Yup, like that! Nashville sounds great, especially the cheap part. I like a good bargain. I used to usher for Bill Graham Presents and this kind of reminds me of a story about The Lord of Dance guy. He refused to let them book him into the Berkeley Community Theater, which was the perfect venue for that type of show, because he wanted "San Francisco" to be on the t-shirts and posters. So they had to put in risers in a flat performance space and the sight lines sucked for the audience because of it.

Anyway, feel free to send me comments on how you'd like to revise the evaluation criteria and I'd be happy to send out RFPs to any city, or forward the RFP to any contact person for a city and they can do it for that area. And I, for one, would definitely take an Oakland over a San Francisco, if you know what I mean, because you get more bang for your buck.

I had a great time. DC is a fabulous city for museum-ing, and I made it my main focus for the week that I was there. There are a few things on my list that I couldn't get to but I came home feeling that I'd seen everything I wanted to see. I visited Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Cassatt, Degas, Diebenkorn, Lichtenstein, de Witt, O'Keefe, etc. many times AIWFG. The little parks were a huge favorite - the butterfly park between Natural History and the East Wing of the National Museum of Art, the Bartholdi Fountain & National Wildlife Federation garden, the Japanese Memorial around the corner from the hotel, the Sculpture Garden with the fountain/rink in the middle and the elms! Wow! There were so many big trees, especially lots of big elms, all over the National Mall, and birds singing everywhere. It was marvelous.

I'd like to do more photography next year too, only with a better understanding of the camera. I spent the entire prom outside taking people's pictures AIWFG.

The night head security guy was fun to schmooze with, actually, too. They must have a camera up there somewhere given the speed with which he arrived when Someone Partying Very Hard had an incident. smonster & amyth, I did not know until the moment you left that you were planning to take the recycling back with you. Wahh!! Had I known, you would've had several giant bags.

eta: Austin! Yeah! Places like that. I wouldn't even rule out Detroit. It's fairly depressed, yes? There might be some fab luxury hotel at which we could do nothing but lounge around for the same price as a Chicago.

I like the idea of a less destinationy city, like Nashville,

Heh. This I could totally help out on, actually being from Tennessee and all.

Nashville sounds kind of cool.

Nashville will be hot and very humid by the end of May, won't it? May as well stick with New Orleans in that case.

Oh, what do I care? I'll pretty much go anywhere, and if it's close to New Orleans I'll just tack on a few days at the beginning or end to go there.

Nashville is actually extremely cool, cheap and easy to navigate. Huge mall, for the Buffista Saturday Shopping Extravaganza, at Opryland.

There's a couple convention centers and a lot of hotels, and downtown is metro enough that we can have pretty much all the benefits we had in DC--except for one huge glaring error. Not much in the way of public transportation. Next year I'll probably have access to a car, so I can be all localista and take people around, but I'm like the only one in that area, so. Not particularly convenient, though restaurants are in walking distance, and the Country Hall of Fame would make for a great day excursion.

Cleveland, right on the lake; Pittsburgh really is a drop-dead gorgeous city; I'd love to go back to Santa Fe again but really, Albequerque is the cheaper place to go; Phoenix in March is fabulous - no, really; toss out the ideas, folks!

Cars are pretty cheap to rent, like ~$130 for a week, so it balances out if you have to rent a car but save money on a hotel.

The Metro was awesome. If/when I go back to DC for another round of museuming, I won't rent a car at all, I'll stay someplace in easy walking distance of a Metro station in Virginia and take the Metro everywhere.

Nilly, if you are reading, I highly recommend that you make a stop in DC if you are at all able to take the time. The museums are incredible, and for the most part are free. All the Smithsonian museums are, and there are alot of them.

I think it's important to have someone on the ground who can check out hotels, know where food, booze, and other stuff is, maybe drive people places, that sort of thing. But I don't know how many of those people we have in Midwestern cities, especially the smaller ones, let alone people who can be that point person (especially if they're the only one in town).

So, for me, at least, I'm not really comfortable suggesting/volunteering cities-not-mine.

DebetEsse, insent tomorrow. Home now.

That info can be gleaned, though, from guidebooks like Lonely Planet or Moon or whatever. Also, I'd be surprised if it got exposure to the whole group if every mid-level city doesn't have a Buffista who knows something about it.

I think it's important to have someone on the ground who can check out hotels, know where food, booze, and other stuff is, maybe drive people places, that sort of thing.

In Chicago the planner was Erin who had never been there. We had several present and former locals with knowledge, but the bulk of our transportation was public.