Cities

[oyceter]

jonquil's been linking to posts on the giant spectacle in London, and stakebait just came back from Hong Kong. rachelmanija has also been going around London and Madrid.

I've always loved Neil Gaiman's short piece on cities, especially as a companion to his "Tale of Two Cities" in World's End; I think it's collected in Smoke and Mirrors. Cities are alive and they grow and they change. They have personalities and forms and shapes.

I love cities. I fell in love with Hong Kong the minute I saw its tall, needly buildings poking out of the rocky green island, the moment we drove across the long bridge connecting the airport to the main island. I still love the narrow streets and the odd contrast between the shiny metal smoothness of Central and the dirty side streets and sidewalk vendors. I miss the winding roads and the hills and the oppressive humidity, the mix of modern and old, the subway system, the mix of Cantonese and British and Chinese cultures.

I miss New York even though I never lived there, the dirty sidewalks and the subway and the grumpy people and the wealth of culture and books and art. I miss the posters plastered over construction sites, metal scaffolding above sidewalks, the numbered streets.

I love getting to know cities and finding all the nooks and crannies and making them mine. I loved eating baguettes in Paris in front of Notre Dame, but I loved looking at the sidewalk cafes even more. I loved the little grocery stores in Florence and how the lady there just let us sample the grapes. I miss Taipei and Hsinchu and the vendors selling food on the street and the six million different small restaurants and side streets.

I'm still getting acquainted with San Francisco, though I've already got a few favorite spots there already. I can tell I'm getting along better with it now that I have certain routines or routes that I go through when I'm there: genre bookstore with cat and then Ethiopian, or Kinokuniya in Japantown, or hole-in-the-wall sushi place and a walk to the dessert place with the giant slices of cake.

What are your favorite cities? What do they feel like? (also, I totally want to make this a meme because I like hearing about cities and I like reading about people's personal experiences of places and the little details that bring it to life)

Comments

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Montreal. Reykjavik. Rossford, Ohio.

It is revealing that word "feel." Because that is why for me. The family is from Ross a small town now within a larger (Toledo) that was built by Libby Owens Ford glass. I know many people find small town claustrophobic but they have a cradling aspect also, and I think that I miss this in communites where I am not known. And I could walk to the library and there was a librarian there who had a passion for SF/F.. and I spent a lot of vacations up in some tree, or tucked away in some cranny surrounded by books with the voices of the family in the background, utterly happy.

Montreal and Reky are adult things. I cannot realistically live in either of those places. But going there, like no where I've yet been in the states feels like home.. like I fit. I am not goin to be able to get the words right here I know.

It is an intuitive feel.

On top of that there's something unique about the "energy" of the city there. I draw like a mad thing maybe not right there (I am too busy doing things and smiling in the most idiot way) but at the same time they cradle me too.. "click" I fit here, and the energy of the people and place is something that just soaks in in the most sparking way.. often drawings but if not it has come out in writing for work or other things I do there.

[oyceter]

Definitely agree about the energy of a city. They just... feel so very different.

I really want to go to visit Reykjavik after hearing you talk about it so often!

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

In Montreal, at the end of April and the beginning of May, the snow melts off and it gets warm out. The apartments and townhouses downtown tend to have staircases on the outside for some reason of silly fashion (pretty dangerous, because they ice up in winter), and the college kids in the student ghetto sit outside in the sunlight reading philosophy. In winter, you can spend a couple hours in the bookstore watching the snow fall, and you have an excellent excuse for drinking endless hot chocolate. And, having spent my adolescence in the south, it's pretty wonderful to see casual nudity and boykissing on a regular basis, and everyone speaking different languages. Yeah, I love Montreal.

I love Nagasaki because you expect Japan to be all skyscrapers and slick surfaces, and it's so old-fashioned and small-town, and the sun glitters in the harbor, and it's so soft and friendly. It's actually a fairly big city, but it feels smaller than it is, and it feels--a little shabby, in the best of all possible ways; lived-in, comfortable.

Carrboro, well, I guess it's a refuge for grad students and yuppies who want to think they're anti-establishment hippies, but you can get a darn good chai, and everyone rides bikes, and there's a yarn store and a pop-art/toy/weird stuff store, and a farmer's market, and how many small southern towns have a gay mayor and a place to buy eco-friendly household products and herbal remedies? I'm exceedingly fond of it as well.

[oyceter]

Oh those sound lovely!

I never got to visit Nagasaki when I was in Japan =(. But your description reminds me of Kanazawa -- less skyscrapers, more lived-in and smaller.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I loved Kanazawa.

I would also love to see Nagasaki. I never got into Kyushu at all, and I really wanted to. I gather it's completely different from the rest of Japan.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

I love New York, because it has such an energy to it, but I can't stay more than four days or I get exhausted just being there.

I love Barcelona because of the Ramblas, and their fabulous attitude towards food, and because they are right on the Mediterranean.

I love Paris because I could visit medieval sites and soak up history until even I am tired. London too. London also has a lovely number of bookstores.

Tubingen was a lovely suprise, with its old Renaissance town centre, and its almost stereotypical German-ness and 500+-year-old university.

