“My favorite thing to do is still to go back to Peoria, go to my cabin and hunt with the boys. This is a great lifestyle, don't get me wrong. But fun for me is going back with my buddies I grew up with.” StillsFunBoysGrewGrew UpMy FavoriteLifestyleThings To DoHuntsBuddyFavorites ThingsCabinsPeoria Author:Jim Thome
“The reinvention of American culture as purely the self catapulted Las Vegas to prominence. The city took sin and made it choice -- a sometimes ambiguous choice, but choice nonetheless. Combined with a visionary approach to experience that melded Hollywood and Americans' taste for comfort and self-deception, Las Vegas grew into the last American frontier city, as foreign at times as Prague but as quintessential as Peoria. In Las Vegas, you can choose your fantasy; in the rest of America, you don't always get to pick.” MadeSelfSometimesLastsAmericaChoicesCultureSinCitiesFantasyGrewComfortTasteApproachPicksHollywoodMade ItDeceptionFrontiersAmerican CultureVegasLas VegasVisionariesSelf DeceptionAmbiguousReinventionQuintessentialProminencePraguePeoria Author:Hal Rothman
“My adolescence was quite miserable, when I look back on it, at least my early part of my adolescence. Because there was anti-Semitism in Peoria, and I didn't feel that when I was in elementary school.” FeelsLooksSchoolMiserableAdolescenceAnti SemitismElementary SchoolPeoria Author:Betty Friedan
“Caterpillar was quite important because that was the first manufacturing industry that used Reaganite strike-breaking techniques. They illegally called in scabs to break a major strike. It was reported pretty well in the Chicago Tribune, who pointed out something very interesting. They said that the workers got very little support in Peoria when scabs illegally broke the strike, and that was particularly striking because that whole community had been built up by the union - it was a union-based community.” FirstsWellsLittlesSaidImportantWholeUsedCommunityInterestingBreakSupportIndustryMajorsBuiltUnionsWorkersStrikesTechniqueBrokeChicagoThey SaidVery InterestingManufacturingCaterpillarsScabsPeoria Author:Noam Chomsky
“I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world.” WorldHateInfluenceExampleRepublicanI HateSlaverySlaveInjusticeMonstrousBe A SlavePeoria Author:Abraham Lincoln
“[O]ne might ask why, in a galaxy of a few hundred billion stars, the aliens are so intent on coming to Earth at all. It would be as if every vertebrate in North America somehow felt drawn to a particular house in Peoria, Illinois. Are we really that interesting?” IfsMightWould BeEarthAmericaScienceAsksHouseStarsFeltInterestingParticularHundredBillionsAliensGalaxyNorth AmericaIllinoisVertebratesPeoria Author:Seth Shostak
“Always was Morocco. And recently the country's leadership seems to have embraced it in all its ill-reputed glory. The days of predatory poets in search of literary inspiration and young flesh are probably over for good. Hippies can just as easily get their bong riffs in Portland or Peoria. But the good stuff, the real good stuff, the sounds and smells and the look of Tangier -- what you see and hear when you lean out the window and take it all in -- that's here to stay.” LooksRealCountryInspirationSeemsYoungStuffSoundPoetGloryWindowIllSmellFleshHippiePredatoryPortlandMoroccoBongsTangierPeoria Author:Anthony Bourdain
“Through the magic of motion pictures, someone who's never left Peoria knows the softness of a Paris spring, the color of a Nile sunset, the sorts of vegetation one will find along the upper Amazon and that Big Ben has not yet gone digital.” KnowsBigsLeftGoneMagicColorSpringParisSunsetDigitalAmazonSoftnessMotion PicturesVegetationNilePeoria Author:Vincent Canby