Garberville, CA: Hey, man, you should give to the community and help me get some weed.
Wolfeboro, NH (smalltown New England summer resort): You should pretend it's 1962 like all the retirees do.
Waltham, MA (Brandeis University): Go back to NYC when you graduate.
Cambridge, MA: You should be more educated.
I chose "educated" over "intelligent" largely because I lived closer to Harvard. When I go to the MIT side of Cambridge I would switch the two. In and around Harvard you see a strong vein of people who aim for the prestige of higher education over the knowledge it brings.
The middle-aged people dream of sitting in a musky study debating high-falutin mish-mash over a nice port. The college-aged kids dream of sitting in a coffee shop debating their PHIL101 papers. They seek _established_ education.
I know this doesn't speak for every aspect of Cambridge, which I did love living in for a few years, but the too-strong emphasis on the appearance of education as opposed to the knowledge you gain helped me move to take a job in San Mateo (shameless plug: RockYou.com).
Disclaimer: I am not your average anything. My move to San Mateo from Cambridge is via Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. I speak Mandarin but I'm English/German. Take what I said with a healthy grain of wacky salt.
The only place I've had that feeling that "education" was more important than knowledge in Cambridge was actually directly on the Harvard campus. But I completely agree.
There are two strains of culture in Cambridge, "you should be smarter" which is why I love living here. And "you should have two PHDs" -- which is very different and unfortunate message. It's almost the opposite of the Valley, which speaks so reverently of the Harvard drop-out.
The best thing that those of us who live in Cambridge could do is keep the culture focused on ideas and less on diplomas.
Columbia SC: Uh, the culture is pretty much centered around it's mid-tier University of South Carolina, which is a party-hardy Frat/Sorority vibe. So, I guess it says "YEEE-HAAAAW! More beer, Bo!"
Hartford, CT: Unless you can calculate the death of a 55 year old smoker with no major medical history within a margin of error, the city says "There's NY below and Boston above, take your pick, pay your toll, and have a nice day."
Raleigh-Durham, NC: Duke University, UNC, Wake Forrest, North Carolina State, Shaw, and various other colleges all within around 20 interstate exits of each other. I guess it would say "study hard, and find job at IBM, Sony-Ericsson, or Cisco." Not too much entreprenurial spirit here, I guess because the tech giants gobble them up with nice offers right out of college.
Columbia, SC doesn't really send any strong messages. Only the young people in the area have anything to do with USC, normally, so not even the frattiness comes across that strong.
College football tailgating, however, is a state-wide sport.
aston, are you from SC? I'm from Greenville (which sends the message, "How can we be more like Atlanta?", or at least it did when I last lived there 14 years ago). Small world.
The message in Charleston definitely has something about aristocracy and the value of old money, while the message in the rest of the coastal towns generally involves fishing. Except Myrtle Beach, where the message is, "Y'all come on down for a visit, and leave your money when you head back up north."
Weird. I lived three blocks from Furman. It was my playground, growing up. We played video games in the student center using change fished out of the fountain beside it, flirted embarrassingly with the college girls, skateboarded and biked all over, and regularly got kicked out after the campus closed for the day (for those unfamiliar with small Southern Baptist liberal arts schools, or at least Furman, they close all of the gates except the main gate at 10PM and only allow students in).
Speaking of Bob Jones, no one ever believes me when I explain that it has a "date room", wherein couples sit together in a chaperoned room, with a Bible-width space in between. Which explains why Bob Jones girls are such a terror when they do manage to escape the watchful eyes of the school.
Being a native Western Pennsylvania, and living more of my adult life in Pittsburgh than anywhere else, I'll take that as a compliment :).
I moved to NYC with my wife right after we were married, and loved every minute of it. But decided to return here to raise our kids after they were born.
An interesting thing about Pittsburgh is the number of large non-profits of every kind, especially considering the reduced population. The major industrial titans that made their fortunes here in decades past (Carnegie, Mellon, Heinz, etc.) have left behind many cultural institutions like libraries, museums, universities, parks, hospitals, etc. that are still well funded and high quality.
