Has any city in the last 40 years been punched in the stomach more than...

I loved The Flats. Haven't been there in about seven or eight years and like you said, I heard it's deserted now.

 

I'm not necessarily saying I agree with them, but that's all they talked about on ESPN radio and TV after his performance in Game 6. And I'm not going to get into a pissing match with you about conspiracy theories. There is a big difference between just having a bad game and what happened to Lebron in game 6. They all thought that was his way of telling ownership that he needed better players around him and this is what happens when he doesn't perform . . . the Celts win by 30. Personally, I think if that is what happened, it means that he is very willing to stay in Cleveland, otherwise there is no point in sending a message if he fully intended to leave.

 

For non-sports (though upon thinking on it, you have to include sports), I couldn't go with New Orleans. Yeah, they've had their share of heartache, but NO still has much going for it with the French Quarter. Detroit and Cleveland (The R&R HOF is dead to me), not so much. Might add Buffalo to that list, too.

 

I assume you mean Game 5. That was the one where he barely showed up and had the worst performance of his career, not Game 6.

 

Game. Set. Match.

 

My favorite passage about the Flats from the book "Diary of a Punk" by Mike Hudson:

"Having lived most of my life in exile, I still have a physical reaction every time I hear some rube tell me how they ventured down to the Flats on a recent visit to Cleveland. They might as well gone to Disneyland. Fern bars, over-priced strip joints and chain restaurants where the dingy drives along Old River Road once smokes and stank and farted and belched. You can't even see the fucking river anymore. They built big barriers blocking it off because too many idiot suburban kids fell in drunk and drowned. But on hot summer nights we'd sit there, the Pagans and Dead Boys and the rest, legs dangling over the edge over the Inky black Cuyahoga water, that water that burned, tugboats heading out to the lake and big ships unloading their cargoes of iron ore. The ear-splitting pneumatic crack from the Aeronautical Shot Peening Company across the river and the night lit crazy with bright work lamps, bridge lights strung and open flames shooting up, licking at the darkness. The rotten-egg smell of burning sulfur. It was beautiful hell and we owned it, and we loved it because it was ours. That crooked river. Today the rubes pay seven bucks to sit there in plastic lawn chairs and they're not even allowed to smoke cigarettes."

 

This thread is useless without these links:

 

New Orleans has recent history on its side, but in the 40-year comparison Cleveland blows Detroit and NO out of the water.

 

I had that song in my head all of yesterday. It's pretty catchy.

 

Ottawa won seven Grey Cups (Canadian Football League championships) after 1927, most recently in 1976.

Toronto's most recent Grey Cup win was in 2004.

 

Two of my favorite youtube videos ever.