Where do you -wish- you lived?

That Lou Reed line from European Son keeps coming back to me: 'You want to make love to the scene'. Yes, that's a New York feeling. There are always more stimulating cultural events going on than I can keep up with (though I really do try!). People here speak my language. The rest of the US is a foreign country.

I'm leaving here for Tokyo in two weeks, which has its own very powerful charm, but I will always want to come back to New York. Preferably to a bigger apartment. I'm missin

I hate where I live now (seedy North London), but it is possible to squeeze some value out of it.

What I need is a 'private income'. Work (of any kind) is overrated.

I'd give anything for a sea view Robin. You don't appreciate what you have (only joking).

Now if we *hadn't* been governed since 1979 (and especially since 1983) by parties that overwhelmingly pursued policies with the effect of homogenising this country, and turning us into just another province of the global free market where virtually every detail of our lives is dictated by the whim of said market, then I'd care about where I was going to live. But when you consider what *has* happened (23 years ... almost a quarter of a century, an immense time for essentially one ethos to rule) there seems very little point. "Travel broadens the mind" was always a cliche but it has finally lost what truth it has because the direction of modern British society is utterly opposed to broadness of places.

This isn't necessarily a criticism. Because of my age, and because it's all I know, I'd find it very hard to live in a society recast on pre-1979 lines. But what I do know is that if I expected any significant difference in my personal life if I upped sticks tomorrow, I'd be fooling myself, and I'd know it.

Possibly not, but it *would* influence you in ways you mightn't expect.

Which places value being a lazy shit and will offer me a living for it? oh i guess i already live in that place. i wish Toronto valued it this much.

Nick, stop patronising me about my choice of city and maybe I'll stop patronising you about your choice of tittie. Deal?

Inglesfield: the truth of the matter is (as you know) that I don't see any value or importance, apart from the superficial kind, in simple physical differences between places. Yes, I like the sea, and I don't usually like London back streets. But if the people living in each place have been taken in entirely the same direction in terms of "native culture" and worldview over a prolonged period, then what difference does it make? It may make a difference to others, but not to me, because I crave genuine difference in terms of how people see the world and what they consume. And as that is so rare these days, I may as well stick around in my home patch, for now.

Chicago
Vancouver
London
Washington DC
Los Angeles
San Francisco
New York City
Amsterdam
Edinburgh

Oddly, you've just described Portland, which does however have a Labour MP. Southend, crucially, has Teddy Taylor and David Amess (yeah, the Brass Eye cake thing, that one) to count against it.

Nowhere south of D.C. (no great loss AFAIC, I'm not very Red State friendly [sorry Ethan]). But it's more because I hate hot, sticky, clammy weather (the real drawback of NYC during the summer).

As to whether it it makes a difference where you live - I depends on what you spend your time doing, and what's important. I could essentially do my job from anywhere given an ISDN line and a laptop, and I'd be more relaxed and have more time if, say, I overlooked the sea from the South Wales coast. With property prices as they are, my house could probably have a small recording studio in it too. I could *get* whatever I need from city life by travelling to Cardiff, but I would still miss like hell being *in* (or at least on the edge of) London. So while work time would be better, leisure time may well disappoint.

It may be that the things people comsume there and here are closer than they were twenty years ago, but I'm not even sure about that.

I love living in London, as I reminded myself this morning when I took the lazy route to work on the bus across Waterloo Bridge. But I want it to go FASTER!

Tim H:

"It may be that the things people consume here and there are closer than they were twenty years ago, but I'm not even sure about that."

I can't believe what I've just quoted. I'm amazed someone as obviously intelligent and well-informed as Tim seems so ignorant of the very nature of social and cultural change in this country (note: this is not a statement of opinion either way *about* the change, just what appears to me to have happened).

