61–70 of 313 posts
I think Paul's right here, but there is one point that always irks me when he's talking about location: It comes off as assuming that the singular goal of your life is to start a successful startup and that having a successful startup makes you a great person. While we're throwing out city memes, here's what I'd peg my beloved Berlin: Break the rules.
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I think you are missing his point, as he said " beneath this layer, every city is made up of normal people". The judgments you are making on those particular areas are relative to the individuals you are associating with.
yes, that's very nice but does nothing to refute Cambridge as the intellectual capital of the world.
That is, people who come there(and many different people do, the turnover is high) also tote along some baggage of what they think the city is about. Vision meets and gradually becomes reality as the newcomers act out their desires, to varying degrees of success. So there is a sort of flow at work. Realization of all the various lifestyles present is a multi-decade process. Plus it changes quickly and incrementally, so as to become nearly unrecognizable. I'm still nowhere near a full comprehension of my hometown.
The broad strokes pg paints in this essay seem more reminiscent of college lifestyle than the character of entire cities. A four-year college is able to concentrate those kinds of ambitions precisely: everyone is at roughly the same few stages of life and so can quickly find common ground.
But in a city, things quickly collide.
PG fails to mention that Cambridge (and Sommerville, the emerging hipster/cheaper alternative) is like an island in the middle of a puritan city. Boston, in large, give the message of "old money rules". Where you were born, where is your summer house (Martha Vineyard, Cape Cod, or Maine?), seems to the most important thing. And coorporates rule, so you have to play by their game: meaning you have to be one of them, i…
I wish the spirit of Boston were anything so romantic as "old money rules." Actually there are hardly any of those people left. The Thurston Howells have all died, and their trustafarian kids have long since moved to Berkeley or Boulder. Except for Cambridge, Boston doesn't send any message at all that I can pick up.
I've noticed messages as well: Gary, IN: Lock the doors. Do not stop. Macon, GA: You know, Atlanta is just up the road, right? Elko, NV: The only winners are the house and the mine owners. Milwaukee, WI: Fourth place is just fine, given enough beer. Clearly, I need to hang out in better cities.
I have, and here's what they've said to me:
Pittsburgh: You should be nice.
New Jersey: You should be in New York.
Los Angeles: You should go outside.
Phoenix: You should go inside.
Detroit: You should be glad you have a good job.
Tampa: You should buy a new pair of flip flops for dinner Saturday night.
"Hipness is another thing you wouldn't have seen on the list 100 years ago. Or wouldn't you?" Being picky about the grammar here, but shouldn't it be 'Or would you?' ?
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Not everyone is just busy. The place turns some people into monsters.
The values of New York come from Wall Street, which sets the tone for the rest of industry there. The attitude that everything has its price is responsible for the bad reputation that New York and New Yorkers have in the rest of the country. If you live in New York, in some sense you aren't a citizen of the United States: your residency means that you have a passport to enter the "real" United States. Another thing a…
And I can't really say that Science and Oakland go together all that way in my mind either.
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yes, that's very nice but does nothing to refute Cambridge as the intellectual capital of the world.
It does because the parents entire message was that for the most part, every city is made up of the same ingredients and you cannot dub the city the intellectual capital of the world based on a small subset of experiences with a select group of people. If your entire experience with the city of Cambridge is surrounded with individuals involved in academia, then it would be easy to come to such a conclusion. Having a…
It is nearly impossible because humanity is more complex than being reduced to the experiences of one person, but if someone was holding a gun to your head and saying you had to name the world's intellectual capital, what would you name it? There really doesn't seem to be a better one than Cambridge.
I've noticed messages as well: Gary, IN: Lock the doors. Do not stop. Macon, GA: You know, Atlanta is just up the road, right? Elko, NV: The only winners are the house and the mine owners. Milwaukee, WI: Fourth place is just fine, given enough beer. Clearly, I need to hang out in better cities.
"your best best is probably to try living in several places when you're young" I have, and here's what they've said to me: Pittsburgh: You should be nice. New Jersey: You should be in New York. Los Angeles: You should go outside. Phoenix: You should go inside. Detroit: You should be glad you have a good job. Tampa: You should buy a new pair of flip flops for dinner Saturday night.
Sydney: You should spend more money on real estate.
Melbourne: You should spend more money on clothes.
London: You should have been here 150 years ago.
Davis, CA: You should leave Davis, CA.
I think the biggest shift in deciding where to live is happening "online" rather than "offline". I am an online nomad. I never lived and never will live in MySpace. I do not like the MySpacians message (Hey lets try to see who has more friends and hookups). I sometimes spend time at Facebook. I lived there for a little while until I realized I am not so much into keeping in touch and I had no friends in the few hours…
Me too.
Nice observation, the virtual city. The result of choice, not circumstance.