Cities and Ambition

Re:Cities and Ambition by hugh on Tuesday May 27, 2008 @07:09PM (#201534)

Places I've lived:

Sydney: You should spend more money on real estate.

Melbourne: You should spend more money on clothes.

London: You should have been here 150 years ago.

Davis, CA: You should leave Davis, CA.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by menloparkbum on Tuesday May 27, 2008 @09:46PM (#201669)

my list:

brooklyn: you should be hipper

cambridge: you should be smarter

berkeley: you should only eat organically grown vegetables

tokyo: you should be japanese

san francisco: you should become as crazy as most everyone else, but not quite as crazy as the homeless people

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Re:Cities and Ambition by shiro on Tuesday May 27, 2008 @08:29PM (#201598)

Tokyo, Japan: Doing nothing, even for a minute, is a sin.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by fogus on Friday May 30, 2008 @03:52PM (#204800)

Having spent some time in Tokyo, I must say that the most striking thing for me was that at any moment of the day, the streets are flooded with people going too and fro. It was amazing. -m

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Re:Cities and Ambition by janm on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @10:06AM (#202080)

Sydney is real estate, through and through.

London: "You should have been here 150 years ago" is essentially "you should be more aristocratic". I think that signal is strong in London. I have been at dinner with friends who started arguing about how far they had to commute on the tube (as a proxy for social class.) The English pretend to the world that it doesn't matter but it seems to matter deeply to them. This seems to be an English hidden rule; that is how the discussion started.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by motoko on Tuesday May 27, 2008 @09:45PM (#201667)

Places I've lived:

Mountain View, CA: We're not the Barrio (any more).

Toledo, OH: We're close to Detroit.

Bowling Green, OH: Attend a real university with your real high school friends!

Columbus, OH: Love Ohio State football (and basketball, if the season's wrong).

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Re:Cities and Ambition by imp on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @01:05AM (#201790)

Cleveland, OH: You gotta be tough.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by motoko on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @03:52AM (#201880)

My sister, who drives a car worth about $100, had her car window smashed picked clean of her collection of burned CDs in downtown Cleveland.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by tomh on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @04:03PM (#202552)

Moscow: You should be rich, or Russian. Preferably both.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by thepeople on Thursday May 29, 2008 @05:17AM (#203148)

Wrong. If we were to choose one message for Moscow it should be: "you must be powerfull."

If you are merely rich, your money can be easily taken from you by more powerful person in Moscow.

And if you didn't know, Russian is a second class citizen in Russia.

All in all, one message per city is insufficient. It all depends on the people around you.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by jsteele on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @08:22AM (#268396)

You hit the nail on the head: This whole essay is based on a false premise (which nonetheless is strongly believed by PG). Cambridge only seems to be a "smart" town if your social group consists of people associated with MIT, and you're only likely to end up in that social group if you were part of the middle class when you moved there.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by helveticaman on Friday June 06, 2008 @12:58PM (#210953)

Why exactly is Moscow expensive? I've never figured this out. Is there a shortage of land, or is it really, really inaccessible from land, or what?

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Re:Cities and Ambition by bootload on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @12:31AM (#201775)

"... Melbourne: You should spend more money on clothes ..."

No it's more like...

Melbourne: You live in the sports capital of a sports crazed country. You should go to the footy, the cricket, tennis and don't forget some new duds on cup day.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by astrec on Thursday May 29, 2008 @02:27AM (#203063)

You forgot to mention the obligatory beers at each event.

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Re:Cities and Ambition by netcan on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @08:29PM (#202786)

Tel Aviv: You should be moving faster. A lot faster. Dublin: Be wittier then smart. Melbourne: I agree. Its a confused message that definitely has to do with sports not clothes.

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