I loved New Orleans, with its shops and decay, and beignets in the morning.

If it has lots of history, I'm probably going to fall in love, and that's why I can take or leave most North American cities.

[oyceter]

OMG must go to Spain some time! Am so jealous... my parents got to go a few years ago and took back some marvelous pictures. And I keep reading rachelmanija's entries and salivating.

Also, tapas.

I wish I had a chance to go to New Orleans before Katrina =(.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Me too. My parents and I had been planning to go... this year. And I never went, and now I'll never see it the way it was.

I have been told that Barcelona is much, much prettier than Madrid, which is about as pretty as, say, Los Angeles or Tokyo, which is to say that "pretty" is not one of the attractions. From the conversation I had last night, it sounds like Barcelona is the San Francisco of Spain.

[ellarien]

I love my home city, Sheffield in England, because it is my home, and because it has hills and parks and woods and decks itself in flowers every summer. It's just a middle-sized recovering industrial city in the north of England, nothing very special, but it's mine.

I have a great fondness for Glasgow, though I've only spent a few days and nights there; it's a real, down-to-earth place, very solid, and the people are wonderfully hospitable. I was there for a scientific meeting once, and the city government treated the whole lot of us to a reception and sit-down meal in the council house, with wine and entertainers.

London is a great place to visit, but I was right the first time when I said I wouldn't want to live there; I did, for nearly three years, and it didn't agree with me.

[oyceter]

Ohhhhh how lovely! I know what you mean about a city being yours; the place I lived in before the move wasn't anything spectacular. It was small and had its own little downtown and etc., and it was mine, and I loved it.

Hopefully I'll get used to the new place as well.

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

I love Toronto because it's the only place I've lived other than where I was born, and because I rooted more deeply there than was at all sensible, since I promised Chris before we went there that I'd come back to Halifax. I love its multiculturalism, and the array of things to do, but I suppose those are largely things that're true in most big cities. So I love it because it was home, because I have favorite restaurants and markets, and because so many people I adore are there.

I can't really pick cities otherwise--the only other places I've spent significant time are Hong Kong and Hilo, and I loved them both. The things I remember about Hong Kong are the ways the jungle encroaches on the urban build-up, with the palm trees poking up through holes in the concrete that keeps the hills from sliding down; the way the girls all seemed to have bells on (although I doubt it was even most of them, but it was pretty common); the kickass transit; the fabulous Hong Kong accent that blends British and Chinese lilts; the geckos on all the walls, and the feral cats . . . I'm even a bit sentimental about the heat, which is a little scary. But it made me appreciate the week it rained non-stop, esp. since I love tropical rain. *^^*

[oyceter]

Man, now you're making miss Hong Kong again ;). But yes, yes to all those things.

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

I would so like to go back sometime (although I don't know what the odds are, since I doubt I'll have any way to go back to that part of the world other than on my own money, and my first choice will have to be finally seeing Japan). My experience there was really good, but it was so short and hectic (five weeks, including four weeks of camp counseling and a few days in mainland China) that I burned out before the end and was just exhausted. I did get to visit the central part of the city on weekends--the camp was up in Tuen Mun--but I really would like more time to poke around. Preferably not in August. ^_^

[oursin.livejournal.com]

London, because like Dr Johnson said, and because of the layers and the contrasts and the surprises and the size.

Amsterdam: canals, and the fact that the historic centre is still a living working inhabited city, not a theme park.

New York. For the energy and the vibe.

San Francisco. For a wonderful 2 weeks I spent there, though not sure that return would work the same way.

Chicago. Because my tiny glimpses of it last year made me want to go back.

Adelaide. There may be purely circumstantial reasons why this is the Australian city I feel most like returning to. Memories of a good time had.

Kabul. Though I doubt it's the same city I visited well over 20 years ago.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

And on the subject of canals and waterways and islands, assets to any city, I completely forgot both Venice and Stockholm!

[oyceter]

Ooooo, come to San Francisco again! I could... uh... take you to the bookstore of the hairless cat. Otherwise, sadly, I still need to figure it out =(.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I'd love to come to San Francisco again. Unfortunately local institutions of higher education are very unlikely to invite me to be visiting professor or keynote speaker at their conferences I fear, though I may be over-estimating the influence of 2 individuals. (Wot, me paranoid?)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

It's always love-hate with cities I live in.

Toronto sometimes still looks like my childhood. It can be beautiful at odd moments- like now, and in the fall when the leaves turn, and on occasional clear winter nights. I'm so used to walking down a street and not understanding three out of any four conversations that I get a little freaked in all-English or all-white cities. And I'm invisible there, which was a great relief after

Tokyo- which can be beautiful at odd moments, especially in winter when the sky goes on forever. You can take a train from downtown to the mountains, and it leaves every ten minutes. You can be packed to the doors of a subway car and pressed fullbody against someone else and still be quite alone. It has strange conveniences, including the conveni, but doesn't value convenience or efficiency for its own sake. And if people are having a bad day, you don't hear about it.

