[Tim Lee]
A good essay by Paul Graham on 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.
When you ask what message a city sends, you sometimes get surprising answers. As much as they respect brains in Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is: you should be more powerful.
Here in St. Louis, the message is "you should have met the right people in school." The cliche here is that the first thing St. Louisans ask when they meet each other is "what high school did you go to?" The answer tells them about the speaker's social class and often his religious background. Also, if you want to be successful in Missouri you don't don't go to the highly-ranked Washington University, but to the University of Missouri in Columbia, which is where the kids of other rich and powerful Missourians go to school. Needless to say, moving to St. Louis in your 20s isn't a brilliant career move:
No matter how determined you are, it's hard not to be influenced by the people around you. It's not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do.
When I lived in DC and I told people I worked at a think tank, virtually everyone knew what that was and many were interested to know which one and what I did there. When I go to a party in St. Louis, the people I meet not only don't know what a think tank is, but a lot of them don't know what public policy is. I've taken to just telling people I'm a writer, which is something most people have heard of.
Here's Graham's take on DC, which he admits he hasn't lived in long enough to be sure of:
In DC the message seems to be that the most important thing is who you know. You want to be an insider. In practice this seems to work much as in LA. There's an A List and you want to be on it or close to those who are. The only difference is how the A List is selected. And even that is not that different.
Graham's not altogether wrong about Cambridge, but he seems to have found a Boston I never noticed when I lived there. No doubt it depends on which parties you happen to get invited to.
Paul Graham has a knack for sounding like he knows what he's talking about, but when I know the subject well enough to judge for myself, it always turns out to be glib, clueless nonsense.
Much of his writing about programming (his own field, for God's sake) is laughable. Others have noticed this as well, in other subjects.
You're a writer? My God I thought you were the intern that cleared the spam filter.
Do you tell them that you work for a think tank or do you tell them that you work for CATO?
They are not one in the same.
I'm not sure what party's you're going to but perhaps it would be best to find new friends and new party's. I'm from St. Louis and work in public policy and have none of these issues when I move home.
Do you tell them that you work for a think tank or do you tell them that you work for CATO?
They are not one in the same.
I'm not sure what party's you're going to but perhaps it would be best to find new friends and new party's. I'm from St. Louis and work in public policy and have none of these issues when I visit home.
In DC the message seems to be that the most important thing is who you know.
Indeed, even the road signage is designed to make fools out of the outsider, like the "official" 395 to 66 route, which sends you miles up the GW and Sprout Run parkways, or the incredible difficulty of getting onto DC 295 NB from downtown, or the perverse exits on 110, or the direction-switching lanes on surface streets, or the Whitehall Fwy and Canal st, which are an impossible trap for the unwary, or the massive barriers formed by parks that even cabbies can't find a way around...you need a professional lobbyist just to get where you're going.
the "official" 395 to 66 route, which sends you miles up the GW and Sprout Run parkways
110 takes you directly from 395 to 66, no problem. Why they don't tell you, I dunno. Of course, for a while after 9-11 access to 110 was restricted. And 66 inside the Beltway is all-HOV during the afternoon rush.
Part of the signage problem has to do with the fact that the Park Service, which believes that signs should be tasteful and inconspicuous, has jurisdiction over some of these roads.
(It's Spout Run, not Sprout Run, BTW.)
I used to joke that DC's road system was designed to deter Soviet invasion.
They would get lost trying to find the capital.
110 takes you directly from 395 to 66, no problem
Can you even get on 110 from 395N? I seem to recall this being difficult/impossible, but it's been 10 years since I lived there.
Well, if google is to be believed, it looks like it can only be done by taking 27 and then taking a little trip through the Pentagon parking lot. This fits in with what I remember. Probably no less difficult to create signs for than the route via Spout Run, which is admittedly pretty bizarre.
Can you even get on 110 from 395N?
Not directly, no. I was thinking about 395S, which is the way I regularly have occasion to do it.
Looking at the same satellite picture you looked at, it can be done with not too much difficulty by getting off at Hayes St. (Pentagon City) and looping over to go north on route 1, which connects directly to 110. (I don't know, if you get off on rt. 1 itself, how far south you have to go before you can make a u-turn.)
Get off 395N at the Washington Blvd exit... there's a sign that says (I think) Pentagon North Parking, with a little tiny 110 below it. Quick little loop skirts the parking lot and dumps you right on 110.
In DC the message seems to be that the most important thing is who you know. You want to be an insider. In practice this seems to work much as in LA. There's an A List and you want to be on it or close to those who are.
One thing you quickly learn in both cities is that those "lists" (reaching down into B, C, D, E and F) are orders of magnitudes longer than you'd previously imagined them.
The message you get in LA is "you gotta work on that tan...."
The "where did you go to high school" question is endemic to medium sized, flat-to-shrinking Midwestern cities, aka St. Louis, Milwaukee, and the like.
