When I was growing up, people used to ask the question, "Are you a city person or a country person?" I always had a hard time answering it. I loved the outdoors, the smell of the forest and the lakes, going camping with my family, and the peaceful feeling of being connected to the earth. But I also loved going into the city (for me, the city was Boston), which had so much to see and do. I loved its energy and the stimulation. I loved the museums, architecture, events, and (as I got older) shopping.
But I didn't grow up in the city or the county, I grew up in a suburb.
When I was in school, that suburb was fine for me. There were places I could ride my bike, small bits of forest where the local kids could play, a couple of small lakes that were good for swimming, fishing, and exploring. The schools were good and I liked my teachers. But the older I got, the more boring I found the town. It didn't have easy access to the city or to the country. It didn't feel very international. There wasn't much to do there except for hanging out at the shopping mall. At one point, in my late teens or early 20's, I even felt like the suburbs were a place where culture went to die.
At around the same time that I was becoming increasingly unhappy with suburban life, I got the opportunity to move from the East Coast to the West Coast, to Berkeley to be exact. If any of you have been to Berkeley, you know that even though it does not have skyscrapers and is not very large, it is very much a city! And not only that, it is just a 20 min train-ride across the bay to San Francisco. It was eye-opening and energizing to experience actually living in a city, as opposed to only visiting one. For seven wonderful years, Berkeley was my home and San Francisco was my world. I had discovered that, although I love and need to be near nature ("the country"), I am at heart a city person.
When I lived in the Bay Area (the area around San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay is simply called the Bay Area by people who live there or are familiar with it), there was a columnist (similar to a journalist or blogger, a columnist writes a weekly "column" in the newspaper) who wrote about life in San Francisco. His name was Herb Caen and he had a sharp wit, was very observant, and had a wonderfully rich and expressive style of writing. It seemed like everybody in the Bay Area loved to read Herb Caen's columns.
Today, as I was reading SF Gate (the online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper), I came across a reprint of one of Herb Caen's columns. It's an old column, from 1963, but he could have written it yesterday. Well, actually, he couldn't have written it yesterday because he died in 1997, but you know what I mean; what he wrote is as relevant today as it was almost 50 years ago.
In his column, he talks about what makes a city a city. (No, that's not a typo. It's a set sentence pattern: "what makes (an noun) (a noun)." See me after class if you'd like examples or an explanation of this pattern.)
I'm posting the column here because it's a beautiful piece of writing. I must warn you, parts of it will be difficult to understand. But the style and the feeling that he puts into his writing make it worth reading all the way through. Because this column is about getting a feeling for what makes a city a city, it's ok to skim (and even skip) over the parts that you don't understand - in fact I strongly suggest you do that. Read it just for the feeling, don't worry about every word. Enjoy the pictures he paints with his words, and think about how you feel about cities. Do you share the same feelings? Does he give you new idea about cities?
If you look at the column and are afraid that it is too long or that it's really too hard for you, just read the first 5 paragraphs and the last 3 paragraphs. Here is some vocabulary from those paragraphs to help you along:
Paragraphs 1-5:
'burb - Short form of "suburb." In the US these are often also called 'bedroom communities' of larger cities.
In parting - When we were leaving, when we were saying good-bye.
Watch it - A variation on "watch out" meaning "be careful." Here, it means that the speaker thinks the listener will be surprised when his city becomes bigger than San Francisco.
Merely - Only, just
State of mind - way of thinking, attitude
Clash - Fight together
Bittersweet smell of success and failure - A play on words with the set expression "the sweet smell of success."
Gauged - Judged, measured
The last 3 paragraphs:
Accessibility (n) - The state of being able to get to (or enter) a place easily or not.
Baggage - Caen mixes the idea of actual luggage and suitcases with the psychological idea of "emotional baggage," which refers to our own personal histories & emotions which make us who we are (and often not in a good way).
Assimilate - To absorb (take in) something and make it part of you. For cities this is both physical and abstract.
Poise - Balance and gracefulness. Dancers have physical poise. Diplomats are very poised in their relationships.
Supermarket satellites - Caen's poetic way of saying that suburbs are nothing more than satellites of a city, with a supermarket at their center. (Does a supermarket offer culture the way a traditional city center does?)
Formless vacuum - Formless = having no clear or definite shape. Vacuum = having nothing inside, not capable of supporting life.
Housing project - Mass-produced housing, usually apartments, usually built by the government. In the US these are traditionally built is cities, are usually ugly and very basic, and are for low-income (poor) people.
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