The point I made was that I'm not sure that the *difference* between what people consume in London and what they consume in (say) Exeter has changed very much in twenty years. This is from direct but unmeasured experience: twenty years ago the things you could get in the shopping centres in Exeter were much the same as the things which I found in London, but the range and the prices were different... Away from the 'High Street' London offers a huge range of things which Exeter doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of. This is much the same now. I don't know how you'd even begin to measure it, but I chose the period of twenty years because I've been coming to London to shop for about that long. I also stand to be corrected on the above, of course.

Your point about there being "no genuine cultural differences" within the UK remains to be substantiated, by the way. Sometimes your analysis of culture seems based a little heavily on what's on the shelves and seems not to take enough account of the way people live and work together. This may apply to only to the parts of your analysis which I see on the internet, of course.

"sometimes your analysis of culture seems based a little heavily on what's on the shelves"

because this is what people have been encouraged in post-1979 Britain to base their lives around more heavily than they ever did before

"and seems not to take enough account of the way people live and work together"

because this is what people have been encouraged in - again, I'm afraid - post-1979 Britain to regard as relatively unimportant compared to how things were before. 20 years ago the new society, where people define themselves by what they consume rather than where they lived and how they worked and who they worked with, was only in its infancy and had yet to receive the electoral kick of June 1983 that turned it into the orthodoxy.

*This* is what I'm talking about. I know I'm slanted towards analysing consumer culture and against analysing the collectivist and the communal, but it seems to me that this merely reflects changes in *priorities* among British people which were, 20 years ago, only just beginning (there were still collectivist / Butskellite statements, such as British Transport Films' "Partners In Prosperity" from 1980, being made in the early Thatcher era).

Of course I'm not trying to suggest that London and Exeter are utterly indistinguishable *when you see them* - I'm not that much of a fool - or that the range of things available instantly in the two cities is the same - I'd have to be an even greater fool to think that! I'm thinking more of the kind of revolution that maintains surface differences, leaves the edifices standing, but chips away at their original meaning, which is what I think we've had. I remember Tangents running a piece a while ago - I can't recall who by, though it wasn't Fitchett or Loydell or indeed Hopkins - about a club the writer had in Exeter about 15 years ago: when he described how *other* even something like "Walk This Way" seemed there and then, and I thought about the kind of life I live now, the rush of realisation of rapid, dramatic social change swept through me like it rarely has before or since.

Ultimately I'm an amateur historian. If that's how my writing seems to Nick - and I get the impression he's referring to me and possibly Inglesfield as well - then maybe that's inevitable. But it doesn't make it worthless.

I guess people have been encouraged to ignore the social aspects of their behaviour, but that doesn't equate to regional culture having become homogenous. Culture is much more robust than that, although it may not seem so if you concentrate too much on the product ranges in high street shops. It seems to me that it is all the more crucial for people like you to pay attention to differences in regional culture rather than consciously choose to ignore them or write them off completely (and then going round saying I sound ignorant for questioning what you say).

What I will say - and this may well surprise you - is that since our earlier discussions I've broken all ties with Common Ground and am increasingly wary of their approach. The ways in which I look for differences now (and I *do*, I just don't always track them down) are more individual and, perhaps, more likely to find interesting points in the lives of a much wider range of people, rather than just middle- class arts-and-crafts enthusiasts.

Local difference is important and to be cherished. Coming at the thing at the level of the personal seems the right place to start, to me, both from the point of view of studying / understanding and from the pov of actually making things happen.

I want to see if Gainseville is really the punk rock wonderland it's potrayed as in so many fanzines/record inserts. Or at least if it's comparable to Providence in terms of exciting music scene.

I've lived in most of the cities I would like to, and might move back to some (Austin/NY) but overall, "where you are is where you're meant to be."

Dallas-love.

Save your cash: Gainsville is pure college town. West Coast is creepy? Depends where you're talking about. The hookers and drug dealers (if that's your image) don't just exist there; they can be found anywhere.

I want to see if Gainseville is really the punk rock wonderland it's potrayed as in so many fanzines/record inserts. Or at least if it's comparable to Providence in terms of exciting music scene.

It might be, but don't move here (FL) if your imagination isn't based on fact, else you may be begging to get away from here too....2 days after you move.