10 PLACES THAT DON'T DESERVE THEIR BAD REPUTATIONS
MEXICO CITY
Those who haven’t been think it’s a druggie death wish of kidnappings, police kickbacks and car exhaust. Those who have been know the only shots they’ll be taking are in the “uno mas” mariachi bars scattered around a stellar walking city of classic Spanish buildings, 400-calorie tacos on every corner and possibly the friendliest, most energetic people on earth.
ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
Billboard-infested Nixonian wasteland? Parts, yes. But it’s also got 320 days of sunshine a year, the beaches of the Pacific Coast Highway, and a cultural legacy that stretches from John Wayne to Gwen Stefani to the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. That’s red, white, blue and golden America jammed along 42 miles of bikini-infested coastline.
FRANCE
America needs to get over its freedom fries stupidity. Paris is still a global treasure, cities like Lyon and Nice are wonders, you could live happily for a year on the wine, bread, and cheese and every country in the world has some bad waiters. Oh, and without the French navy at Yorktown no one would be chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” because the country probably wouldn’t even exist.
SINGAPORE
That “fine city” business of suffocating regulations and corpo sterility has always been closer to nostalgic knee jerk reaction to the bulldozing of Suzy Wong brothels and opium godowns than to the truth. With the most entertaining English dialect outside of Hawaii, a population of gregarious food lovers, and the only honest police force in the world, today’s Singapore may not be historic, but it’s still a damn nice place to find on the edge of the Southeast Asian jungle.
QUEENS
Manhattan is too expensive. Brooklyn is heavily bearded hipsterville. The Bronx is too far away. And Las Vegas stole Staten Island’s unofficial slogan and made it ironic. Queens, however, is New York with human-sized apartments, neighborhoods with actual neighbors and an endless supply of lovably grouchy white ethnics for TV sitcoms to exploit for going on four decades now.
CARACAS
Hugo Chavez may be the latest in a long line of tin-pot loonies, but he lords over a glorious architectural city, one shouldered by dramatic mountain peaks and populated with perennial Miss Universe finalists. Most visitors manage to escape with nothing worse than a mild hangover, a ferocious addiction to beef arepas, and regrettable purchase of decorative papier-mâché fruit.
JOHANNESBURG
It’s not the prettiest city in Africa, but Johannesburg is among its most musical. Despite the Grim Reaper dispatches, you can walk its streets unmolested, shop in bargain street markets or air-conditioned malls and visit historic anti-Apartheid sites.
IRAN
As we all should have learned by now, it’s moronic to impugn an entire civilization because of one evil politician. Any bazaar culture that survives largely on tea, humus, almonds, kebabs, backgammon, hookah smoke and a commitment to personal hospitality that borders on pathological deserves a more well-informed assessment than the one our broken political system and hysterical news media are addicted to.
SACRAMENTO
It’s not just that Tahoe, Napa, the Redwoods and San Francisco are practically within walking distance. California’s presumptive sphincter has remained a manageable version of the oranges-and-sunshine Dust Bowl dream the entire state once embodied, with pretty houses on tree-lined streets, a busy downtown and the most spectacular bankrupt capitol in the country.
COLOMBIA
The nation of drug lords, crooked pols and private right-wing paramilitaries is more accurately described by those who have actually been as a land of unforgettable Andean mountain beauty, indigenous food alive with flavor, friendly strangers and more good vibes than a blind date with Shakira.
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