On Cities

[aliseadae]

I like to explore cities. I like to feel the rush of their traffic, the way the people and things flow from place to place. How they feel about it, which neighborhoods are all business and which are filled with joy.

I know the Twin Cities really well and parts of Madison. I love to travel to Milwaukee because I get to look out onto an entire unexplored place. It has lovely architecture as well.

I walk through the city until I've felt the turns of its streets. I can't quite make it all the way around a city usually, but I learn to find my favorite spaces.

I like to find their strange corners and the new places in each one. Each city has many odd places. If I've found some, I'll visit them. At home I would go looking for the two story treehouse on my way back from the art supply store. In Madison, I have less of those places but one of them is Dobra tea.

I'd like to hear about where you live and what you like there. I'd like to hear about the places that you find magical. Recently I've been thinking about how I really don't know too many places that well and how I'd like to explore new ones. I know I like the Twin Cities. I know I like Madison. I know that, while I've not been there for very long at a time, I do like Portland. I'd like to visit more of New England. I haven't been to many places there.

So. Where do you live? Where have you been? What cities have you wandered through once, twice, a dozen times?

Fictional cities are a whole other realm. Reading books set in cities is enjoyable for these same reasons, for the joy of finding a new strange area along with the character.

Cities I know:
Minneapolis, St. Paul, Madison

Cities I've been to many times:
Santa Barbara, DC

Cities I've only been to once or twice:
Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Paris, San Jose, Milwaukee, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia, Duluth

Cities I'd like to explore:
Chicago, Milwaukee, Boston, Burlington, Montreal, Seattle, London, Edinburgh, Paris, Kathmandu, Santiago, Barcelona, Córdoba (in Argentina), New York and probably so many more. I'll add them as I think of them.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

I live in New York and have most of my life, but I went to college in Washington DC. It's sort of a fucked up place, and I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone for a long time -- everyone leaves -- everyone is there for 4 or 8 years because of the government or school. But it's one of the darkest, strangest, most pagan cities I've ever been. It has secret worlds and strange energy, and there were all sorts of weird buildings we used to love to sit on the steps of at night.

I've not been in San Francisco in years, although Patty and I are going for Labor Day, but I have an intensely personal weird relationship with Chinatown and Seal Rock. Despite having NO interest in New York's Chinatown, SF's Chinatown may be one of the places on earth I feel most comfortable for reasons unknown.

I can also speak relatively unfondly about Zurich, although there are a few parts I like. And despite having not been in Rome in 25 years, I find myself writing about it often. Sydney, though, despite only having spent a month there is the other place I think of at home. It's a strange mix of privilege and exile and suits my experiences more than other places. London's like New York in the 80s, and Brick Lane feels like home to me too. I belong there, the way I don't other places. But I don't know why.

Chicago's a place I have a deep fondness for. I've been there intermittently throughout my life and its architecture is what reminds me that I could never really live further west than there and be happy.

[aliseadae]

I'd like to see non-Manahattan bits of New York (as well as more of Manhattan). I have been to New York for one day and only one day and we spent all of it in Manhattan.

I like the bits of DC I see when I go there but I'm seeing bits of Maryland mixed in and seeing it through what my grandparents show me.

I'd like to go to more cities in other countries. I've only been to San Jose and Paris.

Chicago feels very familiar to me, despite the fact that I've only been there three times.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping I will learn how to find places I love in San Francisco this summer--it should help that I know a few people out there, but I will also be spending some time wandering the city alone.

The Twin Cities, of course, is a place I love. Other cities... well, you know, I think. Burlington, VT, where I've only been a couple of times but which I adore. Boston, too. One of the benefits of going to college out here has been exploring some of these new cities--if I were in undergrad in MN, I would probably just shuttle between campus and home.

[aliseadae]

I'd like to explore Burlington and Boston. I've never felt drawn to that portion of the country before but someone was showing me Contra dances from around her home in VT and it intrigued me. I'd like to go exploring there as I never have before. And yeah. Going to college here means that I've gotten to explore Chicago and Milwaukee (though not very much, particularly for Milwaukee) and gotten to know Madison really well. (Though mainly the isthmus.)

I'd like to go back to San Francisco too as I've only been once and I was 12 then.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Tucson, border city in the desert. Coyote's country, ringed by mountains, filled with spiny plants and endless skies. A multicultural city, just an hour from Mexico to the south, with a mix of English and Spanish and Native American and other cultures and languages as refugees from around the world make homes here. No shortage of tacquerias and spicy salsa. And while Arizona is known for its conservative politics, and we're not untouched by them, in Tucson you'll find some of the most radical liberals you'll meet, too. We were home to the Sanctuary movement, and we haven't forgotten it. And there's the land. It's all about the land in the end for me.

Which means other places I go have become as much about the land as about the cities within it, too.

Iceland's lava fields and mossy black stones and places of power, its geology and its stories.

New Mexico's green Gila wilderness, home to one of the few still-running rivers in the west, a wilderness which I'm still getting to know.

[aliseadae]

I've been to National Parks near Arizona and New Mexico but I've not been to any cities around there. I'd love to explore.

[guardian852.livejournal.com]

I would just like to verify that exploring Paris is pretty darn awesome - even away from the sights. For starters, I found a cafe that sold actual Grog for like $8.00 a glass and they wouldn't sell it to me. So now I have to go back and realize what I'm apparently missing!

So good for you and best of luck! It's a noble goal by any standard.

[aliseadae]

Yeah. There is so much of Paris that I'd like to explore. The catacombs, for one.

[carve037.livejournal.com]

Out of cities I've been to as something approximating an adult,

Cities I can navigate with great confidence:
Calgary, Minneapolis-St. Paul

Cities I have some navigational sense of:
Chicago, Detroit, Saigon, St. Cloud, Thunder Bay

Cities I've spent time in and am still lost in:
Colorado Springs, Denver

I'm probably doing Madison for my next degree come Spring 13 or so. Also have a week to go before I figure out where I'm going for the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society conference next year. Hoping it's Asia but it was Bangkok this year when I couldn't go, so it'll probably be somewhere in the West. :(

[aliseadae]

Madison's a great city!

I'd like to spend time in Canada.