Yes, the
home office of the
Late Show with David Letterman's Top Ten List is a real place. Located about 45 minutes from
Omaha in
Saunders County, Nebraska, the small town's primary claim to fame is, well, being the
home office of the
Late Show Top Ten. However, despite
David Letterman's nightly on-air claim, there is no
Worldwide Pants office in Wahoo, nor do the citizens of the town write the nightly comedy segment. Wahoo became the "home office" after a resident alerted
Letterman to the town's name and asked that the home office be moved to Wahoo. The gap-toothed-funnyman thought the town name was funny and "authorized" the move. However, if
Letterman had known how small, dirty, and depressing Wahoo really is, he might have turned the suggestion down.
I have been to Wahoo. I knew ahead of time that there was no home office located there, but I had no idea that there was also no offices at all located there. Wahoo is not the fun-sounding town it seems to be. The place is run-down, dingy, and basically downright depressing. There are no malls. There are no movie theaters. There are very few franchise restaurants and shops. What does Wahoo have? Farmland, mainly. Also a lot of low income housing for the town's 3,942 residents, a small Main Street in the center of town, and large billboards at the town's borders that proclaim it to be the "Official Home Office of the Late Show with David Letterman!" The town also sells t-shirts and bumper stickers with this same message of pride. Let the record show that when I passed through town in summer 2002, one of the two billboards was falling apart.