Howdy all. Today’s post is a short pre-curser to this year’s City Rumble Challenge. City Rumble over the years has seen many cities face off against each other to determine in my mind at least – which is the better destination? Now the challenge is lifting up a gear or two, to determine which city is the ultimate! Of course, it’s all only my personal opinion, and that also means it’s extremely limited to the cities that I have visited in my life.

So what we are now entering, to borrow an American turn of phrase, is the ‘play-offs’. In tennis terms we might call it the ‘Round of 16’. Because now we take the winners from the previous instalments of ‘City Rumble’ and we pit them against each other in an elimination style battle to end all battles.

However, there is one little issue here, and that is previously we have seen a lot of good cities fall by the wayside, because they went head to head with other heavyweights. Off the top of my head I can think of Sydney, Shanghai, and New York City as three that really are brilliant cities and haven’t made it to the round of sixteen. Which to me doesn’t seem quite fair, because I always tried to pair ‘like for like’ cities against each other in the past. So I propose that after the round of sixteen I will try some sort of wild-card entry. I am not exactly sure how that will work at this point. It’s probably going to have something to do with the electoral college. NOT! But I do want to see some of these other cities get a chance because the original rumbles weren’t done on a seeding basis, if you get my drift.

NYC faced off against a city I love – London. Instead of say Tashkent where honestly I would have had a hard time not awarding the win to NYC. There are also a bunch of cities I haven’t ever done city rumbles for, and there are also some who DID win but I couldn’t fit into the round of sixteen. So we will look to those once the round of sixteen is done. Cities to possibly be included that have NEVER featured in a City Rumble include – Los Angeles, Toronto, Washington DC, Tehran, Dakar, Accra, Ouagadougou, Reykjavik, Cologne, Lahore and many more. So you see there are many options. It may mean that we have a whole ‘nother round of 16. Which leaves us with two lists of eight, which then become…. A THIRD round of sixteen.

But I haven’t decided on that as yet. This is a year long competition folks, and there are a lot of cities out there. SO it’s going to be big and it’s going to dominate Thursdays on my blog. The blood of the enemy cities will soak the ground before this is all done!

Also, today gives me the chance to talk about the ‘other’ City Rumbles I have done. Not that many but these are ones that won’t be included in the ongoing competition – that is my fantasy City Rumbles between ancient cities and fictional cities. And some other twists on the idea. Specifically here is what I am talking about!

City Rumble – King’s Landing Versus Winterfell

City Rumble – Tokyo Disneyland Versus Tokyo Disney Sea

Ancient City Rumble – Angkor Versus Bagan

Tower Rumble – Views from Above!

As always, thanks so much for stopping by and look to the first face off next Thursday – London Versus Singapore!