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  #101  
Old Posted May 22, 2020, 5:44 PM
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sopas ej sopas ej is offline
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Originally Posted by ChrisLA View Post
The few things I knew about San Francisco as a kid growing up in LA in the early 70’s from the commercial was rice o roni was a favorite treat. I knew it was hilly and they had a famous bridge. I also knew I had relatives in Oakland whom came down to LA often and it was close to SF. I also got the impression Oakland was some sleepy country community, and didn’t realize it was big city too.

San Diego I thought was an amusement park, that name just didn’t give off a big city in my little head. I guess the commercials we see in LA advertising the San Diego Zoo and Sea World didn’t help.

Las Vegas in my mind was this huge city sort of like New York. It seems like that’s all the adult relatives would talk about in LA was going to Vegas on the weekend and gamble. Let’s just say when I seen it for the first time at 14 years old in 1978 it was shocking to see how small it was. The lights at night was pretty, but we arrived in the early morning driving in so you really got to see how it looks with out all of its glamour at night. Also back then I don’t even think the city even had a population of 200,000 so it was small and the Las Vegas Strip was much of nothing compared the present.
Regarding San Francisco, I have a similar experience myself growing up in LA in the 1970s and 80s. San Francisco was Rice-A-Roni, but also a fascinating place with steep hills, fog, cable cars, and the famous orange bridge. Oakland didn't enter my mind until much later, and I actually like it, along with Berkeley. SF, Oakland and Berkeley in my opinion are the most interesting places in the Bay Area, and all historically significant. Berkeley was the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement after all, among other things. Thanks to what happened at UC Berkeley, all college campuses in the US have areas where you can set up tables and hand out pamphlets and literature that you might not necessarily agree with (and can downright make you angry), but it's all about the freedom of speech. I also like reading about the Black Panthers and the whole Patty Hearst kidnapping, so Berkeley and Oakland play huge roles.

I also felt the same way as you about San Diego as a kid; to me it wasn't even a real city; as a kid, I just went down there with my family to go to Sea World. Thinking about it now, as a kid I probably only went to Sea World 2 or 3 times at the most. I went once as an adult when my sister's kids were little and we went there.

We differ on Las Vegas, though; as a kid, I also thought of it as not being a real city. Growing up, we would go to Vegas like once every 2 months, because my parents liked to gamble (they still do hehe), and they didn't have the Native American reservations with casinos back then. Back in the 1970s, my parents would drop my sis and me off at Circus Circus with rolls and rolls of quarters while they gambled. We thought it was fun, playing the arcade and carnival-type games, and watching the free trapeze shows. But back then, we never left the Strip, which was a lot less developed back then. We never went into downtown or the actual city of Las Vegas, so to me, Vegas was just casino/hotels on a very wide highway. I remember thinking as a child, 'where do the people here actually live??'
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Last edited by sopas ej; May 22, 2020 at 8:31 PM.
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  #102  
Old Posted May 22, 2020, 5:51 PM
JMKeynes JMKeynes is offline
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Ny
boston
philly
dc
chicago
la
sf
new orleans
miami
charleston
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  #103  
Old Posted May 22, 2020, 7:59 PM
IWant2BeInSTL
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every city and no city because nobody has bothered to define what the fuck pedigree is supposed to mean in the context of cities.

Quote:
ped·i·gree

/ˈpedəˌɡrē/

noun

1. the record of descent of an animal, showing it to be purebred.

2. the recorded ancestry, especially upper-class ancestry, of a person or family.
i really don't understand the point of threads like this.
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  #104  
Old Posted May 22, 2020, 8:26 PM
JAYNYC JAYNYC is offline
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Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL View Post
i really don't understand the point of threads like this.
for the OP to prove (and get off on) how many people agree with his / her list of cities that have pedigree.
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  #105  
Old Posted May 22, 2020, 10:17 PM
Razor Razor is offline
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Originally Posted by JAYNYC View Post
for the OP to prove (and get off on) how many people agree with his / her list of cities that have pedigree.
Sure.. I listed 4 cities over 6 pages, so whatevs!..

Last edited by Razor; May 22, 2020 at 10:30 PM.
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  #106  
Old Posted May 23, 2020, 3:21 AM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc View Post
I always had the impression of Berlin as a hard, mean sort of place -- a sort of brutalist Gotham City.
It's a city of commieblocks, large master-planned neighborhoods, and formerly gritty, now gentrified apartment rows.

Definitely not beautiful, but quite interesting.
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  #107  
Old Posted May 25, 2020, 2:58 PM
Miu Miu is offline
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Berlin is kinda an underachiever within Germany and an overachiever everywhere else.

Within (Western) Germany, Berlin is seen as poor and undesirable, and kinda on the frontier; practically Poland. Also considered very unrepresentative of German norms and values.

Outside Germany, Berlin is considered the trendy, progressive face of the nation.
Berlin is not at all considered undesirable by West Germans - it regularly tops the list of most popular cities in Germany, ahead of Munich and Hamburg.

The cultural gulf between Berlin and the rest of Germany is smaller than that between Paris and provincial France or London and the rest of the UK. It's true that Berlin is much less central to German identity than, say, Paris is to France, but that has more to do with Berlin objectively being less important in the German context than with its supposed alienness.

