This is letter to anyone who’s wondering, “That place I’ve never heard of, Wichita, Kansas…I wonder if it’s cool?” As a long time resident of Wichita, and frequent visitor and liver of other places, I’m here to tell you the answer is a big “yes.”
So, let’s get started. I like lists. So, here’s my list of reasons why Wichita is actually “That Cool Place You’ve Never Heard Of.”
It’s a place for poor people. I mean this in a very positive way. If you’re bothering to read this, that means you aren’t rich. If you’re not rich, then you’re poor. That’s how it works. I didn’t make the rules. If you don’t own a baseball stadium, entire companies on the NASDAQ, or write the checks for millions of other people, then you are not rich. Congratulations! Wichita is perfect for you!
It’s affordable. You get a lot of house for your buck here. Houses just come with basements here. That doubles your floor plan. Food is also cheap.
Great highway system. You save on gas as you’re not stuck in traffic everywhere (less people live here than OKC, so you just get to where you’re going without the constant waiting or dodging cars).
Plenty of blue collar work. Lot of factories, many of them make airplanes. We got other factories too. People love to make stuff here. Also a lot of people who fix stuff. Lots of stuff getting made and fixed in Wichita.
4. There’s a lot of free things to do with children in town (Wichita Art Museum, PBS Kids, the Library, Cool Parks, the Sunflower App).
There’s a great library system. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I am a total psycho for the library. We always have at least 30 things checked out at once. Often much more than that.
Do you like movies? The library has that. And a lot of them. Blu Ray and DVD. Do you like new movies? They have all those. TV shows too. Oh, and it’s free.
Do you like books? They’ve got all those. All the new ones, and all the old ones.
Do you like audiobooks? They’ve got those too.
You like community? They’ve got tons of events always going on where you can meet other humans who like the cool things you like.
Do you love Amazon? Do you love how you can get on their website, add a bunch of crap to your cart and have it delivered to your house? Well, the library does that too. You can add a bunch of crap (binoculars, telescopes, tablets, Blu Rays, etc.) to your WPL cart and then click to have it delivered to the library closest to your house (there’s 7 in town, so most neighborhoods are a short driving distance from one). This is also free.
There’s a ton more reasons to love the Wichita Public Library system. You can read about it here: https://wichitalibrary.org
Pretty good food scene. Despite what some Wichitans will say, I don’t think we have the best food scene. It’s definitely gotten better, but we don’t have a great Indiana place, Sushi place, or hibachi place. We have places that are good enough in those categories, but I’ve lived in cities that had much better restaurants in those categories. We also don’t have great barbecue, which is a huge downer as I love barbecue. Wichita does have a pretty good pizza scene though. We’ve got Pizza Johns in Derby (the ‘burbs count as part of the metro, guys), Picasso’s in Delano, Piatto downtown, and a few other places that are just okay. George’s is also a hidden gem if you’re looking to celebrate something and want to spend a bunch of money on really good food.
Pretty good coffee scene. We’ve got quite a few roasters, and a couple of pretty hip coffee shops to just hangout in and write or read. My two favorites are LESLIE’S and THE REVERIE. Both on Douglas. They’re basically the opposite side of the same coin. The Reverie is boogie and more pricey. Leslie’s is dirtier and more homely feeling. It also has better prices and the people who work there look like regular people instead of models.
There’s a lot of activities to do. Like most places, you have to pay attention or you’ll miss out. But there are a lot of activities through the City of Wichita itself, through the library, through WAM (Wichita Art Museum) and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t even know about. There’s enough in town to keep you busy if you branch out, talk to people, and then go do the things.
Two major movie theater companies. We used to have this local chain called THE WARREN. It was solid. Expensive (which I don’t like), but pretty good service and quality. It got bought out by Regal, and now kind of sucks, but we do have the AMC out east, and it's a much better corporate movie experience. We also have the Derby Plaza in Derby and the Starlite Drive Inn in town as well. There used to be others but the Warren killed them all before it sold to Regal.
A nice zoo. If you like zoos (and why wouldn’t you?!) we have a pretty solid one. Lot of exhibits to make your way around. They own a lot of undeveloped land, so plenty of space to grow as they acquire more injured and discarded animals from across the globe. It’s also not a private zoo, so there’s no Tiger King stuff going on here (not at Sedgwick County anyways…that other zoo though, this blog can’t vouch for).
A neat down town. It’s broken up into a couple of spots. My favorite is Delano. Like most downtowns with a spot called “Delano” it is the arty district. It’s full of cool shops. It’s home to a cool pizza place, a candy shop, a dessert place, one of the two coffee shops I like, a hat store, a place I like to go to buy shaving soap, and a crappy BBQ place I don’t eat at. There’s other stuff too.
A cool flag. Our town has a flag. It’s pretty cool looking.
Well, that’s it for now. I plan on expanding on the idea of this blogpost in the future. Creating lists that target specific cool things about Wichita, but I thought I’d get the ball rolling with a brief post that just hits the broad strokes of some of what Wichita has to offer, and dispels the myths that those two guys I know in OKC have made up about it.
Wichita! It’s a place you could live in!
Stay tuned for my as yet unwritten post on FREE PLACES TO TAKE YOUR KID IN WICHITA!