Washington D.C.

I love life in Kansas City- under one condition. It’s essential that I leave several times a year.

When asked why I'm still here, I inform skeptical friends that I live like a king, while I’d struggle to make ends meet in a city like New York. My life is relatively simple and hassle-free. And there’s enough cultural and economic activity to allow plentiful entertainment and employment options.

Even so, living in Kansas City can be stifling.

I just returned from five days in Washington D.C. Landing at Reagan airport was just like the scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy’s world goes from sepia to technicolor. The capital is overflowing with vitality. It offers extraordinarily bountiful riches and an expansive sense of purpose on every block. Urbane, cosmopolitan and global, it’s worlds away from Kansas City.

Still, Washington doesn’t bother to conceal its sense of entitlement. The city abounds in snide, smug people blinded by their mean aspirations. Surprisingly, it's not just the seersucker suit set that's aggressively unpleasant. An unsavory spitefulness pervades the city like a toxic fog. The disenfranchised majority are cold and indifferent, a sad result of the elites' abuse. The ambition necessary to succeed infects its populace with avarice and spite.

Be it ever so drab and provincial, there’s no place like the warm and gentle home of Kansas City. Now about this next trip to Los Angeles...