The next hot outdoors town could pop up in a state where you’d least expect it.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

This April, I found myself biking alongside Tommy Battle, the mayor of Huntsville, Alabama. My previous knowledge of Battle was limited to the fact that in 2018 he had urged his city to spend $125,000 to defend a cop who shot a suicidal man within 11 seconds of entering the man’s home. Battle also tried to refuse to release the body-camera footage from the scene, even after the officer had been convicted of murder by a jury and sentenced to 25 years in prison. This hasn’t hurt Battle’s standing in the eyes of Huntsville voters, however. In 2024 he ran for his fifth term unopposed .

As a New Yorker who has been forced to defend the phrase Defund the Police