TREND: KANSAS CITY BOOMERANGING

Long ago they used to call it "failing" or "coming back with your tail between your legs" but "boomeranging" is a much nicer way to describe local natives moving back to Kansas City after urban adventures in bigger, better cities.

Today, Kansas City's Emily Farris is the star of a Salon.com feature on "boomeranging" and her EPIC journey back to where she started.

Remember that TKC profiled the Feed Me KC foodie blog last week. 

Anyhoo . . .

After nine years in Brooklyn, N.Y. the "Midwestern cuisine queen" visited Kansas City and decided this cowtown was a more cosmopolitan place and she could "live like an adult" here.

Check the money quote:

"Three months later, Farris bid adieu to New York and moved back to the city she grew up in, a newly minted member of a migratory group that’s quietly making an impact on cities. Boomerangs — people who move away from a place and then later move back — make up over 37 percent of in-migration to U.S. metro counties, and even more than that in counties that are economically distressed. Many are young-ish people like Farris who moved to places like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, then returned home (often to their own surprise) to launch start-ups, restaurants, furniture stores and fashion lines. (Farris, who worked for websites in Manhattan, got a job in Kansas City running social media for a local coffee roaster, then co-created an online food magazine called feed me kc.)"

It's an interesting trend that could benefit Kansas City in as much as most of this town's efforts are focused on attracting people from other places instead of providing services to locals.

There's a tendency to poke fun at "young people boomeranging back to flyover-country cities to live cheap and chase their dreams" but then I remember that TKC never really aspired to live any other place than my (mom's) basement and watching more talented people bounce around while I mark time in this crappy cowtown is rather interesting.