Every lonely city, where I hang my hat.

March 8, 2022 1:50 AM

Two years ago, comedian Peter Kay proposed a social media public public dance craze in medical and other worksplaces and also some other surprising venues, for the song called Amarillo. Tagged everywhere with #BigNightInAmarillo [All links to youtube and twitter videos.]
posted by eotvos (19 comments total)

(Is that really how people in Amarillo pronounce Amarillo? I guess it's no weirder than Leicester. But, it's really weird.)
posted by eotvos at 1:51 AM on March 8, 2022

Do you remember flash mobs?
posted by howfar at 3:30 AM on March 8, 2022

Do you remember flash mobs?
I believe that I saw an email about breakroom flash mob bananas....
posted by mightshould at 3:37 AM on March 8, 2022

Journey back to 2005
posted by parmanparman at 6:11 AM on March 8, 2022

eotvos, I'm genuinely perplexed: how else would someone pronounce Amarillo?
posted by mochapickle at 6:13 AM on March 8, 2022

I mean, besides the spanish pronounciation for yellow, like AMMA-RIO?
posted by mochapickle at 6:15 AM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Yeah, mochapickle has what I'd always assumed. (I might write it as something like ah-mahr-EE-yo, 'cause the As are also surprising. (To be clear, you can pronounce the name of your city any way you like. I'm not objecting. Just surprised.)
posted by eotvos at 6:50 AM on March 8, 2022

Is that really how people in Amarillo pronounce Amarillo?

The question you should really be asking is whether that's how people in Doncaster pronounce Amarillo. That's where Tony Christie, who had a 1971 UK hit version with the song was born, and it's his version Kay and everyone else has copied ever since. Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield (both born in Brooklyn), who wrote the song, must have had a the same pronunciation in mind, or why else would they have used it as a rhyme for "pillow"?
posted by Paul Slade at 7:22 AM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

The US South is full is a place full of many language traditions, most of which seem to have been aggressively flattened since the time of Andrew Jackson. but the linguistic diversity seems to survive in the town names, which usually have unique pronunciations that have been transliterated through a couple of different colonial language efforts
posted by eustatic at 7:31 AM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Lost my wife and a girlfriend somewhere along the way...
posted by Reverend John at 7:35 AM on March 8, 2022

I live in Texas and yes, it is pronounced the way it is in the song. I don't recommend going there. Flat, windy, and full of nonmasking people. If any of y'all live in Amarillo, I have some friends that live there in that godforsaken red area. They could use some non-trumpist friends. Glad some people are getting some fun activity from the song though.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 8:56 AM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

A surprisingly small number of Spanish-named cities in the US are pronounced the Spanish way, or the way that they would be pronounced in their native language.

Amarillo's not special (in any way), other than it used to have an eccentric (millionaire) who put up a bunch of silly street signs around the city, which was kind of fun.

But I think they are all gone now.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:27 AM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Same goes for French street names. I'm a Brit, and so was the friend I once visited New Orleans with. We were trying to find our hotel in Chartres Street, and relied on our old schoolboy French to ask a succession of baffled natives where "Shah-truh" street was. Finally we found one who cottoned on and said "Oh, you mean Charters!".

[We were the ones in the wrong, of course. The ultimate authority on how to pronounce a street or town name must always be the people who live there.]
posted by Paul Slade at 10:14 AM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Wow, The_Vegetables. That's fascinating. I've heard enough Spanish speakers pronounce Nahuatl and Mayan words in astonishing ways that I realize it happens everywhere. (I don't speak either language. But, I know enough to recognize when they're pronounced very unusually.) That's great fun. (Don't get me started on Wisconsin or upstate New York w/r/t French.)

Also, sorry to derail the conversation with my first comment. And the street sings are also neat.
posted by eotvos at 10:52 AM on March 8, 2022

When I lived in Amarillo in the 80s, I knew numerous people who knew Stanley Marsh and his family. He was an interesting, eccentric local personality and art lover... and then became very disreputable shortly before his death as numerous allegations of sexual assault of teen boys came to light.

Amarillo is deeply conservative, but as is surprisingly frequent in such cities, it had an intense counter-culture underground. I encountered my first communist zine there. It was also the first time I visited a gay bar.

In the late 90s, there was a widely publicized murder and trial — after an altercation, a redneck in a pickup truck ran down and over, and back over, a punk kid in a parking lot. My sister was a bystander and she actually held the kid in her arms as he died. She says the ambulance took more than ten minutes to get there; the official account says it wasn't that long. The murderer was found guilty of vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to only ten years probation.

Amarillo is a land of horrifying contrasts.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:20 AM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

it had an intense counter-culture underground.

I only know Amarillo via passing though on I40, but their independent radio station for West Texas A&M in Canyon is exceptional, far better than any other major city on that route,so I can believe it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:44 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

For all the Amarillo bashing I have to chime in and say that in 1988 after a long day driving from Denver we had a great night in Amarillo.

We rolled in around 9pm, the HoJo motel was having a 1888-1988 celebration (don't know why) but rooms were only $18.88. Bonus! Desk clerk recommended that we go to J Christopher's for dinner. We arrived just before closing time. "Where are ya from?" "Canada" we replied. "Come on in!" They stayed open for us and we were the only ones there. Good food great service.

So fond memories of Amarillo. (San Antonio, not so much)
posted by Zedcaster at 8:21 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

“Desk clerk recommended that we go to J Christopher's for dinner.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on....

So, that was the first restaurant I ever waited tables at. I was 21. But I'm 99.99% certain that you were there in 1985 or 1986 because that restaurant opened in 1985 and closed in 1986. It was a cajun-themed menu, right? Were there fresh oysters shucked at the bar when you were there? That would place it earlier or later in its existence, depending.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:20 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

This thread wonderfully combines my loves of earnest British people dancing (or a reasonable approximation thereof) and America's more remote and idiosyncratic cities. I remember finally reaching Amarillo on a cross-country drive years ago -- miles and miles of the dark staked plains and suddenly there it was, complete with unexpectedly good sushi restaurant, completely improbably there. Makes a person want to dance.
posted by SandCounty at 7:46 PM on March 10, 2022 [2 favorites]