Americans lose their minds over London. They’re obsessed with it. More than twenty percent of the Ted Lasso fervor came from the “biscuits” and the cobblestone streets. Americans love London. It’s Mom’s house, after all.
Americans, however, do not like tea. This goes back a long way. Remember 1773? Bunch of dudes in Massachusetts took all the tea off a boat and threw it in the harbor. Said, “Get this shit out of my face,” then got that shit out of their face. They wanted coffee. They got coffee, via Dunkin’. Now, Dunkin’s tea sucks. It’s terrible. It tastes like someone scooped a little water out of a backed-up urinal. As I was reminded last weekend in the fifth (fourth, there is no fourth because the fourth is named the fifth) terminal at O’Hare.
Because Americans hate tea, and because the fifth terminal at O’Hare is a strange liminal passageway through which you must journey to leave the country directly from Illinois, there is nowhere to purchase tea behind security if you are flying Southwest from O’Hare to Austin. There isn’t a Starbucks. There isn’t a little independent coffee shop. I don’t think there’s even a Great American Bagel, or something of that ilk. There is only Dunkin’, and as I was reminded—trying to wake myself up and perk up my mood before the flight without fully saturating my bloodstream with another cup of coffee—Dunkin’s tea is disgusting.
This isn’t a complaint about Dunkin’. This isn’t even a complaint about America. I’m not complaining. I chose to drink tea, this is my lot. But I do think it’s disingenuous that Americans like everything about London except the thing that defines midafternoon there. Feels selective, to me.
London is the best city I have ever visited. It’s a hidden gem — Americans don’t talk about it en0ugh.