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The day after I flew in to San Francisco, I drove into the city to kill sometime before meeting some friends for a birthday dinner. I drove into SoMa, parked, got out of the car, and instantly I looked up and saw Paul and Tyler walking down the street. Paul, I knew as one of Yosh's housemates and friends, and last time I talked to him was when he still lived down the street from me in Somerville, and we'd run into each other outside Someday Cafe in Davis. Tyler, I've known through various friends, and the last time I saw him was when his band was playing downstairs at the Middle East. The two of them are the latest of a dozen different Bostonians who've moved to San Fran in the last few years, and I suppose I should get used to these sort of run-ins. But, I mean, jesus, when you haven't even been in a new city for ten minutes and you already run into a familiar face, it's hard to escape that feeling of the world contracting by a few more degrees.
Later on, I was on Haight, walking up to Amoeba, and I saw John and Eva walking up with stacks of fliers in their hand. They were flyering for Meat, one of their epic scale loft parties ... a friend of mine once said that Shelter parties happened with such frequency that for a while people viewed our apartment as a substitute nightclub. John and Eva's parties have taken the "substitute" part out of the equation. The onstreet conversation was brief because we were going to see each other in an hour anyway for dinner, but John gave me a flyer before he left, and for a second, I felt like I was on Newbury Street, running into friends hanging out on the sidewalk outside Tower Records, taking flyers that I'd stuff away and rediscover a week later, when I'm doing laundry.
David Brooks has an essay in this month's Atlantic that talks about how Americans, for all of their multicultural Benetton ideals, really just want to live with people who are just like them. The American thing can probably be written as "all human beings" but he makes an interesting point about by noting how, more now than ever, every neighborhood in North America tends to define itself by a critical mass of residents who share cultural traits. There are databases that can tell you which target markets live in your zip code, and geocoding software that allows retailers to see things like, say, the best neighborhoods for opening a new Crate and Barrel. Amazon Purchasing Circles do similar things, and the real life equivalent of that is jaunting between places like Haight St., the East Village or Atlanta's Little Five Points. The flyers on the wall might be for different bands, and there might be a preponderance of taco places here and sub shops there, but you'll still find head shops, vintage clothing stores and places selling the new Prefuse73 CD.
Every now and again, magazines run one of those "coolest places to live" feature that sound like an excuse for freelancers to pitch their current neighborhoods. But that whole business about sending out a message to all of your writers and listening to them try to upstage each other with their hipster cred seems so oldfashioned (though admittedly fun) ... I'd rather take a peek into the sales databases of Amazon and ask them things like, "hey, where've you been shipping the latest New Pornographers CD?" Or even, better yet, offer relocation recommendation services for upwardly mobile twentysomethings by giving them questionaires asking about culinary tastes, media collections and transportation preferences. Ah, if only it were 1998 again and venture capital grew on trees.
Later on, I was on Haight, walking up to Amoeba, and I saw John and Eva walking up with stacks of fliers in their hand. They were flyering for Meat, one of their epic scale loft parties ... a friend of mine once said that Shelter parties happened with such frequency that for a while people viewed our apartment as a substitute nightclub. John and Eva's parties have taken the "substitute" part out of the equation. The onstreet conversation was brief because we were going to see each other in an hour anyway for dinner, but John gave me a flyer before he left, and for a second, I felt like I was on Newbury Street, running into friends hanging out on the sidewalk outside Tower Records, taking flyers that I'd stuff away and rediscover a week later, when I'm doing laundry.
David Brooks has an essay in this month's Atlantic that talks about how Americans, for all of their multicultural Benetton ideals, really just want to live with people who are just like them. The American thing can probably be written as "all human beings" but he makes an interesting point about by noting how, more now than ever, every neighborhood in North America tends to define itself by a critical mass of residents who share cultural traits. There are databases that can tell you which target markets live in your zip code, and geocoding software that allows retailers to see things like, say, the best neighborhoods for opening a new Crate and Barrel. Amazon Purchasing Circles do similar things, and the real life equivalent of that is jaunting between places like Haight St., the East Village or Atlanta's Little Five Points. The flyers on the wall might be for different bands, and there might be a preponderance of taco places here and sub shops there, but you'll still find head shops, vintage clothing stores and places selling the new Prefuse73 CD.
Every now and again, magazines run one of those "coolest places to live" feature that sound like an excuse for freelancers to pitch their current neighborhoods. But that whole business about sending out a message to all of your writers and listening to them try to upstage each other with their hipster cred seems so oldfashioned (though admittedly fun) ... I'd rather take a peek into the sales databases of Amazon and ask them things like, "hey, where've you been shipping the latest New Pornographers CD?" Or even, better yet, offer relocation recommendation services for upwardly mobile twentysomethings by giving them questionaires asking about culinary tastes, media collections and transportation preferences. Ah, if only it were 1998 again and venture capital grew on trees.