The Fantasy of a "Cool City"

Stupids are everywhere. Any city, town, village, refugee camp can be cool if you fall in with the right people irrespective of what kind of shithole it may be
 
Monkeyface said:
You can't very well expect all cities within the same country to be wildly different.
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What? There are plenty of states here where one end is totally different from the other.
Monkeyface said:
In comparison to backwater bumpkin towns?
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This thread could be about cultural homogenization. The touristy parts of NYC are pretty generic, but rural dives can be very distinctive. Of course if a damn WalMart and McDonalds chased out the local businesses, then it's Generica.
 
Russell Street said:
What? There are plenty of states here where one end is totally different from the other.

This thread could be about cultural homogenization. The touristy parts of NYC are pretty generic, but rural dives can be very distinctive. Of course if a damn WalMart and McDonalds chased out the local businesses, then it's Generica.
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Not according to office pants
 
doghouse said:
Grand Potentate Grand Potentate can move this to the main forum? This thread is more pertinent to style than pretty much any that currently resides there.

Also, can we change OfficePants OfficePants title to "Stay off my lawn!"

kthxbai.
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Moved. Will ponder the title. After reading some of his posts in here I'm not sure Captain Buzzkill is even representative of the general downer that he provides. I was thinking 'Human Quaalude'.
 
Russell Street said:
What? There are plenty of states here where one end is totally different from the other.
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No question. The difference between Los Angeles and Yreka is bigger than Rome and Paris.


Russell Street said:
This thread could be about cultural homogenization. The touristy parts of NYC are pretty generic, but rural dives can be very distinctive. Of course if a damn WalMart and McDonalds chased out the local businesses, then it's Generica.
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It could be, but probably another thread. I'd hope we could talk about what gives certain times and places an elan vital.
 
Rambo said:
Moved. Will ponder the title. After reading some of his posts in here I'm not sure Captain Buzzkill is even representative of the general downer that he provides. I was thinking 'Human Quaalude'.
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My college roommate's nickname is Quaalude. True story. I actually often forget his real name.
 
Rambo said:
Moved. Will ponder the title. After reading some of his posts in here I'm not sure Captain Buzzkill is even representative of the general downer that he provides. I was thinking 'Human Quaalude'.
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how about castrated cool city crawler?
 
So is trans the new gay? That's accelerate the ephemeral nature even more, given the life spans of such types.
 
OfficePants said:
Gay is the hallmark of a cool city. When you have gays it means you have places to eat, arts (especially the theater), and ever increasing flamboyant displays of sexually oriented pride late at night when bars are closing. Again, such cool, novel stuff.
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look at the bolshoi
the best theatre in the world works perfectly fine
 
