I
Speaking of whiteness, the most uncomfortable place I ever lived was Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, a place you definitely do want to visit but where at the time, it was virtually impossible for me to reside. I will not explain at length now, but the reason it was so uncomfortable was that it was only about 20% white, and these white people were sticking very close together to run the place. They were provincial and snobbish, they were very strongly committed to white supremacy. They were in charge of housing, funding, and academic advising for me. They were doing their best to recruit me to whiteness, and the onslaught was constant. The atmosphere of assault and coercion was as exhausting as Reeducation later was, and it had similar effects on me – although these subsided when I made some rebellious friends, and although I escaped much more quickly.
II
In commemoration of all odd urban experiences, everyone is invited to join in a game of listing your favorite cities, and those you find overrated.
Rules:
1. Paris and New York are not allowed on the “favorite cities” list. We must get a little more original than that.
2. All cities must have at least 1,000,000 people. San Francisco and New Orleans, for example, are not allowed. Cuzco is not allowed, although unbelievably, it is now larger than New Orleans. Port of Spain is absolutely prohibited, its metropolitan area being no larger than that of Santa Barbara. This meme is about bigger cities: Barcelona, Chicago, Houston, Marseille.
3. You may put five cities on each list. You may also list five runners-up, should you so wish, and provide comments.
My lists:
FAVORITE: Lima, Los Angeles, Madrid, México, São Paulo.
Runners-up: Copenhagen, Havana, Lisbon, Marrakesh, Rome.
OVERRATED: Buenos Aires, London, Salvador da Bahia, Santiago de Chile, Rio de Janeiro.
Runners-up: None come immediately to mind.
Comment: I list these cities as overrated because they have seemed to me to be too obviously dominated by really stuffy old bourgeoisies. I will admit that all of them are beautiful – except Santiago de Chile, whose beauty level is in my view very close to that of Baton Rouge.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Never heard of such a thing. Bahia is a multiplural city open to the different groups that may want to inhabit it. And it’s lively.
Something to think about, yet…
Santiago de Chile always looks so pretty in photos – except for the smog :-\
You like Los Angeles?! It’s still #1 on my worst list. Though I do like walkable cities, which is why London ranks on my favorites list.
Pistolette – Yes, I am perverse. Los Angeles, Mexico City, S. Paulo, they are all big, smoggy, industrial, unpretentious, hard working, and chock full of culture. Part of why I like L.A. is that it is just so surrealistic, it is funny. But it is also very heavily ethnic and very heavily working class, and there is always something new to find. And there are all these people there from da nint’ ward, and they have conserved their accents! Walkable cities, London, you have a point. My list is very subjective and intended partly to be iconoclastic. Santiago – yes, it looks pretty in pictures – I was amazed when I actually saw it, and it wasn’t even during the smoggy time of the year!
Andy – That’s only what they say in tourist brochures (said Z snarkily.) People from the River Plate believe it. And they never leave the tourist zones – and stick around in Porto da Barra which is youth-oriented and also basically white – although a person from a less heavily Black city might think it was “multicultural” because there are always a few persons of color around in cities as Black as Salvador.
Certain Black Americans who go on carefully guided tours, stay in five star hotels, and do not speak Portuguese, also think Bahia is culturally open. People treat them well as long as they know they are Americans, because they do not want to lose their reputation abroad as a multicultural city. If they don’t know you’re American and don’t know you, they behave quite differently.
Really the place is run by this oligarchy of slavocratic families which has been in place for 400 years. And in addition, the period I am talking about is just after the end of the Brazilian dictatorship, so there were many features of and distortions from those terrible years still in place. But I’m white and I was often invited to all-white parties and so on, and you do not want to hear what people have to say about race in such venues. And at Jorge Amado’s induction into the Bahian Academy of Letters, all the guests were white, all the camerapersons were mulatto, and all the servants were Black. Typical situation.
White people did not go to the beach on Sunday because Black people had Sunday off and went to the beach then. White people also had Saturday off, so they went Saturday. What they *said* about this is, of course “Oh, the weather was much nicer on Saturday.” They were also prone to saying “Oh, I love Black people, you can tell because I slept with one once, and I even give money to the child sometimes.” Etc. etc. etc. You do *not* experience all of these things if you go as a tourist, though, or if you don’t live / work / study there and find out how things work.
Some Americans and people from the Cono Sur were more used to hearing this kind of language than I was, and were less uncomfortable with it than I was. Because of living there, though, I learned a lot about how to deal with such situations. It was *very* stressful, but also *very* educational.
Yeah, more suggestions, Prof. Please?
My favorites, Baltimore and Albuquerque, are too small!
You are far too cruel to London! I love London.
The architecture in Los Angeles is hideous. When I used to have to go into L.A. I was totally stressed out. It is ugly, the aura is thick and nasty, the feeling of potential death by automobile is always one thought away, the people seem hollow and opportunistic, a constant fight to keep everyone’s hand out of my pocket is expected, guaranteed, and the service at Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘n Waffles sucks eggs, oh, the public transportation is completely craptastic, and service employees, regardless of what the service is always seem to be prepared for a fight at the slightest question or expectation of service. Some of the rudest people I have ever met in my life. Recently when we went on a mini vacation I was totally off guard when people were speaking to us, I had to remind myself that we were not in L.A.
