Cities with the "Je ne sais quoi" factor.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Brazil is too big, with several regional flavours, for São Paulo or any other city being archetypical Brazilian city. But as it's big, full of migrants from everywhere, and that's why there is this cosmopolitan quality, without any regionalism that Berlin also possesses.

Yeah, even despite Rio and SP being right next door to each other, I doubt anyone would ever mistake one for the other. Brazil is very much like the U.S. in how much the different regions of the country vary culturally from each other.

[bossabreezes]

São Paulo for sure.

I think Rio is easily loved and recognized for many different reasons, but São Paulo is basically a whole world of differences smashed into one giant city. Too many reasons to love it, but these reasons are hard to explain and are better off just being felt.

I think finally it might get the recognition it deserves, since people are finally understanding it's reputation as being a war zone are the furthest thing from the truth.

But in short, it's a thriving diverse city with an amazing food, art, architecture and 'everything-else-imaginable'' scene.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, even despite Rio and SP being right next door to each other, I doubt anyone would ever mistake one for the other. Brazil is very much like the U.S. in how much the different regions of the country vary culturally from each other.

They're about a 5-hour drive apart, so not sure if that qualifies as right next to each other. But yeah...

[Blitz]

I'd have to agree with New Orleans. I was expecting it to be different but it was just...really different. There was something about Philadelphia that I enjoyed as well but can't put my finger on it.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JManc

I agree about Montreal being a pretty city but I never been to berlin but from what I've seen, it does have that 'face only ze mother could love' look about it but a feel rarely duplicated. It's high on places I want to visit.

At least pre-pandemic, both cities were undergoing a fairly sustained renaissance and polishing up that was eliminating a lot of their grittier side through new projects that were rejuvenating buildings and even entire areas.

I think they both were retaining at least some of their edgier but they already weren't nearly as "kick in the teeth from a Doc Marten boot" as they used to be.

[Steely Dan]

I don't think I've ever been to a place with Je ne sais quoi.

And if I ever have, I was oblivious to it (or too drunk to remember), whatever it is.

[dimondpark]

I think Ive traveled too much and have lived in so many farflung places all over the world that nowhere really makes me feel that way anymore. I havent been to Siberia, wait does Novosbirsk count as Siberia? Cause Ive been:-(

This thread reminds me of the slogan:

Keep__________Weird(fill in the blank)

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I don't think I've ever been to a place with Je ne sais quoi.

And if I ever have, I was oblivious to it (or too drunk to remember), whatever it is.

You may not remember, but it could be you were in some dive in Rochester NY and someone hit you with a bottle of Genesee beer, and you passed out. That might qualify as "genesee kwah."

[biguc]

Montreal and Berlin have a few things in common. They both have an island-in-a-lake-in-an-island culture, where the islands are greater-Anglo culture and the lakes are their national cultures. And there's something that happens in cities that fall from some height: spaces open up for the people and the culture opens to new ideas. This happened in both Berlin and Montreal, but it's also New York in the '70s and London in the '80s. Experimental living happens in these liminal spaces and new cultures emerge.

Berlin has been in this position, or process, for a generation now. As much as they're filling in interesting spaces with boring spaces, other spaces that were outright abandoned are now occupied. I like to think the culture has internalized this process to the point they can sustain it.

It's the location of the end of history. It's where communism smashed fascism, and liberalism injected itself into the wound and waited for the organism to die so that it could animate the corpus. But the cells are all still there: anarchist squats, Omas who snitch like the police are still the Stasi, sticker duels between fascists and antifascists on the train. It's vital; basic Wessis might read that as unrooted and ugly but it's dynamic and unpredictable and growing in a way that their dull cities aren't. It's a salve to West German unimaginativeness and rigidity.

Years ago, I dropped mushrooms with a girl and we talked about cities. I said that all I wanted was a place with great transit and a relaxed attitude towards public drinking and graffiti; the rest would fall into place. She told me that was Berlin. The first time we visited together I bought a beer from a dude with an ice cream cart and we watched people bomb the wall of the stadium in Mauerpark.

The second time we visited, we went to the club. I was convinced I would hate it--fist-pumping douches aren't my kind of people. And there was this fist-pumping douche ahead of us in line, purple face, no neck, wearing a wife beater, saying "'ey, 'ey, 'ey" to nobody, and I thought it was going to suck. But then the girl working the door--she was really cool, wearing a beret and a gun holster--told this big idiot to talk to the big guy beside her, and he told him he wouldn't fit in. The douche proved them right by calling them faggots and stomped off with his deltoids around his ears.

That was all I needed to see. I married that girl I ate mushrooms with and we moved to Berlin. My good decisions come in bunches. In a way I'm worried about what happens next, after Corona, but I'm excited to get back on the quest. Cities are complicated things. They should, in some measure, be irreducible; they should evince a je ne sais quoi. Reconciling a government that lets a half-dozen e-scooter companies litter the sidewalks, with going for a piss in the bushes and finding a half-dozen dudes sucking dick, shouldn't be possible with terms any more specific than "freedom".

[hauntedheadnc]

Tokyo. It's ugly, because it has a tendency to be completely flattened by one thing or another every forty or fifty years or so, and it looks as though it consists almost entirely of brutalist concrete parking decks. It's the biggest city on the face of the planet, which precludes it from being a relaxing, slow-paced, or low key sort of place by default. They do strange, terrible things to pizza, and my sole experience with Mexican food in Tokyo can best be described by the adage that once is curiosity, and twice is perversion.