You'll find some of that in NYC (even from some of the same benefactors) but Pittsburgh I think has a higher cultural dollars/resident ratio. This is a wonderful thing in terms of raising children. My kids think hanging out at the zoo, library, conservatory, kids' museum, etc. is a perfectly common thing to do. I think in NYC (and other cities?) you could find many of the same things, but it would not be possible to enjoy them in a leisurely manner, or afford family yearly membership passes.
I lived in Pgh. for 6 years (7th-12th grade), and my family still lives there. That's a very good point about the cultural institutions -- though in my experience, they're woefully underattended. It's possible to hang out at the zoo, conservatory, science museum, etc. ...but my family was thought to be a bit odd for actually doing so. (Of course, we lived in the wealthy suburban soccer mom part, not the university-intellectual part, so that's probably why. Neighborhoods have messages, too.)
Heh, that's the advantage of our boys still being young (4 and 6 now, 2 and 4 when we first moved here). They don't know any better than to think those activities are perfectly normal. We have successfully brainwashed them so far, and by the time they hit teenage peer pressure, it might be too late to undo the "damage" of a cultured mind :).
The "under attended" part isn't all bad. Our boys can run around a little bit in Phipps Conservatory, for example, without many negative glances.
We do live in a city neighborhood, so that might account for some of the difference.
I've met nice people everywhere I've lived. Somehow, and I'm not sure why, it seems just a little bit easier to meet nice people in Pittsburgh. Whether it's the checkout line in a supermarket, in a restaurant or bar, or just hanging out, people generally seem friendly and engaging.
(The day after a Steeler's loss, of course, all bets are off.)
Having spent some time in Tokyo, I must say that the most striking thing for me was that at any moment of the day, the streets are flooded with people going too and fro. It was amazing.
-m
London: "You should have been here 150 years ago" is essentially "you should be more aristocratic". I think that signal is strong in London. I have been at dinner with friends who started arguing about how far they had to commute on the tube (as a proxy for social class.) The English pretend to the world that it doesn't matter but it seems to matter deeply to them. This seems to be an English hidden rule; that is how the discussion started.
You hit the nail on the head: This whole essay is based on a false premise (which nonetheless is strongly believed by PG). Cambridge only seems to be a "smart" town if your social group consists of people associated with MIT, and you're only likely to end up in that social group if you were part of the middle class when you moved there.
"... Melbourne: You should spend more money on clothes ..."
No it's more like...
Melbourne: You live in the sports capital of a sports crazed country. You should go to the footy, the cricket, tennis and don't forget some new duds on cup day.
Tel Aviv: You should be moving faster. A lot faster.
Dublin: Be wittier then smart.
Melbourne: I agree. Its a confused message that definitely has to do with sports not clothes.
I must admit the descriptions you give for Amsterdam, London, Barcelona sound off to me. I think you have to live or spend a lot of time somewhere before you can understand it's 'message', if it has one
I lived in Amsterdam for half a year ten years ago. It's very walkable and beautiful. You walk the streets and people smile at you. It's a happy place. I think the message is something like, "Be happy."
Also, I believe it's the only country in Europe except for the UK where everyone speaks good English. In most big cities in Europe you will eventually find someone who speaks English, but in Amsterdam the odds that it will be the first person you approach are no worse than in London or California.
> Also, I believe it's the only country in Europe except for the UK where everyone speaks good English. In most big cities in Europe you will eventually find someone who speaks English, but in Amsterdam the odds that it will be the first person you approach are no worse than in London or California.
Stockholm is similar -- most people speak good English.
Amsterdam is one of the biggest tourist destinations in Europe, no wonder about the quality of their English (although this applies to the whole of Netherlands, not just Amsterdam).
I hear the Danes speak excellent English too, but I haven't been to Denmark myself.
As I understand it, the reason the Dutch speak English so well is that a lot of American television is shown there...still in English, but with Dutch subtitles. So kids grow up essentially in a semi-immersion program of English as a second language, which gets reinforced later in life due to tourism and English being the current effectively most common language.
I remember dialing a wrong number in Amsterdam a number of years ago, and the woman responded, in nearly perfect English, without missing a beat. I was impressed.
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.