Papillion - meh

                                                                                                                       

Dear City of Papillion:

I realize that you were voted Best City or whatever a few years ago, but as a resident of your fine city, I would like to point out some ways in which you kind of suck.

1.        I love eating out.  Here’s the problem:  If I want to eat out, and I don’t want to eat shitty fast food or solidly mediocre chain-food, I have to drive to Omaha.  The restaurants in Papillion suck, a lot.  The tax base in Papio is very high, and the people who live here have money to spend.  If they are discerning with that money, they will most certainly drive away from Papillion, because we have no upscale restaurants.  I’m not saying that good restaurants can’t be chains (Bonefish, PF Changs) but the chain restaurants here are total garbage (Texas Roadhouse, Old Chicago, Red Robin).  GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT!!  If people in the city have money, why not let them spend it in the city where they live rather than taking all of that revenue into a neighboring city?  (Stupid.)

2.       Shopping in Papillion is also a joke.  The city opened a massive outdoor mall, and the anchor store is … Hy Vee?!  Don’t get me wrong, I shop at Hy Vee all the time, but that doesn’t mean it should anchor an entire mall.  We seem to have all kinds of room for Walmarts and Targets and Michael’s and other BS, but we can’t secure a high-end store??  Whoever runs the Department of Get Good Stores for the City of Papillion sucks at his or her job.

3.       The police.  Please find some real crime and stop parking your asses at intersections and hiding in clumps of trees.  Isn’t there a meth lab somewhere that you’d like to bust?

4.       Oh, and the industrial construction?  Stop it.  We already look like a western Nebraska  pit stop, and the more one-story, ugly, brown strip malls our city builds, the more we look like a place no one would ever want to live, because it’s depressing (and then we want to drive to a better neighborhood in Omaha…).

Besides all that, carry on.  I’m just saying that we can do a lot better.  Make me want to stay here rather than wanting to go somewhere where interesting, cultural things actually happen.