July 22, 2009
dear clusterflock
What is your favorite city?
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comments:
- Deron Bauman: It’s a start.
- Joel Bernstein: The first of many things, no doubt.
- Deron Bauman: I’ll pick him up at eight. He may not like the way I smell.
- Michael Smith: Joel’s Dream Date: Phantom Menace; Cat urine cologne; Deron.
- Joel Bernstein: For the record, if you pay to see this, you are no longer my friend.
- Deron Bauman: Meow.
- Joel Bernstein: This must be why I fuck so many cats.
- Michael Smith: Seems to me the experiment almost does itself.
- Casey Cichowicz: No. It is not possible. I can assure you.
- Joel Bernstein: Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes?
- LaurenH: I’m with those who say get that girl out of that household. The father has now very effectively...
- Rick Neece: Holee sh..!
- Rick Neece: Asian calligraphy, ‘cept instead of a brush, hot glass. The image of her controlling the glass and...
- Rick Neece: For the gull-wing, I’m sure it would knock me in the chin every time I opened it.
- Marco: Oh god yes.
Vancouver, B.C. (where we call home when we’re not in Texas).
Paris (where I met my wife, as in “We’ll always have…”)
I’m with Chris–I love Vancouver.
Paris for so many reasons, the main one being I took Richie there once. It was perfect.
To visit: London.
To live: maybe Valletta, Malta.
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
London.
I wish I knew.
New. York.
Though I certainly have a lot of the world left to explore. Like, ya know, almost all of it.
Barcelona.
Lisbon to live.
London to visit.
I live in London, and can’t afford to visit Lisbon.
I can’t afford to visit much in London, either.
Vancouver is excellent, but the winters are crappy.
Rome? Rome took me by surprise. I had been loitering in Florence for a couple of weeks, intending every now and again to wander elsewhere (if only Siena) but unable to pull myself away. Finally the day came when I had to depart for Rome in order to meet friends.
I know this sounds so ridiculous and so obvious, but my all-too-brief stay in Rome was straight out of a Fellini film. I loved it. Maybe because Rome was so ridiculous and so obvious.
Well the thing about this question is that the city you visit, where you hit all the hotspots and it looks amazing and you have a great time for 6 days, is always the affair; the marriage being the city you’ve lived in, whose innards you know all too well, with whom you’ve had ups and downs and whose unappealing aspects you have discovered already.
London and New York are pretty level pegging in me at the moment. I am deeply drawn to both. I am currently having an affair with London. Yes, New York knows about this. We are talking.
New York has not thrown any dishes. yet.
But it has pissed on your pillow.
I also love Calcutta. The streets seemed to have all of humanity on them – life and death unfolding before you. A wonderful place in the oddest of ways.
I guess for me again as I have thought about it it continues to return to Texas.
which, you know, is not a city.
Chris, it is a pity that I didn’t know you lived in London. We must meet next time I am there, ok?
So is it Dallas, Deron? That is, you know, a city. Because if we’re talking about place, that is a whole other topic, really. At least, a broader one.
Absolutely!
Lucy, by that wonderful metaphor, I could answer this question like:
I gave my virginity to London back when — scandal! — I was New York’s steady. New York took me back though.
My marriage to San Francisco was arranged by my father. Walking out on New York was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It’s taken time… but I’ve learned to see past my resentment and spite for this city, instead turning my focus to the bright future we’re going to share. Turns out we have a lot in common.
I should mention, I had a brief affair with Barcelona three months into my marriage. It was hot. Hot.
San Francisco and I never speak of it.
I don’t mind the winters in Vancouver so much, not much snow except on the hills where it matters. As for the rain, I’m British, so we’re used to it.
Summers are great. I’m typing this in my mother-in-law’s garden eating an ice-cream sandwich. If I tried doing that in Houston, both I and the ice-cream sandwich would be melting.
I always find it amusing when the objects of people’s affairs are incredibly similar to their spouses. Wait a minute.
sadly, it can’t be Dallas. which returns me to: I have no idea.
Ok but cities are not for everybody. I just love the Irish countryside, for instance. Actually, I love the contrasts between a large city and dense, lush countryside. I’m not much for small or medium sized cities, generally. I mean, to live in. Though I have lived in them.
I know plenty of people who are all for countryside altogether. Or small communities like Marfa, for instance.
If San Cristobal was a city then I’m with Jack. Mexico City is up there. But it would have to be Rome for me. Followed by NYC, only by necessity (i.e. best city if you have to work).
