I have some things for both cities to keep in mind.

I visited St. Louis (again) over the weekend and I think it's a bit natural to compare a new place to the place you live. I have some thoughts that you might be interested in.

St. Louis preserves its architecture and Lubbock does not.

Let's keep in mind that St. Louis is about 100 years older than Lubbock, 1764 compared to 1851. St. Louis has amazing carved-stone facades on many of its buildings and you feel a real sense of history. Lubbock tends to think of an old building as an old building and just tears it down and builds a new one. St. Louis also has a lot of old residential buildings that probably should be torn down. Still, I give the edge to St. Louis.

St. Louis and Lubbock traffic are pretty evenly matched.

St. Louis has about 50,000 more people than Lubbock, but the roads and amount of traffic were incredibly similar to Lubbock. I would say that their metro rail is doing a pretty good job of keeping the highways reasonable. On the other hand, St. Louis highways have tons of litter on them.

It's awesome St. Louis has planned for the future and present with the rail system, but I kind of think you should take care of what you have, so I give Lubbock a slight edge.

St. Louis and Lubbock both have awful crime rates.

I don't want to weigh this topic down with stats, but both cities have a disproportionate amount of crime for the amount of population. St. Louis has countered this a bit by having security around tourist areas while we just hope it will go away in Lubbock. I'm calling this one dead even.

St. Louis seems to be more interested in tourism.

Think about this, Lubbock has Buddy Holly and St. Louis has the blues. Both have museums in their respective towns. St. Louis has the Arch and Lubbock has the...uh, well, nothing.

I would put Buddy Holly way above the Arch myself, but it's the merchandise of each of our things that makes the difference. There are relatively few places that market Buddy Holly, but the Arch is everywhere. I even bought chocolate with an Arch on it. More importantly, when it comes to tourism, the big convention place is surrounded by hotels, which are surrounded by restaurants, which are surrounded by shopping. Meanwhile, Lubbock is spread out all over.

The verdict on this one is that Lubbock should be winning, but we are not. (I give Buddy Holly massive points over the Arch.)

The difference between St. Louis people and Lubbock people.

I have to put this in here to help out a few of you who've never left the area. St. Louis people are just as nice as Lubbock people, who are also just as nice as California people. People all over are good. We're good, they're good and it's all good. Don't be afraid to get out and meet some nice folks.