Now, there isn't really an equivalent to Berlin's weirdness in Germany or really anywhere in the Western world these days - at least not on this scale - but many of the things that make Berlin Berlin are really just a more extreme, in your face expression of West German norms and values, or at least a subset of them.
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  #108  
Old Posted May 25, 2020, 3:20 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by Miu View Post
Berlin is not at all considered undesirable by West Germans - it regularly tops the list of most popular cities in Germany, ahead of Munich and Hamburg.
Most popular for what? Not for living or working. Berlin is objectively poorer than the other major German cities.

And I think you're discounting the cultural gulf. Germany doesn't have a unified cultural identity like France, even in Western Germany. Bavarians aren't that similar to Frisans. My Swabian grandma barely spoke proper German. Germany is analagous to Italy, a relatively young country that culturally functions more like a federation. And the former DDR states are far more distinct.
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  #109  
Old Posted May 25, 2020, 3:54 PM
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SignalHillHiker SignalHillHiker is offline
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Originally Posted by Razor View Post
This is just for discussion and fun.

My criteria for having Pedigree is not necessarily largeness, but it has to have a style, some sort of notoriety, and something signature about it.

For example, I think that Chicago has lots of pedigree for threefold.

1) It was the birthplace and home of the electric blues scene in the 50's.
2) Al Capone and gangsters. I can see the trench coats and Tommy guns.
3) Chicago Deep dish pizza.

More and why?
Speaking specifically to pedigree, some surprisingly small cities have it within their region. Anyone in my city, for example, who wears Lululemon, uggs, and posts Instagram photos with Starbucks coffee will mention going to Halifax, Nova Scotia, for back-to-school shopping or the like. To them, there's a definite pedigree there.

For the rest, there's definitely a pedigree to saying something is from Montreal, Quebec. Even friends who aren't like that at all, they will always gleefully mention when a pair of shoes or bathroom tile is from Montreal. Not in that middle-class-snobbery way, but in a can-you-believe-my-good-fortune way.

As for culture... age and isolation (whether geographic, linguistic, or whatever else) are key for cities smaller than the world-leading tier. Whether you assign pedigree to that city's culture is a matter of personal preference. Iqaluit, St. John's, Hamilton (Bermuda), etc. all have their own thing going on because they're far enough away from direct, daily influence of other cities.
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  #110  
Old Posted May 25, 2020, 5:08 PM
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MonkeyRonin MonkeyRonin is offline
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Most popular for what? Not for living or working. Berlin is objectively poorer than the other major German cities.

Isn't Berlin one of the most visited and fastest growing cities in Europe now? I'd have to image that West Germans would account for at least some of that. And if not Berlin, then which city would be the most popular amongst Germans?
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  #111  
Old Posted May 25, 2020, 7:34 PM
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Yuri Yuri is offline
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Originally Posted by Miu View Post
Berlin is not at all considered undesirable by West Germans - it regularly tops the list of most popular cities in Germany, ahead of Munich and Hamburg.

The cultural gulf between Berlin and the rest of Germany is smaller than that between Paris and provincial France or London and the rest of the UK. It's true that Berlin is much less central to German identity than, say, Paris is to France, but that has more to do with Berlin objectively being less important in the German context than with its supposed alienness.

Now, there isn't really an equivalent to Berlin's weirdness in Germany or really anywhere in the Western world these days - at least not on this scale - but many of the things that make Berlin Berlin are really just a more extreme, in your face expression of West German norms and values, or at least a subset of them.
That was my impression too. Berlin, at least culturally, felt more international/modern than Frankfurt, Munich or Hamburg. All of them had this a bit provincial, more inward looking.

And statistically speaking, Berlin is closing the economic gap against the average Germany.
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  #112  
Old Posted May 25, 2020, 7:38 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Frankfurt is one of the most boring places I've ever been. Berlin is one of the most interesting.
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  #113  
Old Posted May 25, 2020, 11:16 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Frankfurt is one of the most boring places I've ever been. Berlin is one of the most interesting.
I liked Frankfurt, maybe because I had a low expectation. Business-wise, it's very international, but when it comes to nightlife, it's incredibly limited. I loved their Apfelwein places though.

Nightlife wise, Munich is uptight and Hamburg incredibly dated. I won't talk about Cologne, spent just a day there but I heard only Berlin fares better.

Berlin is really mind blowing. I live in a city several times bigger and it's always are on those top lists of world's best nightlife and even compared to it, Berlin impresses.
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  #114  
Old Posted Jun 18, 2020, 8:53 PM
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For me personally it is Barcelona! I have been to this city over 10 times and every single time it lets me experience some new emotions. Its charisma is about people, about atmosphere in the air, about architecture. Totally awesome place! Curious enough but property in Spain is much more affordable than in my native Toronto. I looked through the catalough https://virtoproperty.com/property-for-sale and it turned out that a great apartment can be bought for some 200 k euros. That is a real bargain for what I saw.

Last edited by Brave; Jul 6, 2020 at 6:31 PM. Reason: additional info
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