Clean Is Not Enough
A while ago, Corin posted this Fran Lebowitz quote on his Facebook status:
“When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.”
The same could easily be said about San Francisco. I spent all day Monday walking around DC, and I was struck by how clean a city it is. I had forgotten how wide the white sidewalks are, how all the buildings are exactly the same height, how the streets all make a perfect grid, how it's all so clean and neat.
San Francisco is not. Back in the city for less then two hours, I went for a walk in my neighborhood and came across this little pile of trash on Turk, near USF. This is not a city of lawyers or even engineers. It's a city of amature artists. That may be an awful mess, but somehow it's a beautiful pile of trash, isn't it? I mean, who throws away a pile of VHS tapes, next to, but not inside a trash can? It could almost be an art installation.
In DC, every bar is the same bar. You can order the same buffalo wings and the same spinach dip at dozens of places. Every restaurant is the same restaurant, almost all steakhouses. Every coffee shop is either a Caribou or a Starbucks. Every place has three stars on Yelp. Not two-and-a-half, not four; three stars.
Everyone you meet in DC is a lawyer. Your former intern? In law school. Your old friend that wanted to build a malaria clinic in Mozambique? Junior associate at Gibson Dunn. Your college roommate? Lobbying for Patton Boggs. Et cetera, comma esquire.
San Francisco is gloriously incoherent. If you try to fit in here, she'll hit you in the jaw with an uppercut. If you listen to the same obscure snythpop band that I'm into, you're a poser. If you show up to your favorite cafe in jeggings, your crush will show up in a 70s track suit.
When you're making the rules for how 300 million Americans should live their lives, sameness is an appropriate context. When you're creating the art, style, poetry, sci-fi blogs, pesonal gadgets, synthpop, and cuisine to make life worth living for 300 million Americans, you need to break the rules.