The few good jobs left are all populated by people who went to the same elite one or two high schools.
For example, Milwaukee--two main financial institutions are RW Baird (I-bank) and Northwestern Mutual (insurance). These institutions, especially the former, are almost entirely populated by graduates of either University High School, Nicolet High School, or Whitefish Bay High School.
As a graduate of a ghetto-licious South Side high school, I was definitely the recipient of more than a few, "you went where?" eyebrow-raising questions. Funny thing was, I went to way better universities than the other folks, but since I wasn't part of the north side "elite," I wasn't slated for promotion.
Even Chicago, where I live now, appears to be growing stagnant.
I'd imagine starting a business here in Chicago would be much more difficult than a more hospitable southern or western locale (with less taxes and cheaper real estate).
If I ever attempted to start a company, i would avoid Chicago and any other midwestern/east coast city.
I grew up in St. Louis and went to one of the best all boys high schools. What I think this misses about STL is who are those people still left from those schools.
Sure the people you are meeting went to elite high schools like SLUH, Priory or John Burroughs, but as my college history professor told me (incidentally he went to SLUH many years before me), "Richard, you should get out Mound City." And that is the point. Most of my friends who were at the top of the class left for university elsewhere, and they never came home. I left after university at Saint Louis U. And though I love it, I could never go back and live with the limits placed upon me.
So all those elites you are meeting I would say they are the middling students of Saint Louis. The talented leave, and it has been like that for decades. Of my own set of friends, I cannot name more than a few who settled in STL after university. That fact should illuminate why your conversations are so strained and possibly dull.
You both missed the point of St. Louis. As with anywhere, St. Louis can be as great or lame as you make it. Don't rely on others to enhance your life.
To debunk you both: I went to an elite high-school too (who really cares?) I got my first degree from UMSL. (Judging me yet?) I got my second degree from Washington U (graduated Summa). I chose to stay in STL while many of my friends moved away. My choice allowed me to reach all of my goals in my twenties: I took a year off of work to enjoy being young. I traveled to all 50 states by the time I was 30. I purchased my own home in the central corridor on a single income. I was able to do all of this in my mid-20s while my friends were struggling to pay their rent which was 2-3 times my mortgage. I accomplished this while having a blast living in St. Louis! I have met amazing new people and I welcome back my old friends (two-thirds of which have moved back).
Your problem is that you identify yourself with what you do for a living and expect other people to be interested. Guess what? People don't really care what you do to earn a living. If new people don't understand what you do, kindly but quickly explain what you do at your job, then move on to other topics. If your work is your life, you are boring. Diversify your life! Get out and take advantage of what this city has to offer (theater, art, music and tons of green space), volunteer to make it a better place, take some interest in something other than your work and you will start to meet cool, interesting people from different backgrounds.
New York wants you to be rich.
DC wants you to be connected.
LA wants you to be famous.
SF wants you to be influential.
Miami wants you to be beautiful.
Minneapolis wants you to be nice.
Dallas wants you to be flashy.
I don't want to live in any of those cities. I want to live in the Houstons and Phoenixes and Charlottes of the world - cities that are totally indifferent to you. I don't really want where I live telling me how to live. I like me telling me how to live.
Secret asian man, I would get so bored if I lived in a city without a personality. I live in Dallas, and sure, sometimes the obsession with outward appearances and what kind of car you drive can get on my nerves. But mostly, it's terribly entertaining. If you can recognize the ridiculousness and absurdity of the world around you wigthout getting too worked up about it, that absurdity greatly contributes to the atmosphere. Personally, I love it when people conform to their stereotypes. You can just sit back above it all (and feeling a bit superior) and chuckle "Oh, Dallas.. (or other city)". That's a large part of the attraction (at least for me) of living in the city rather than the suburbs, for that personality. It kind of defeats the point if you move to Phoenix.
Secret asian man, I would get so bored if I lived in a city without a personality. I live in Dallas, and sure, sometimes the obsession with outward appearances and what kind of car you drive can get on my nerves. But mostly, it's terribly entertaining. If you can recognize the ridiculousness and absurdity of the world around you wigthout getting too worked up about it, that absurdity greatly contributes to the atmosphere. Personally, I love it when people conform to their stereotypes. You can just sit back above it all (and feeling a bit superior) and chuckle "Oh, Dallas.. (or other city)". That's a large part of the attraction (at least for me) of living in the city rather than the suburbs, for that personality. It kind of defeats the point if you move to Phoenix.
New York wants you to be rich.
DC wants you to be connected.
LA wants you to be famous.
SF wants you to be influential.
Miami wants you to be beautiful.
Minneapolis wants you to be nice.
Dallas wants you to be flashy.
Atlanta wants to know your alternate routes while the 75/85 paving is going on and the 14th Street bridge is closed.
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