You say that? Yet I seriously considered relocating to Flint, even after watching Roger & Me. To you? Tucumcari is a fictional armpit. To me? It's where you get gas on your way to Dallas, where you stop in Amarillo because there's a Bennigan's there that doesn't card.

Detroit certainly has its detractors. It also has its boosters, and holy shit are they vocal. The regional pride around Detroit is possibly greater than the regional pride around Chicago, and that's saying something. I haven't been to Detroit? But I've been to Chicago and I get where they're coming from. It's lovely.

I had to drive two hours to get to Breaking Bad.

There are shittier places in the world than those I've been. There are shittier places in the world than those I've lived in. There are definitely shittier places than those I've visited. But is the police department whose SWAT team raided your babysitter by mistake subject to a Netflix docudrama?

Yeah, yeah. Detroit sucks blah blah, rah rah Detroit rah rah rah. There's an extremely cozy upscale white loathing of Detroit that's very much like a Philly Cheese Steak: "This is so bad you have to try it." People disposed of dead bodies in my neighborhood in LA. The cops would fly over it in formation, six birds in vee, as a show of force against the place that gave birth to anti-gang statutes.

Detroit is the Hamburglar - a pretend villain who mostly giggles and steals snacks to increase consumption of Midwest whiteness. Sorry for not having a sense of humor about this? But you don't have any friends who scared off the skinheads by slashing his own tongue with a switchblade and saying "I'm not afraid to die, are you?" and I'll bet you didn't know what a curb smile was until American History X. So I maintain - you've never lived somewhere truly shitty.