I want to tell you about my hometown
It's a dusty old jewel in the South Puget Sound
Well the factories churn and the timber's all cut down
And life goes by slow in Tacoma
...
People who built it they loved it like I do
There was hope in the train yard of something inspired
Once was I on it, but it's been painted shut
I found passion for life in Tacoma

-Stanzas from "Thrice All American" by Neko Case

I grew up in the rust belt, whose name tells you a bit about how we're supposed to feel about it. From the outside, my hometown is a bit like the Tacoma Neko Case sings about (except that most of the factories stopped churning a while ago): tired, peripheral, dirty, a little bit violent. But I love it, and the worse things got in the recession and the more trash-talking outsiders do about it, the more I keep on loving it. There's something about home that grips some of us and compels us to defend the honor of our hometowns, even as we recognize the shortcomings and failings of the places we love.

There are a lot of dusty old jewels in North America, and as a student of cultural geography, I'm interested in the ways people proclaim their pride in hometowns that seem less than attractive from the outside, places like Tacoma or Buffalo or Lemmon, South Dakota. Songs like Case's aren't an attempt to improve the city; they aren't trying to convince people to move to town. Instead, they're statements of identity and a kind of pride that take different forms in different places but which are always tied in these examples to a sense of place. It seems to be a strategy for "winning while losing," to adapt a concept from Shaul Cohen (2007). When we sing songs like "Thrice All American," we insist that even if our hometowns aren't (and never will be) LA or NYC, they still matter--and so do we, damn it.

My hope for this project is that people all over North America (maybe you!) will contribute markers for the dusty old jewels in their lives. What songs, books, poems, videos, paintings, or photographs demonstrate the pride or affection you feel for a tired and used-up old place? As you can see from the map, this is a young project, but I hope we can fill it with stories about places that so often go untold by the producers of mainstream culture. If you've got a story to share, please contribute!

For practical reasons, I'm currently limiting the map to North America, but if you've got stories about places in other parts of the world, drop me a line through the submission form and we can chat.

Reference
Cohen, S. "Winning while Losing: The Apprentice Boys of Derry walk their beat." Political Geography 26(8): 951-967.

I made this map and started collecting points for it when I was an MA student at the University of Oregon in 2013. It sat around collecting dust for a few years, and in 2017, I rebuilt it on the latest version of the Google Maps API. Many of the links are showing their age; please forgive me and feel free to drop me a line at ejslager@uw.edu if you notice anything broken.

If you'd like to suggest a place to be added to the map, and I hope you do, please use the submission form. I tend to favor homemade and unpolished artifacts over things like professional music videos, but I'll try to add most things that get submitted.