laughingstock of himself, and poisoned English relations with the Inuit for generations." This was much more succinct than what the Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec, Canada had to say about him.

(Thanks on this entry go to Tracy who proclaims herself a "Nunavut lover", and points out that most of the Inuit residents of Iqaluit can not only afford the high prices, they make more money than the average North American. This is almost entirely due to Canadian government subsidies.

(Acknowledgment on this entry goes also to the many people who rose to defend Iqaluit's honor. So many people voted against Iqaluit being a Silly Place, they got it thrown off the main list. I'm glad you care, and every vote counts... but the next time you complain about how evil the United States is, try not to do it from Microsoft Hotmail free e-mail, eh?)

But if I added Waco, then Texas would make the list twice, thanks to Dallas... and I couldn't have that. Waco was the place that inspired my "No State Twice" rule: For your community to make the main list, it must be sillier than the second silliest town of any state, territory, or province. And for years, this was Waco, Texas.

Columbus is amazingly similar to Dallas, in that it has:

• A part of town where nothing happens at night. It's called Downtown.
• A part of town on one side of downtown, in which the hockey team plays and the sports fans party (just like the Dallas West End). It's called the Arena District.
• A part of town on the other side of downtown, in which there are no sports, and the non-sports fans party (just like Deep Ellum in Dallas). It's called the Brewery District. But don't be fooled, there are no breweries there anymore. Prohibition mostly wiped them out, and the survivors were feeble enough to be eventually be driven out of business by the makers of (American) Budweiser. Still, the pubs have moved back in, and there are even hotels in the neighborhood.
• German Village is adjacent to the Brewery District. It has very scenic brick-lined streets, plus restaurants including:
  • The original Max & Erma's pub! It has a nice wood barroom, but the same cuisine as all the other Max & Erma's, so don't go out of your way for it.
  • Schmidt's Sausage Haus & Restaurant! It has a small bar, all non-smoking (kind of unusual). And it has schnitzel too (which is to say, beef or pork filets with gravy), and the waitress wear fine German beerhall dresses which were the 19th century equivalent of Hooters. Well worth a visit.
Thanks to Tommy Keegan's pub in the Brewery District. If you show up there, are ready to volunteer, and have any kind of rhythm, you just might be declared the best bongo drummer in the place!

With that in mind, I'm taking submissions for a new list:

The Silliest Places I've Never Been

1. Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, USA. There they have a Shower of Roses, dropped from a helicopter, in honor of St. Therese the Little Flower. People come from hundreds of miles to be there, as the roses are believed by many to have supernatural powers. The Grand-Mistress of Ceremonies is a statue of Mary of Nazareth, carried around town in a big parade. Beautiful Catholic teenage girls compete for the title of Rose Queen. (Thanks to Christine L. for the report.)
2. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. I've heard... "Silly doesn't even begin to describe Las Vegas. I don't know what does. It's kind of surreal in a way. You walk into a hotel and you're on a Paris street or in Venice. The Venetian Hotel has a canal inside, complete with gondola rides, and the ceiling is painted to look like the sky."
3. Pine Bush, New York, USA. I've heard... "This town has been linked to many UFO sightings and wacky pheonmena. I once read about UFO groups meeting weekly at the local VFW. This may be because their mothers also happen to be their aunts, or just the moonshine finally kicking in."
4. Salisbury, Maryland, USA. I've heard... "If you want real silliness, visit Salisbury, Maryland. They're incredibly proud to be the home of the Perdue Chicken company."
5. Seaside, Florida, USA. I've heard... "Seaside is one of those cutesy towns designed to look like an authentic 'old time' village of ocean cottages, which instead just makes you puke!" (Thanks to Oscar Baillio for the report.)
   • Seaside is on Florida's extensive Gulf of Mexico coast. Many Floridians consider the Florida Panhandle to be Real Florida. But sadly, its coastline is often neglected when tourists want a Florida vacation. Apparently, the town of Seaside tries way too hard for tourist money.