And always it is London by lamplight which I vision when I think of her, for it was the London of lamplight that first called to me, as a child. She hardly exists for me in any other mood or dress. It was London by night that awoke me to a sense of that terrible spirit which we call Beauty, to be possessed by which is as unsettling and as sweetly frightful as to be possessed by Love. London, of course, is always calling us, if we have ears to hear, sometimes in a soft, caressing voice, as difficult to hear as the fairies' song, sometimes in a deep, impelling chant. Open your window when you will in the gloating evening, whether you live in town, in the near suburbs, or in the far suburbs—open your window and listen. You will hear London singing to you; and if you are one of her chosen you will have no sleep that night until you have answered her. There is nothing for it but to slip out and be abroad in the grey, furtive streets, or in the streets loud with lamps and loafers, and jostle the gay men and girls, or mingle with the chaste silences. It is the Call not only of London, but of Beauty, of Life. Beauty calls in many voices; but to me and to six million others she calls in the voice of Cockaigne, and it shall go hard with any man who hears the Call and does not answer. To every man, young or old, comes, once in his life, this Call of Beauty. At that moment he awakens to a realization of better things than himself and his foolish little life. To that vague abstraction which we call the average man it comes mostly with first love or religion, sometimes with last love. But come it does to each one of us, and it behoves us all to hearken. So many of us hear, and let it pass. The gleam pauses in our path for an instant, but we turn our backs and plod the road of materialism, and we fade and grow old and die without ever having lived. Only in the pursuit of beauty is youth retained; and beauty is no respecter of person, place, or time. Everywhere it manifests itself. In the young man of the leisured classes this sense only awakens late in life. He is educated to consider only himself, to regard himself as, in the Broadway phrase, a serious proposition; and some time must pass before he discovers, with a pained surprise, that there are other people in the world, and that his little life matters not at all in the eternal scheme. Then, one day, something happens. He falls in love, perhaps; and under the shock of the blow he discovers that he wants something—something he has not known before, something he cannot name: God, Beauty, Prayer, call it what you will. He discovers a thousand subtle essences of life which his clumsy taste had hitherto passed. He discovers that there is a life of ideas, that principles and ideals are something more than mere fooling for dry-minded people, that thoughts are as important as things. In a word, he has heard the Call of Beauty. Just as a man may live in the same house with a girl for years, and then one day will discover that she is beautiful, that she is adorable, that he cannot lose her from his life, so we live surrounded by unregarded beauty, until we awake. So for seven years I was surrounded by the glory of London before I knew that I loved her.... When I was a small child I was as other children of our set. I played their games in the street. I talked their language. I shared their ambitions. I worshipped their gods. Life was a business of Board School, breakfast, dinner, tea, struggled for and eaten casually, either at the table or at the door or other convenient spot. I should grow up. I should be, I hoped, a City clerk. I should wear stand-up collars. I might have a moustache. For Sunday I might have a frock-coat and silk hat, and, if I were very clever and got on well, a white waistcoat. I should have a house—six rooms and a garden, and I might be able to go to West End theatres sometimes, and sit in the pit instead of the gallery. And some day I might even ride in a hansom-cab, though I should have to succeed wonderfully to do that. I hoped I should succeed wonderfully, because then the other boys at the Board School would look up to me. Thus I lived for ten years. A primrose by the river's brim was no more to me than to Peter Bell, or, since I had never seen a primrose growing, shall I say that the fried-fish shop at the corner of the High Street was but a fried-fish shop, visited once a week rapturously. But after the awakening, everything was changed. Things assumed a hitherto hidden significance. Beauty broke her blossoms everywhere about the grey streets and the sordid interiors that were my environment. And my moment was given to me by London. The call came to me in a dirty street at night. The street was short and narrow, its ugliness softened here and there by the liquid lights of shops, the most beautiful of all standing at the corner. This was the fried-fish shop. It was a great night, because I was celebrating my seventh birthday, and I was proud and everything seemed to be sharing in my pride. Then, as I strutted, an organ, lost in strange lands about five streets away, broke into music. I had heard organs many times, and I loved them. But I had never heard an organ play "Suwanee River," in the dusk of an October night, with a fried-fish shop ministering to my nose and flinging clouds of golden glory about me, and myself seven years old. Momentarily, it struck me silly—so silly that some big boy pointed a derisive finger. It somehow ... I don't know.... It.... Well, as the organ choked and gurgled through the outrageous sentimentality of that song, I awoke. Something had happened to me. Through the silver evening a host of little dreams and desires came tripping down the street, beckoning and bobbing in rhythm to the old tune; and as the last of the luscious phrases trickled over the roofs I found myself half-laughing, half-crying, thrilled and tickled as never before. It made me want to die for some one. I think it was for London I wanted to die, or for the fried-fish shop and the stout lady and gentleman who kept it. I had never noticed that street before, except to remark that it wasn't half low and common. But now it had suffered a change. I could no longer sniff at it. I would as soon have said something disrespectful about Hymns Ancient and Modern.

Burke, Thomas (2011-03-24). Nights in London (pp. 5-7).
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OfficePants said:
Cross posting from another thread.

You know this "cool city" stuff is bullshit when Forbes publishes a list of America's coolest 20 cities. Washington DC, #1? Cool?

No. 1: Washington, D.C. - In Photos: America's Coolest Cities 2014

Cool cities seem to be a revolving door. Seattle had that mantle at one point, then Portland. I recall San Francisco being the cool place way back when the gay mafia took over. And remember when Miami had it's day before everyone became bored with Salsa and Miami Vice? Or back when Albuquerque/Santa Fe had it going on? My personal favorite is the great Las Vegas... never been there, never want to go, and would never refer to it as "Vegas" as party-goers are want to do.
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Washington is a fantastic place to visit. Love it. I have several friends up there, so I spend a week or so a year there. One of my favorite places to visit outside of Miami. Living there? Fuck no. Unfriendly, sprawled out, bitterly hot and cold, and everyone thinks they are a lot more important than they actually are.

I'm not cool enough to insist on saying "Las Vegas", so bear with me. Vegas really surprised me. I thought I'd hate it. I like small towns, the outdoors, that kind of shit. Vegas was a blast and I didn't even gamble and got drunk once. Don't know if I'd ever live there though.
 
John Lee Pettimore III said:
Washington is a fantastic place to visit. Love it. I have several friends up there, so I spend a week or so a year there. One of my favorite places to visit outside of Miami. Living there? Fuck no. Unfriendly, sprawled out, bitterly hot and cold, and everyone thinks they are a lot more important than they actually are.

I'm not cool enough to insist on saying "Las Vegas", so bear with me. Vegas really surprised me. I thought I'd hate it. I like small towns, the outdoors, that kind of shit. Vegas was a blast and I didn't even gamble and got drunk once. Don't know if I'd ever live there though.
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Vegas is nice, but the crowd is awful.
 
Vegas is a blast once. Vegas is awful any more than that. I used to be there every weekend when I was a craps dealer. Haven't been back in 15 years and have no desire to go ever again.

I quite agree with John Lee Pettimore III John Lee Pettimore III on DC though. I am there half a dozen or so times a year usually, always a good visit. You couldn't pay me enough to live there.
 
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