But the cities I visit- ahh! New York, because New Yorkers are friendly- by Torontonian standards. Amsterdam, because the Dutch are beautiful and anyway, canals! Even Paris because it's Paris even if les Parisiens, tu sais, les Parisiens n'sont pas Francais, as my Lyonnais cousins were always quick to point out.

[oyceter]

Ooo, how cool! How long were you in Tokyo for? I wish I had a chance to really live there and get to know it, but alas. Someday, maybe.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Boston is my favorite city largely because it's the one I grew up with. I also love Northampton (where I went to school). I enjoyed Oxford (England) in large part because it reminded me of being at home -- I grew up in a suburb of Boston, with easy access via public transit, and Oxford is an easy bus ride away from London. I like NYC, but it's too big for me to want to stay there. I like the accessible feel of Boston. I am glad I grew up with Boston, however, because I would not want to have to learn it as an outsider (I liken it to learning English as other than one's first language); NYC has a great grid system.

I'm not good at talking about the "feel" of a city and honestly a lot of my like for any particular city or town has to do with knowing where to go to get stuff I want and how to get there. I tend to see places-to-live/visit as more means-to-an-end (access to material goods, friends, a job, etc. that one wants) rather than as sort of entities unto themselves (see also how the idea of sacred spaces, pilgrimages, etc. doesn't resonate with me personally very much and I have to move myself into a theoretical other headspace to "get" it).

feel

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I am just odd that way I think. It is something about my drawing. I text but I am in that very small percent of folks that texts as a layer (think of windows over dos) rather than by default.

So we probably approach these from opposite doors. The reason I am appending here.. on my own (both Montreal and Reyk I had guides) that piece about finding your way around does resonate for me. I am a map person and a big researcher before I travel.

You've got me curious now. Can you link on the bit about scared space/etc?

Re: feel

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Meep. I remember it coming up in conversations, but I don't think I ever made an actual post proper about sacred space etc. *ponders making one*

Re: meep

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

No worries. I was just curious. :)

[oyceter]

I adore NYC's grid system; it's the only reason I haven't gotten more lost there than usual.

And I really, really, really want to visit Boston someday and hang around with friends and the like. It sounds like such a fun city, especially with all the colleges and public transportation and etc.

I dunno, it's odd because I've always thought of cities as having personalities. Really, it is just the stuff I do and the people I meet, and my San Francisco is probably very different from someone else's. But that process of getting to know a city and finding my own spots there, I love doing that.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I left half my heart in Tokyo the first time I went there, and I still haven´t gotten it back.

[oyceter]

It's so funny, because I didn't feel that way about Tokyo and I completely expected to! I think I didn't stay there for long enough and get to poke around.

But that's what happened with me and Hong Kong, despite spending some of the more awful months of my life there.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Probably not; I was madly in love by the end of my first week. Possibly by the end of my first day.

[ckd]

London is one city that I carry an echo of in my heart, ever since my first visit of many (but never enough). From the Tube and the old Routemasters (now relegated to heritage runs) to the Houses of Parliament, from the British Museum to the Royal Observatory, from the Canary Wharf complex to Camden Locks...it's all there.

I'd love to visit Hong Kong someday; I'd love another week or two in Tokyo; I've visited New York and Paris and Munich and Zurich; I've lived in small towns on Puget Sound and the People's Republic of Cambridge...but if I think to myself that I need a week to become less tired of life, it's time for a dose of Dr. Johnson's remedy.

[oyceter]

I adore London, particularly the Tube. I seem to have a thing for public transportation.

I have a giant, giant list of places I want to go, and I have no idea when I'll get to it, but you never know!

[canandagirl.livejournal.com]

Calgary is my favorite city, even though there's winter for 8 months of the year, and there's always a possibility of a freak snow storm even in the middle of July, it's home and it's beautiful.

It's right at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and sits where the Bow and Elbow river meet. There's always a beautiful view of the mountains to the west. It has a tight city core with a sparwaling suburbia. It's praire country and every single tree you see there has been planted by residents. Although big business has a firm grip in the city, it's roots are in ranching, and every year in July, the city celebrates in the Stampede. Stores and businesses decorate their offices with hay bales and the dress code is jeans and cowboy hats. Everyone puts up with country music, and for 10 days, there will always by several dozen free pancake breakfasts served by someone (or company) in the city. You just show up.

The people there have always had the reputation of being really friendly (except maybe when they drive -- then they're really aggressive.), and I've met some of the best people in the world there.

However, I'm also a sucker for Europe. I love the sophistication and culture. My favorite cities there have been Vienna, Cologne, London and Bern, yet Europe has a different atmosphere and even though I lived there for a few years and felt comfortable, I still missed Calgary a lot.

[oyceter]

Oh how awesome! I still remember going there maybe ten years back during the Stampede. We didn't stay long (we headed off to Jasper and Banff), but oh, it was so amazingly beautiful up there. I grew up in Colorado with the Rockies all around me before my family moved to Taiwan, and I still miss the towering purple mountains.

[canandagirl.livejournal.com]

I totally miss it. I just can't wait to go back. Unfortunately, economics won't make the possible for a few years still.