Seeking a creative city? Think Kabul, Afghanistan.

When I read the description of London, Ontario, in my local paper, I was appalled. According to The London Free Press my city is dull and boring. Just the descriptive words one wants associated with one's city. These are not the descriptive words to post on the Internet for the world to find on googling London, Ontario. Nice work, Free Press.

I decided to do some googling to discover what the world finds when they google boring cities and stuff like that. Surprise, my search didn't lead to London, Ontario. But it did lead to:

• Waterloo, ON — "This city is boring, has awful weather and worse food."
• Orange County, CA (San Francisco, Long Beach) — "Depressingly boring"
• New York, NY — "Overrated, boring place, just left of rural Alabama"
• Catalina, CA — "No points of interest . . . you can walk it all in under 20 minutes"
• Miami, FL — "Another lifeless boring place"
• Albany, NY — "The most boring place in the world"
• Phoenix, AZ — "The most boring large city in America"
• Hamilton, ON — "If you thought Mississauga was boring, this place is worse — "

Gosh, what a surprise. I found folk bad mouthing Hamilton. Who would have thought? The father of The London Free Press reporter Randy Richmond fled to Hamilton when he could not take another boring day in London according to Randy Richmond, the reporter who wrote the London is boring story.

Heck, if some folk find Hamilton boring, why go on with this search? Clearly, the number of places that have been called dull and boring must be just about infinite.

Still, if boring puts London, Ontario, in the company of places like New York and San Francisco, what company do we keep if we become a Creative City as The London Free Press suggested in another story? Answer: Try Kabul!

Yes, that's right. A few years ago Newsweek featured eight creative cities in a piece looking at The World's New Culture Meccas. Kabul, Afghanistan, made the cut along with Tijuana, Newcastle/Gateshead, Marseilles, Cape Town, Zhongguancun, Antwerp and Austin. The BBC agree that these eight cities are "the world's new culture meccas."

So, if you don't like boredom, don't move to Hamilton like Randy Richmond's dad, move to Kabul. No boredom. Guaranteed.
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This weekend, end of May, 2016, the paper ran another hatchet job on London. This one was penned by Larry Cornies: Safe, average London: Canada's wallflower.

This afternoon I took my six-year-old granddaughter to see the Cirque du Soleil show Toruk: The First Flight at Budweiser Gardens in downtown London. During intermission I had a short chat with a lady taking the seventh inning stretch. I asked her if she had read the Larry Cornies' piece on the city in The London Free Press. He called the city Canada's wallflower, I told her. "Oh," she said and shook her head to indicate "No." She explained, "I don't take the paper. I find it dull and boring."