But alas, I’ve never been to London.
I can’t name one, except for where I live, Kansas City. Somehow I took it to heart immediately and it became home. I’ve never been off the continent. Favorites are Chicago, D.C., Minneapolis, Philadelphia, NEW YORK. But I would love to see others. I don’t want to go as a tourist, neccessarily. I would love to spend extended time in Florence or Barcelona or London. I might even choose Tokyo if I had the opportunity and the right companion (y’all know who I’m talking about.) I don’t feel I need to see the sights, though I would, in some minor way. I would like to rise in the morning, find coffee, and sit at the street each morning and watch what happens there as a daily routine.
Well, hmm. I suppose I do love New York; I’m always grateful to come back to it from somewhere else (which is not the same as missing it while I’m away, or being grateful to be home). And none of the other cities I’ve lived in is a favorite—Sacramento (though I like it), Seattle (ick), Berkeley (feh).
The place I’ve always wanted to go live someday, for at least a month though really a year would be more like it, is Rome. I love Florence, too, but Rome is a city. For real. It’s messy and businesslike and history and walkable and touristy and real people live there and, fuck, I haven’t been there since 2000. Do we have any flockers in Rome? Can I come crash on your couch for a week? We need to recruit some Italians to the flock; Deron, could you get on that?
I love Paris, and it’s probably the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to, but it’s not my favorite, because I can’t shake the feeling that it hates me. I will keep going, though; it’s the most masochistic thing I do, probably.
Vancouver is real nice, but it’s not for me. London is real nice, but, fuck, I will never have so much money that I can enjoy being there without feeling twitchy about how much everything costs.
There are so many places I haven’t been. Pittsburgh! It must be great; there are so many cool Internet people there. Chicago! I may go visit in a few weeks, if I can get my plane ticket shit together. Copenhagen! Amsterdam! Edinburgh!
I dunno.
Not to be a snob, but I don’t believe Berkeley is a city. It’s more suburb — sizeable, sure, thanks to the university population — than city.
Sort of related: Last week I came across this perfect set of instructions for anyone interested in dipping their toes in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Copenhagen is also a great city to live in. We lived there for 2 years, and left reluctantly. Had a small but lovely apartment on the harbour where we could see the Little Mermaid (if not for the tourists). I walked into work every day and we cycled everywhere. One of the few capital cities where you can walk from end to end in about 2 hours.
Oh fine. Wikipedia claims it’s a city. Not that that means much… it also refers to Albany, California, as one. I guess what I should’ve said is, I tend to find that if a majority of the population travels away from where they live to get to work, the feel of that town is more suburb than city.
Chicago may be the closest I’ve come to it but I wasn’t there long enough to be certain. And India, yep, I’m on it.
oh, I forgot. I think I would love LA.
Los Angeles, always and forever. I even love the problems, with a steady unconditional love that means “we’re still working on it”. Los Angeles lacks for nothing and has everything. The things most people hate aren’t even locale specific. Traffic? not a thing. (the most lovely lacy spider just crawled lazily along my forearm) Los Angeles has the museums, the smashing local food, the nonsense and the genuine and just everything.
I do find this is a much better city to be in when you really know a lot about who you are as a person, so maybe in 20 years I will truly know what I mean when I say I love it.
I always thought I hated my country and the city I live in. Truth is, I was just spending too much time here.
As I started to travel on a more regular basis, albeit short breaks, I found that my love for where I live increased. I guess most people, if they are lucky get a couple of weeks a year away, sometimes not even abroad. For me this built up a lot of hate/dislike for England and in particular my home city of Bristol and to a lesser extent Bath. Probably that sense of missing out or the grass always being greener.
Being away more has increased my love of here.
Yeah, Copenhagen is a small city. Like Dublin, it’s easily walkable. Did you live on Langelinie Alle, Chris? I used to take some dogs from there to Kastellet, where I would let them off free. Kastellet was one of my favourite places in København. I lived in the city for three and a half years (Islandsbrygge and Nørrebro, mostly).
Things I missed intensely in Copenhagen that I find in large cities like London and New York: diverse vibrant cultural life, activity, English being spoken freely, opportunity, human diversity. It’s hard to specify it. I find London breathtakingly exciting, compelling, complex. Most people I knew in København were mainly interested in their families, everyone was getting pregnant for the first time, some of them occasionally visited Berlin, there wasn’t much hunger, in every sense. There is the homogeneity issue. Yes, there is definitely a quality of contentment in the people who live there. But it lingered a little too close to inertia for my liking. I love people with an adventurous, open, creative spirit, and kind of feel lonely (ok, intensely lonely) when that is not around. I had and continue to have some great friends there, but I saw them so rarely.
