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We get out to Omaha every couple of years—D's mom lives out there—and we always have a good time.
One thing I've noticed about Omaha—and a lot of midwestern cities, really—is that they've got a very different vibe from old coastal cities because they're planned cities, with a stricter grid of streets, designed on a planner's drafting table rather than evolving from wagon-roads and cow-paths. Despite this—perhaps because of it—there are fewer natural focal points, less of a sense of "downtown."
There are outskirts of endless highway, where the famniliar brand-names go by like a cheaply-animated background in a 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon: you'll pass an Olive Garden, then a Taco Bell, then a Target, then a KMart, then a Taco Bell, then a Target, then an Olive Garden... It gets a little disorienting.
Enormous enclaves of leafy suburban-style streets, ranch-shouses and two-story colonials, little yards and swimming pools, tow-headed kids everywhere. Further inside the city the houses are smaller, older, closer together; there aren't as many pools, and the kids in the street are more likely to be black or Latino—Mexican, mostly. Store 24 and 7-11 give way to little independent bodegas and Carribean groceries as you drive further in.
And you will drive. The midwest is a place of automotive culture. Your public transportation are pretty limited: there's the bus, and... well, yeah, the bus. There are active movements to bring light rail and/or a downtown trolley system, but don't hold your breath. Highways crisscross the city, ring it, fly over it, knit it together.
Other than that, it's a place, you know? An American city like any other. You can find what you're looking for, if you look hard enough. The Doorly Zoo, mentioned above, is indeed amazing, probably the best zoo I've ever been to. There's minor league baseball. Plenty of live music venues—a lot of country, but certainly not exclusively. The Old Market is there, lots of tourist-funky shops but lots of genyuine-funky ones, too—used-book stores, intimidating, chaotic used-record stores, vintage clothing, art galleries and good food on quiet, clean brick streets.
I spent the best New Year's Eve of my life in Omaha, getting legless drunk and listening to a tight, rowdy a capella four-piece belting out sea chanteys for a wildly-enthusiastic indie-rock crowd. For that reason alone, I'll always have a fondness for the place. |
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