Bracketology

As certain as recorded voices telling you exactly what kind of Christmas to have whenever you leave the house, this time of the year also brings predictable wailing/gnashing about the lack of a playoff system in college football. But those of you who pine for the brackets of March, the play-ins between Creighton and Cal State-Pismo Beach, the total cessation of work at work, there is something to tide you over. Two somethings, actually -- Curbed has the Curbed Cup, an NYC neighborhoods tournament, while some folks in Chicago have the Burrito Bracket. As an enterprise, the Curbed Cup could not be more of a troll if it lived under a bridge and wore a pointy hat, but the Burrito Bracket is exactly what it sounds like, an effort to determine the supreme burrito in the Wicker Park area.

I did the bulk of my Chicago burrito eating back when there was still a reasonable chance that a trip to the Rainbo might well include Blackie Onassis suggesting that one of your party join him at his home for a bath, but they appear to have most of my old favorites in the mix. For eating in, in particular Tecalitlan is an excellent choice because of the remarkable ceiling fresco of a night sky. It's like eating in a van, but the classiest van in the world. My rating system was more of an indifference curve -- remarkably, burritos cost roughly the same throughout this neighborhood, but the key variables of a) size and b) perceived likelihood of finding a severed finger in your burrito varied inversely.

I applaud these efforts, but with 16 burritos and 16 neighborhoods, we only have half of a full tournament. We might want to see the matchup between Ft. Greene and La Pasadita, but that's only half of a final four. If we want to have a real battle of incommensurables, we need two more brackets in order to have a real competition for the Feyerabend Trophy. I like corrupt US mayors/African despots for one, but am not sure of the other. I welcome suggestions.
1) Idi Amin
2) Buddy Cianci
2) Charles Taylor
4) Daley, Pere
5) Daley, Fils
6) James Michael Curley
7) Mobutu Sese Seko
8) Abraham Beam
9) Henry Cisneros

10-16 tk, k?

Comments

[addison]

Laurent Kabila
Qadafi?
Frank Shaw
Levy in AC
Doe in Liberia

Nice to see Chonch; too bad R. Bud Dwyer doesn't fit

[alice]

Dude, RI chick here. Cianci one below Amin? Cool. But the "Daileys" deserve proper spelling of their names ("Daly"...sorry...English major and former Chicago habituee and screw-B. Onassis-but-a-Jeff-Tweedy-spotter in me). Great site!

[Fesser]

Fixed -- apologies. As a former Providence Westsider, and Ukranian Village veteran, I should know better. I moved from Chicago to Providence in '98, and swung by a Buddy meet n Greet on Federal Hill -- when I told him I'd moved from Chicago, he immediately informed me that "Mayor Daley was a personal friend."

[Skeen]

Last semester (spring) it just so happened that we read 16 different things so I made a bracket for the students to fill out at the end of the term (to choose a champion). Not as much fun as American mayors/African dictators but still fun.