"an expensive, grubby place wth bad weather"

[randomness]

From Cities and Ambition:

Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.

The surprising thing is how different these messages can be. New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer.

What I like about Boston (or rather Cambridge) is that the message there is: you should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you've been meaning to.

I'd always imagined Berkeley would be the ideal place—that it would basically be Cambridge with good weather. But when I finally tried living there a couple years ago, it turned out not to be. The message Berkeley sends is: you should live better. Life in Berkeley is very civilized. It's probably the place in America where someone from Northern Europe would feel most at home. But it's not humming with ambition.

In retrospect it shouldn't have been surprising that a place so pleasant would attract people interested above all in quality of life. Cambridge with good weather, it turns out, is not Cambridge. The people you find in Cambridge are not there by accident. You have to make sacrifices to live there. It's expensive and somewhat grubby, and the weather's often bad. So the kind of people you find in Cambridge are the kind of people who want to live where the smartest people are, even if that means living in an expensive, grubby place with bad weather.

And from footnote [3]: How many times have you read about startup founders who continued to live inexpensively as their companies took off? Who continued to dress in jeans and t-shirts, to drive the old car they had in grad school, and so on? If you did that in New York, people would treat you like shit. If you walk into a fancy restaurant in San Francisco wearing a jeans and a t-shirt, they're nice to you; who knows who you might be? Not in New York.

One sign of a city's potential as a technology center is the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. According to Zagat's there are none in San Francisco, LA, Boston, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York, and 20 in Paris.

(Also, the comments are amusing, particularly for the one-line descriptions of places.)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And Moscow's all about being hungry?

I don't think I was in Seoul long enough to judge.

[bryant]

That was me, about Moscow and Seoul.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I suspect Moscow's more about being crooked and well-connected. :)

[bryant]

Yeah, but what's the motivation behind those goals? Getting more X (where X is the object of your desire) takes primacy over the rule of law.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Money.

Moscow (at least, for the ambitious) is all about making lots of money by being well-connected, it being understood this will require cutting (quite) a few corners.

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's exactly what I adore and miss most about Cambridge. Put much better than I could have managed.

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

This was interesting, actually, but then at the end I got rubbed all the wrong way be his comments on Berkeley. I mean, the thing I've decided about Berkeley is that it isn't really a city. It's two cities, Oakland and the Berkeley Hills, and in between them is a college campus with a largely self-contained community. I'm not sure which he's talking about; I think it's the hills. Berkeley the entity is therefore a little schizophrenic (joke totally intended.) It's like you smushed Scarsdale and New Haven together, and then Scarsdale sort of tried to respect New Haven and listen to its values, with limited success. I think what I'm trying to say here is that his summary is too simplistic.

Also, he describes Cambridge as expensive, grubby, and with bad weather, but only one of those things is different from Berkeley. I think he overestimates the ease of living in Berkeley and underestimates the ease of living in Cambridge. Sure, we have nice weather here, but we also have insane people regularly accosting you on the street and violent crime a block from campus. I mean, I like Berkeley, but it's not *that* easy. And I like Cambridge, but if you have the money to live in Cambridge in the first place (unless you're doing it in the rough parts), acting like living in Cambridge is some sort of character-forming hardship is a little... near-sighted.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Sure, we have nice weather here, but we also have insane people regularly accosting you on the street and violent crime a block from campus.

This isn't different from Cambridge, other than the "nice weather" bit.

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

Sure; my point was not that Berkeley is, liek, totally worse dude, but that the two cities are much more comparable in terms of ease-of-living than the author was suggesting. We're not some hippy paradise where everything is peaceful and, as the author puts it "civilized."

That said, I will say that after living in both places, the violent crime risk around here strikes me as comparable but the "crazy people accosting you on the street" factor is meaningfully worse.

[bwilder.livejournal.com]

A symptom of the better weather, no doubt. :)

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah, Berkeley is almost certainly a more homeless-person-friendly place from a weather point of view. But it's also that Berkeley has an unusually permissive attitude toward people that many cities make an active effort to keep out of sight and away from people. I don't actually disapprove of this from a policy standpoint, but it is annoying and occasionally frightening from a living experience standpoint.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I mean, there's Camberville the place where we all lived, and then there's all the rest of it: Sullivan Square, that nasty bit of Cambridge (Area 4?), and that industrial bit along the McGrath. None of it is what he's talking about.

Similarly--and I think you make reference to it--South Berkeley, down past Ashby BART, starts to look a lot like Oakland. (For that matter, the bits of Oakland up in the hills start to look like the Berkeley Hills.)

I think in both cases he's talking about the people and places the ambitious professionals might live in, so I suspect he's comparing Camberville with the Berkeley Hills.

[jicama]

I suppose technically this doesn't count as "requiring" a jacket, but as far as Seattle restaurants go there's this one near my parents' house:

http://www.canlis.com/about/

Attire
Canlis is a dressy, fine dining restaurant. Men will feel comfortable in a suit or sport coat -- though we strongly encourage them, they are not required for all areas of the dining room. Casual attire (jeans, short sleeve shirts, casual foot wear) is not appropriate. At Canlis, you cannot be overdressed.

