NP: "Chronic City"

[Monte Davis]

Malignd sez:

> I'm fond of the outer boroughs too and I certainly understand 
> your sentiments, but as someone ?? said, it isn't necessarily 
> either/or...

I lived 15 years in Manhattan, 15 in Brooklyn, and I'm with you: *any* big
city, certainly any world city, contains more worlds than any of us has time
to savor. And to the extent that "frat town" and "society people" signify
non-natives and aggressive money/status climbers, well... that's what cities
have been about for a long, long time, drawing young optimists in from the
sticks and enriching them, disillusioning them, or both. Meanwhile the
real-estate wheel keeps gentrifying one neighborhood as another, formerly
fashionable, slides downhill. 

Cities that stop doing that -- cities full of Real [Cityname]ites who've
lived there all their lives in stable, traditional neighborhoods -- are dead
or dying.

-Monte