Houston has some pretty areas, around Herman Park, Rice University, Allen Parkway area, even part of the Braes Bayou around Meyerland, but overall it is too spread out and ugly. The temperature and humidity is enough to make someone homicidal. Oh, parts of Bellaire are pretty as well as River Oaks, but that is well known. There used to be a saying in Houston, “If you cannot make it in Houston you cannot make it anywhere.” This used to be true, perhaps still so. There always seem to be a job in Houston, not necessarily a good paying one, but a job nevertheless. I did always like visiting the Jacinto Monument and the Battleship of Texas but if viewed in a larger context it is in a very ugly area, not too far from Deer Park and the Houston ship channel. Yuck. Oh, but Sea wolf park was nice too but I’m not sure if that is technically still in Houston. You know what it is ugly about Houston? It is too industrial, or at least the industrial areas are not confined, they are rather sprinkled around everywhere. Tranquility Park downtown is all right, so is the Houston Public Library. However, one only has to go half a mile and run into some factory or industry complex.
See? I’m perverse. I like Houston. However I have never spent serious time there, if I did I might have terrible opinions of it.
On London: the cities I listed as overrated, it doesn’t mean I don’t like them, I do.
Albuquerque and Baltimore are nice. For this size city one needs a different meme though. Actually there is a website that calculates, based on a questionnaire, where you should live. I should try to find the address. It said I should live in Baltimore. Andy, your tone sounds dismissive. Remember, you are the guest here. I have already given a bunch of suggestions. For more, you have to do the meme yourself, or invent one like it, maybe with different city sizes or other differences in rules.
I found on wiki what I was trying to get at about Houston:
Houston, the largest city in the United States without zoning regulations, has expanded without land use planning. Voters rejected efforts to have separate residential and commericial land-use districts in 1948, 1962, and 1993.
Rather than a single central business district as the center of the city’s employment, multiple business districts have grown throughout the city in addition to downtown which include Uptown, Texas Medical Center, Greenway Plaza, Westchase, and Greenspoint.
Yes. I always vote for zoning. But I am hungry for metropolitan energy and so I find myself forgiving Houston. You should see what they’ve done to Baton Rouge, it’s a mini-Houston now yet still provincial, it looks horrible and the traffic is awful.
We should all meet in Copenhagen, you’ll like it, you can walk and the public transportation is good.
P.S. The quiz is called “Find Your Spot” and it is a commercial real estate thing, so I’m not linking it, but you can google it. I just retook it. It said I should live in Little Rock, choice #1 … weird for me, no beaches, and I have never been there, but I remembered that this was the #1 selection for me when I took the quiz before. WEIRD. Albuquerque is #2. It asks how much you want to pay for a house, I said under $200K so obviously, it did not give me New York. I went back and told it look, money is no object, and it STILL gave me Little Rock.
It also recommends Baton Rouge – Lord, I can only take BR a day at a time, prefer to sleep out of town and have days off from it – and San Francisco. STRANGE combination.
Meanwhile, this test: http://www.selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=city – said I should live in coastal California, in a city, and listed a few other quite reasonable places as well. But it also said DALLAS, which I hate.
If I had made a WORST CITIES meme, I would have put Dallas and Ft. Worth on the list.
By this population criteria, I can list none of my favorite cities. Dayum.
Joanna – you and Tom need a different meme. I’m hoping for one! My theory was that there are just too many mind-boggling choices at lower population levels.
It is interesting – peoples’ reactions to this are demonstrating to me how extremely urban I really am. I thought it was just a preference shared by many, but now I am starting to realize it is an unusually strong one dans mon cas.
Haha. I took the second test you gave and I got #1 Honolulu and #2 New Orleans. Interesting.
I lived in Sao Paulo for a year and a half and loved it, and I am definitely not a big-city person. The only thing I missed was water. Living in New Orleans, I’ve always been close to some body of water. I don’t necessarily need a beach. But I do need water.
Athens!
Mexico City!
Los Angeles!
Po Boy – that is funny! And I’m glad you loved SP too! No water, it is true, but beautiful ocean coves beyond the Serra do Mar.
RG – Oh good, someone else “gets” L.A.! Athens – that’s intriguing – I’ve been there briefly, but I have not studied it. It rained and an Egyptian masseur gave everyone in our hostel a free massage. He gave me a big lecture about how I needed to start yoga, now. Out in the country old men poured us ouzo and smiled, and we communicated via gestures. Tell us more Athens stories!
Favourites: Kathmandu, Cape Town, Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi, and Singapore (city-state).
Overrated: Los Angeles, London, New York, San Diego, Toronto.
Peace,
Ridwan
How excellent, five favorites I have never been to! How terribly touristy is Kathmandu? Compared, say, to Cusco? I am sure I would adore New Delhi, and I would like the visuals and air of Cape Town at the very least. But of these I most want to visit Kathmandu, and/but I am always afraid it will be overrun by hippies with credit cards … is it?
Kathmandu around Durbar square is touristy no doubt. But Kathmandu is three cites roled into the Kathmandu valley and if you look deeper the tourists herds, tourist gimmicks, become thinner.
But Kathmandu will beckon you to see the rest of Nepal too. Not just base camps toward the North but hilltop ancient Newari towns like Bandipur (a five hour bus ride from Kathmandu).
I stomached the tourists, mostly European, and embraced the Kathmandu despite.
I have not been to Cusco so can’t compare.
I found more ‘credit card hippies’ in India. Particularly Israeli ones in holy cities in Rajastan and on beaches in Goa.
Delhi is frenetic but the layers of civilization are amazing.
Cape Town is a colonial city … but you can escape and get to the areas where the people live … you know what I mean.
Ridwan
It is unfair to restrict to such large cities! Cities are a treasure to many people no matter their size, and smaller cities should have their due! (How else can I shout out for Hartford??)
Leigh, Tom, Joanna, that’s a different meme!!! I figured, there are so many smaller cities, how would one ever decide? Plus, this started out as a meditation on Salvador da Bahia!!! Define the new meme, and we’ll all do it!!! 🙂