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

I have to say, the statement that you cannot be overdressed really makes me wonder if someone would in fact be comfortable (and treated as normal) if you wore white-tie. I am skeptical, but perhaps they do in fact get pre-shindig dinner crowds who are highly formally dressed.

[noire.livejournal.com]

Actually nails why I left NYC for Camberville and have no interest in ever returning. When I tell people that NYC is all about money and image they insist that I've got it wrong. Nice to have someone else confirm that in writing!

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I think Berkeley does edge out Cambridge, ultimately. Maybe I just want to live life better!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Nothing wrong with living life better.

Besides, you live in Union Sq. Most of Berkeley definitely edges out Union Square.

[bwilder.livejournal.com]

This is so excellent I had to re-post.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[drwex]

That's a great essay. Thanks!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Sure!

[theloriest.livejournal.com]

When I made the decision to move, there were five cities I primarily considered. Boston/Cambridge won for this very reason. I wanted to live where intelligence was highly valued.

[sukitawdry.livejournal.com]

thanks for the article!

In Manhattan, I feel like I should have a cooler wardrobe (and shoes!) and eat more interesting foods and see more art and movies. this means I should make much, much more money.

However, in Brooklyn, I also feel like I should have a cooler wardrobe but the clothes should be thrifted or handmade. this means I should put more effort into it.

In San Francisco, I always feel like I should lose weight and/or get liposuction---this also means I should make more money. However, this is offset by the abundance of nice places to walk and access to good food.

I don't have enough exposure to Cambridge or Berkeley. I lived in Silicon Valley for one year (1997). I was appalled at the amount of money spent on big tacky houses and the lack of interest in anything cultural--no art, no movies, no neat bookstores. just stripmalls.

[jicama]

That depends somewhat on what part of Silicon Valley you are talking about. University Ave in Palo Alto has some nice stuff, including an old movie theatre with a Mighty Wurlitzer. But perhaps that's more Stanford than Silicon Valley. I believe San Jose has a decent arts scene, but didn't explore it that much.

But yeah, the Sunnyvale/Cupertino area is pretty depressing.

[tyellas.livejournal.com]

Ha ha! It's funny, I wasn't in Wellington, NZ for five minutes before I was asking myself, "Why am I not running this country? I should be running this country!"

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I wasn't in Wellington, NZ for five minutes before I was asking myself, "Why am I not running this country? I should be running this country!"

*laugh*

What about Auckland?

[tyellas.livejournal.com]

"You should be rich enough to afford to buy one of these houses."

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

If you did that in New York, people would treat you like shit. I

erm. i've lived in NY. if you do *anything* in NY, people treat you like shit. i still love it two decades later, but not for the people.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

I think Seattle says "you should go off and do whatever makes you happy, just don't bother anyone else".

It explicitly does not include detailed analysis of what makes one happy, although that's an occasional side-effect.

New York, you're doing it wrong

[fullcopy.livejournal.com]

Part of me is kind of amused: I never expected that New York would be in competition with Cambridge and Berkeley? I'll completely admit, that if you're looking for a collegetown/city with 19 million people in it, you're probably not going to be satisfied.

I remember a conversation with a friend about how one became a New Yorker, and my answer to it was and is that it's about ownership: that's it about taking the wide-open map and marking spots and areas and things as yours. It's that feeling of knowing where you are. So are there places where money and status are glorified? Sure, there are plenty, and most of them are amusingly mutually exclusive (I'm sure the people in West Soho are aren't getting any invites to Park Ave). But I don't feel like the presence of those people matters at all to my experience of the city.

Part of what makes NYC work is how the dense transportation mesh allows people to be non-localized: it's easier to draw your places and people and influences from disparate areas when so much of the city is accessible within X minutes.

Even the legendary standoffishness of New Yorkers is just part of how this all works: the unwritten assumption that undergirds the social interactions is that by being unobtrusive, you let other people get on with they're doing, and that that's the greatest politeness. Stand on the right, walk on the left is just as much an act of politeness as saying "Hello" can be.

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

One sign of a city's potential as a technology center is the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. According to Zagat's there are none in San Francisco, LA, Boston, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York, and 20 in Paris.

OK, I will be the very first to admit I may be wrong -- I make it a personal policy to avoid restaurants like that if at all possible, so I'm out of the loop and quite possibly in need of an update -- that having all been said, I remember until a few years ago there was a restaurant inside the Pru, I think, or possibly Copley Place, that had such requirements. I remember vividly thinking that they thought it would make it such a "nice" place and "ambiance" but the place reeked of cigarette and cigar smoke so much that I wouldn't want to be inside it even without the dress code and, in fact, I resented walking by it. This is in the mall inside the building. All that seemed to have changed in the last few years was that Metro Boston went all smoking is prohibited inside buildings so no more smoke, but I think they still require the stupid jackets.

I hope that some day people will realize that a strict dress code doesn't make a club/restaurant any better, just as a "dry-clean only" garment doesn't mean it's any better than something you can machine wash and dry at home. In fact, any of those two tags should be a warning sign that the thing in question may actually not have enough quality to stand on its own without the restrictions.

I guess I'm just old and cranky. ;-)