What’s a cultural tradition from your country that you love?

America has a lot of cultural traditions. Thanksgiving. Baseball. Fireworks. Getting offended by something on Facebook. But honestly, one of my favorites is American weirdness.

I’m talking about UFO festivals, roadside attractions, giant fiberglass animals, cryptids, bizarre little museums, county fairs, and entire towns that somehow built their identity around one incredibly specific thing.

You can drive across this country and suddenly see a giant chicken, a 30-foot statue of a guy holding a wrench, a museum dedicated to something nobody knew needed a museum, or a sign promising the WORLD’S LARGEST SOMETHING.

And obviously you have to stop.

That’s the rule.

America has always had this weird ability to turn absolutely anything into an attraction. See something strange? Build a parking lot. Put up a sign. Charge five bucks. Congratulations, you now have a tourist destination.

I love that shit.

Give me the weird roadside museum over some polished corporate attraction any day. I want the place that looks like it was built in 1978 and hasn’t changed since. I want the hand-painted sign. I want the gift shop selling questionable souvenirs. I want the local legend that may or may not be complete bullshit.

UFO festivals are great. Cryptid festivals are great. County fairs are great. Giant fiberglass animals are basically American landmarks at this point.

And the best part is that nobody really needs to explain why it exists.

It just does.

That’s the beauty of it.

America is huge, strange, overly confident, slightly broken, and completely willing to put a giant fiberglass squirrel beside a highway and call it an attraction.

Keep doing that.

The world has enough boring shit already.