Regarding London being expensive: well coming from Ireland, it seems really quite cheap. There’s a hell of a lot more competition, so you can always find cheap possibilities. I wonder if it is as expensive as New York to live there. Most of what I know about London so far is from short trips: you can drop £2 into the National Gallery’s donation sculptures if you feel so moved, versus $20 to get into the Met, via ticket counter. Most museums there are basically free. Theatre tickets are reasonably priced. The exchange rate hits the dollar hard, I think.
But centrally for me, it’s about theatre. Nowhere else comes close.
I’ve got a hopeful plan to visit LA in the next few months, Amanda. Problem is, I don’t drive, and I’ve got a feeling that LA is not a cyclable city. I really have no idea how I will get around.
The final word on CITIES, from Rome of all places: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51IZG6Ryeis
Think of London, a small city
It’s dark, dark in the daytime
The people sleep, sleep in the daytime
If they want to, if they want to
I’m checking them out
I’m checking them out
I got it figured out
I got it figured out
There’s good points and bad points
But it all works out
I’m a little freaked out
Find a city
Find myself a city to live in.
There are a lot of rich people in Birmingham
A lot of ghosts in a lot of houses
Look over there!…A dry ice factory
A good place to get some thinking done
Down el Paso way things get pretty spread out
People got no idea where in the world they are
They go up north and come back south
Still got no idea where in the world they are.
Did I forget to mention, to mention Memphis
Home of Elvis and the ancient greeks
Do I smell? I smell home cooking
It’s only the river, it’s only the river.
Phil, I notice that it is Bath, not Bristol, you have grown fond of!
Oh, and aside from Rick’s mention of Tokyo, you are the only person who mentioned a city (Calcutta) that is not in Europe or North America.
Now the only cities I’ve lived in (you know, rented an apartment, held a job, all that stuff) are in the States: Dallas and Chicago. And Chicago is the clear winner. I may move back there. But I lived there for fifteen years, so it is not tops on the list. Oh, and I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for eight years, but its population of 225,000 or so notwithstanding, I don’t consider it a city. Not really. And lovely though it is, it gets insular after a while.
In the States, here are some candidates:
Los Angeles
Las Vegas (and I am not kidding)
Pittsburgh
Memphis (home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks)
Tucson (I’m iffy on this)
New York should be an obvious inclusion, as it is sure swell to visit, but I have always had the possibly misguided impression that it might not be a place for me to live.
Outside the states, I’ve lived in Saltillo (Coahuila, México) and spent moderately extended stays in London, Paris, and Florence. London and Paris are contenders, most decidedly, but it is Rome that exerts the magical pull.
Athens is a possibility. It’s funny to think that I have not been in Athens since all of the changes associated with the 2004 Olympics. Matter of fact . . . but that’s another story.
Now I think I would also enjoy living in Mérida — the one in the Mexican state of Yucatán. It is a city that feels good to me.
And I think about Buenos Aires from time to time.
Notice that nobody has yet mentioned a German city? I could dig a visit to Berlin, I think, and lately I have come to think that Hamburg might have more going for it than the Reeperbahn, but Germany has never stirred me in an especially positive way. I’ve never even traveled to Germany and have never dreamed of living there. And I don’t speak German.
Tucson is great, not quite a city. Santiago, Chile rocks. I always seem to hit Buenos Aires in recession years, but it still is quite compelling. La Paz Bolivia is great for the lungs but they eat too much starch. No one mentioned Sydney either or Auckland, though my favorite of OZ and NZ is Wellington. And Yogyajakarta Indonesia is seriously cool if you had a reason to live there, that’s always the question…
Hmmmnh. I will ponder Santiago.
Perhaps it is time for me to cross the equator.
Santiago
Under the volcano
Floats like a cushion on the sea
Yet I can never sleep here
Everything ponders in the night
(“Everything Merges with the Night,” Brian Eno. Another Green World.)
Berlin seems cool, so much is talked about it particularly by artist and musician friends of mine, and mainly, it’s dirt cheap. I don’t actually feel drawn to live there either, though. Fantastic to visit. I also don’t have the heart to learn German, and you really need to speak German there.
problem with Santiago is it sits in a pit that fills with smog. But on a clear day it is something to see Acongagua towering over you.
