Max Schieble on: Sister Cities

I don't care much for sister cities. It's not even so much the cities themselves as it is the whole concept. "Wait, Max, what is a sister city?" Well, reader, "sister cities" is a term denoting two cities that have reached some sort of agreement or cooperation because they share similar geographical or cultural aspects. It's a very vague concept, really.

Take, for instance, my hometown of Sausalito, California. Apparently, Sausalito is siblings with the city of Sakaide, Kagawa, Japan. Why? Well, let me tell you that there is absolutely no reason why. These two cities have nothing in common. And I don't mean that, yeah, they're kind of similar, but also a little different. No. These cities are nothing alike. The populations differ by nearly 50,000, the total area, in addition to one city favoring the metric system and one using the, um, other system, differs by over thirty miles, and on top of all that one has a much more informative Wikipedia page than the other. And those are just the logistical comparisons. You know what else the two don't have in common? Culture. What shock I experienced in learning that a small town in America and a fairly bigger town in Japan do not share any similar cultural aspects. Imagine that.

Really the only connection between the two is that Sausalito constantly receives a heavy flow of Japanese tourists. That's it. Well that, and the fact that they're both located near some body of water. If that's all it takes though, why stop there? I say we create a family of all cities that reside near water. Yeah. Yeah! That would be something. And maybe another family of all cities that are near land.

Another foolish aspect of the whole sister cities thing is evidenced in the sisterhood of Toledo, Ohio and Toledo, Spain. What family do you know that gives two sisters the same name? Yeah, that's what I thought.

There's just no reason that I can find for these cities to be related. It's not like they ever get together for family dinners, or for holidays. Sausalito never goes over to Sakaide, Kagawa for Christmas, or for Sakaide's birthday. That would be cool though. That I could get along with.

And just who are the parents in this worthless game of house? Exactly who is the mother? England? I don't think any British ever sailed over to, and usurped, an already inhabited Japan. No, I'm pretty sure that never happened.

Well, that's about it. I really don't like this sister cities thing. You know what I do like though? T-shirts with pockets, sometimes referred to as pocket tees. I would like to tell you that from now on I'm going to be wearing exclusively pocket tees, but in actuality I imagine that it will be more of a 70-30 type ratio, with pocket tees being worn 70% of the time.