In an actual Weird city

In an actual Weird city, the city slogan is not “Keep Lexingville Weird”. The city slogan is “Keep Lexingville Belgian”. The Belgian national day on July 21st is celebrated excessively. Traditional Belgian foods are sold in the streets. New streets are named after famous belgians, and the children are given Belgian names in Belgian class in school. On the evening of Eurovision, or during the World Cup, the whole town grinds to a halt to cheer for the Belgian team. It’s more Belgian than anywhere in actual Belgium. That is real Weird.

In an actual weird city, children’s birthdays are sacred. Children can obtain access to a certain Birthday Room in the city hall, where there is cake and festivities. If they are one day too early or too late they are not be be admitted. Then it is their not-birthday, and they are not welcome.

When tourists arrive in the city, they are appointed a Friend who follows them for a couple of blocks and says that it’s been waaay too long since they met and it’s so great but then becomes distant and looks down on his phone and says it’s been nice but gotta go. 

In an actual weird city, Festivus a la Seinfeld is traditionally celebrated on the 23rd of December since 1996. A large metal pole is placed in the central square and the populace is invited to stand by it in order to air their grievances. 

In an actual weird city, there are four mayors. One for each race. There is white mayor Jenny, there’s black mayor Jim, hispanic mayor Marco, and asian mayor Lisa. They show up on randomly selected children’s birthdays to sing. They also solve crimes together. 

“We’ve been here for three days now,'' says one tourist. “It’s really beautiful and all, and the weather’s been good, but I don’t think they’re really used to visitors here. We wanted to have a cup of coffee so we asked a man on the street. What he did was to offer us french fries with mayonnaise that he was eating from a paper cone. Disgusting. In the end, he pointed us to a place that said ‘café’, but inside there were no furniture, just white walls and a woman reading a large Russian novel behind a massive dark Harvard desk. When we pointed out that the sign said ‘café’ and asked where we could order a cappuccino she took us through a door in the back and led us through what seemed to be her private apartment. There were kids playing on the floor in one room. On the walls there were hanging pictures of what seemed like some kind of off-brand power rangers team, They were sporting multicolored uniforms. There was a white woman, a black man, a latino man, and an asian woman too. Finally we came out in a backyard that was absolutely packed with people. We couldn’t even get a table but had to lean against a window ledge. A teenager tried to sell us lottery tickets to win a trip to Brussels and a night out with Guy Verhofstadt. He leaned in between us and was about to light up a cigarette! My husband had to politely but firmly grip him about the shoulders and shove him back into the crowd.”