Of all places in South America, Cuzco takes the cake. Livable even. But as much a city as Tucson, so not quite.
African cities, I don’t know… my better half is on her way to Addis Ababa as we speak… Ethiopia is our favorite African country, but I don’t know how to judge it as a city. Better than Nairobi for sure, but not saying much.
Cuzco is just about at my altitude ceiling. Could be interesting.
Down El Paso way
Things get a little spread out
People have no idea
Where in the world they are
I haven’t spent enough time in many cities to say for sure.
No, that’s a cop out. That’s like saying “I haven’t loved enough women to choose one to marry.”
New York and I were friends with benefits for a while, but we both knew nothing could come of it.
Jacksonville was lazy, which is ok day-to-day but I need some adventure sometimes, some spontaneity.
Miami is right out because I know better than to give my heart to a latina.
Orlando’s a whore.
Chicago and I never had a chance, although there could have been something. craigslist.org/mis/ ?
I’m sort of crushing on the idea of somewhere further west. Nowhere particular, just the idea. A red-headed western city with freckles on her thighs and dusty soil on her feet. Maybe I’m looking for the one that I’ll regret leaving, ten years settled into a more sensible and stable city. Or maybe I’ll have to roam.
oh, and DC is too caught up in its own bullshit. Fuck you, DC. More than fuck you DC, fuck your goddamned uptight pretentious neighbors.
Sometimes I dream of Reno. Might she suit you, Dave?
The Met is pay-what-you-will; so’s Natural History. I’m an asshole, so I never pay more than a dollar. But I don’t go to museums much, anywhere, anyway.
I like to go places where I can pretend that I live, and, preferably, where I can pretend that I live at a slightly better standard of living than I have at home. I might feel like a very rich person in Calcutta, but I could certainly never blend in. Ditto anywhere in Asia and most of Africa. I realize it proves me a very small person, but I’ve consequently never had any interest in going. Also, food is an issue. I am a bit particular about it.
Some people thrive on adventure; I thrive on coziness.
I did study German in school for a while, and it’s a useful language to have a familiarity with, but I’ve never had any interest in visiting.
I’d love to go to Buenos Aires. Also, Melbourne, though I didn’t go in the years that my friend Rachel lived there.
[...] same vein as What is your favourite city? But I hope sufficiently different. Rather than ask the question I will tell my story and so the [...]
1. Washington, DC. Met my wife there, so it will always be at the top of the list.
2. Pittsburgh, PA–Lived there for six years. Can’t say I loved every minute of being there, but I do miss it now that I’ve moved away.
3. Chicago, IL–Easy choice, so much to do and see.
4. San Francisco, CA–Ditto.
5. Detroit, MI– A car guy’s town. You just want to cheer for this city. I hope it can make it back from the brink.
[...] our discussion on cities, I got this email from Foad Mardukhi, the contents of which I’ll post below. For those that [...]
Lucy, we lived on Indiakaj overlooking the roundabout with the anchor on it. It was a small apartment but full of light. We’d sit on the balcony with our drying pasta and watch the bikers come down to the ice-cream stand at the end of the harbour.
Kastellet was great, I used to walk through the barracks to get to work. I have some great winter photos of the snow drifting on the ice around Kastellet.
Chris, I used to cycle around that little roundabout every single day in my last year in København. I practically know what apartment you live in.
That icecream stand was only open in the summer, and sometimes I used to sit on the wooden platform around it, and have my lunch. I used to park my bike in the alcove right behind it, just under the bridge overpass, so that it wouldn’t gather snow in the freezing freezing snowy winter. My dog clients lived on the corner of Langelinie Alle, number 3 I think, the one whose entrance faced the roundabout, and where the crown princess lived in the year before she shacked up legally with the prince.
I spent a year cycling between Islandsbrygge (where I lived in A-Huset, the large artist collective that lasted just a few years there and ended up with MTV parties and the place being turned into “warehouse living combined with a 5 star hotel” type apartments) and the other end of the waterfront at Østerbro: Langelinje, Kastellet and Operaen. I loved Kastellet, and if I meet anyone who is planning to visit the city, I suggest they take a couple of laps of it. I watched the sea and the harbour and the changing landscapes for four full seasons, with small rich puppies enthusiastically lepping around my ankles. With them, I didn’t have to speak either Danish or English.