Cincinnati is the place to be. No, really. C'mon, it is. Seriously.

Every few years there's an American city that is christened "hip" by an important media outlet. In the early nineties, thousands of bad musicians flooded Seattle to form bands and become "the next Nirvana". A week later half of them were hopeless heroin addicts. The ones who didn't overdose are still wandering around the Emerald City, toothless and skeletal, telling tourists "I used to be the bass player for Screaming Trees."

In Charlotte, North Carolina, deemed hip at the end of the same decade by either Rolling Stone or Popular Mechanics (I can't remember which), expatriated Yankees wondered aloud why no one was ever in much of a hurry.

And really, how cool is it to have a city half full of people who regret having moved there? It's a siren's call, this pronouncement of hipness. Hell, it's part of the reason I, despite never ever ever being even remotely hip, moved to Las Vegas during it's early-2ooo's heyday. I shit on Las Vegas a lot, but it's a fun city and I learned a lot from living there. I just stayed about a year too long.

I'm too "wise" to fall for the hip charade now, but it would be a hell of a lot of fun to witness it again from a short but safe distance. That's why I nominate Cincinnati, Ohio as America's Next Hip City.

Cincinnati, or "The Natty" to nickname junkies, is less than a hundred miles north of my hometown. I could readily enjoy the perks of its population explosion without having to actually live with the problems it would create. It's perfect for me. And that's reason enough.

Ok, if you don't think that's reason enough, I offer the following:

-Cincinnati Chili, if you're really drunk, is almost as good as real chili. Click the recipe I was kind enough to include. Sure, it would hare lip a Texan to even taste this stuff, but the rest of us can deal with it.

-Jerry Springer was once the Mayor of Cincinnati. Springer was forced to resign as a Cincinnati City Councilman when police found a check he wrote to a local prostitute (Yes, he wrote a whore a check). Despite this indiscretion, he was elected Mayor a few years later. You have to love a city that forgives not only immorality but gross stupidity.

-WKRP in Cincinnati was one of the funniest shows in TV history. It was filmed in Los Angeles, of course, and no one from Cincinnati was involved in its production, but still...

I'm sure there are other compelling reasons, but I can't think of any right now.

I realize this obscure blog doesn't count as an important media outlet, but I'm hoping an entity that's read by more than five people will take on this cause. It's a perfect excuse for ignoring the real problems this country faces.