Read Breaking Copy, a copywriting blog by Daryl Lang, the writer of History Eraser Button

I’m not about to dis Cleveland. It’s the city where my dad was born and several of my relatives still live. That said, I’m not weeping over LeBron James’s choice to abandon his hometown for a bigger market and more money. King James is exactly right to go to Miami.

In America, we are all free agents. We can move from city to city, and if one city offers more appeal than another, we should go there. It’s how many of my friends and I ended up in New York. It’s good economics; theoretically a mobile workforce should mean higher employment and better pay for workers, since people are empowered to seek out jobs anywhere.

But what about the small city that gets abandoned by its best people, who are lured away like moths to bright lights? How is that fair? Doesn’t a hero owe his hometown some loyalty?

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I hope you enjoyed your 4th of July weekend! I took Friday off, and had today off as a holiday, granting me a 4-day staycation here in Brooklyn. However, my weekend was disrupted somewhat by some scheduled dental surgery; I had my final two wisdom teeth extracted Friday. This wiped Friday off the map and made Saturday and Sunday an odd muddle of World Cup soccer, barbecues, beer, good times with friends and suffering from mouth pain.

Today, however, I’m feeling mostly recovered. I planned to spend the full day for a long bike ride. Unfortunately, once I woke up, I couldn’t muster the motivation to spend a full day outside in this heat. (It hit 98 today in Central Park.) Instead I rode a loop out to Coney Island and back.

On today’s bike ride, I used a free mobile application called InstaMapper to track my route on a map. I’ve tried InstaMapper before with limited success; the GPS on my Blackberry isn’t always reliable, and the program itself seemed to shut itself down randomly. Today, however, it worked brilliantly. Assuming it’s all still working, you can see an interactive map below showing my ride with pretty good precision. I find this kind of thing amazing.
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