And yet, I found Tokyo to be inexplicably comfortable. I have no idea why, but it felt like the city existed in some kind of eternal pleasant summer afternoon.

[Razor]

I agree about Montreal. You just can't put your finger on it, but it certainly has a special energy and vibe about it. To a lesser extent Philadelphia. NYC and Toronto, not so much. At least to me.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by biguc

Montreal and Berlin have a few things in common. They both have an island-in-a-lake-in-an-island culture, where the islands are greater-Anglo culture and the lakes are their national cultures. And there's something that happens in cities that fall from some height: spaces open up for the people and the culture opens to new ideas. This happened in both Berlin and Montreal, but it's also New York in the '70s and London in the '80s. Experimental living happens in these liminal spaces and new cultures emerge.

Berlin has been in this position, or process, for a generation now. As much as they're filling in interesting spaces with boring spaces, other spaces that were outright abandoned are now occupied. I like to think the culture has internalized this process to the point they can sustain it.

It's the location of the end of history. It's where communism smashed fascism, and liberalism injected itself into the wound and waited for the organism to die so that it could animate the corpus. But the cells are all still there: anarchist squats, Omas who snitch like the police are still the Stasi, sticker duels between fascists and antifascists on the train. It's vital; basic Wessis might read that as unrooted and ugly but it's dynamic and unpredictable and growing in a way that their dull cities aren't. It's a salve to West German unimaginativeness and rigidity.

Years ago, I dropped mushrooms with a girl and we talked about cities. I said that all I wanted was a place with great transit and a relaxed attitude towards public drinking and graffiti; the rest would fall into place. She told me that was Berlin. The first time we visited together I bought a beer from a dude with an ice cream cart and we watched people bomb the wall of the stadium in Mauerpark.

The second time we visited, we went to the club. I was convinced I would hate it--fist-pumping douches aren't my kind of people. And there was this fist-pumping douche ahead of us in line, purple face, no neck, wearing a wife beater, saying "'ey, 'ey, 'ey" to nobody, and I thought it was going to suck. But then the girl working the door--she was really cool, wearing a beret and a gun holster--told this big idiot to talk to the big guy beside her, and he told him he wouldn't fit in. The douche proved them right by calling them faggots and stomped off with his deltoids around his ears.

That was all I needed to see. I married that girl I ate mushrooms with and we moved to Berlin. My good decisions come in bunches. In a way I'm worried about what happens next, after Corona, but I'm excited to get back on the quest. Cities are complicated things. They should, in some measure, be irreducible; they should evince a je ne sais quoi. Reconciling a government that lets a half-dozen e-scooter companies litter the sidewalks, with going for a piss in the bushes and finding a half-dozen dudes sucking dick, shouldn't be possible with terms any more specific than "freedom".

I always look forward to your posts and this is why. I have never loved clubs either, but Mira & Chris at Kater Blau on the right night, right face control, beads of sweat, it's its own world.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I always look forward to your posts and this is why. I have never loved clubs either, but Mira & Chris at Kater Blau on the right night, right face control, beads of sweat, it's its own world.

As put on display in movies (see trailers below) Montreal (as you might agree) had a lot of this in the 80s and 90s and into the first couple of years of the 2000s, but it has undergone enough gentrification since then for that to be mostly gone. (Or at least, it no longer has it out-of-proportion for a city of its size.)

I haven't been there in a few years but the last time I was, as I said already, Berlin seemed to be transitioning in the same direction. Being the national capital and (increasingly uncontested) metropolis of an economic powerhouse and level 2 superpower will do that to you, no matter how raucous your semi-recent history has been.

And now, to the movies. (You'll see what I mean.)

https://vimeo.com/151571548

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm6XSDhj8mk

(Yeah, that second movie is by Denis Villeneuve, the guy who went on to make Arrival, and the remakes of Blade Runner and Dune.)

[Handro]

Charleston and Pittsburgh jump to mind, although I'm not sure if they count for your criteria. Both might be pretty easy to be pinned down; Charleston for its history and charm and Pittsburgh for its unrivaled (at least in the US) urban topography. Outside the US I'd throw Dublin on the list, it's actually a pretty dreary, boring city aesthetically, but it's the soul that makes it a pretty awesome place.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by biguc

Montreal and Berlin have a few things in common. They both have an island-in-a-lake-in-an-island culture, where the islands are greater-Anglo culture and the lakes are their national cultures. And there's something that happens in cities that fall from some height: spaces open up for the people and the culture opens to new ideas. This happened in both Berlin and Montreal, but it's also New York in the '70s and London in the '80s. Experimental living happens in these liminal spaces and new cultures emerge.

Berlin has been in this position, or process, for a generation now. As much as they're filling in interesting spaces with boring spaces, other spaces that were outright abandoned are now occupied. I like to think the culture has internalized this process to the point they can sustain it.

It's the location of the end of history. It's where communism smashed fascism, and liberalism injected itself into the wound and waited for the organism to die so that it could animate the corpus. But the cells are all still there: anarchist squats, Omas who snitch like the police are still the Stasi, sticker duels between fascists and antifascists on the train. It's vital; basic Wessis might read that as unrooted and ugly but it's dynamic and unpredictable and growing in a way that their dull cities aren't. It's a salve to West German unimaginativeness and rigidity.

Years ago, I dropped mushrooms with a girl and we talked about cities. I said that all I wanted was a place with great transit and a relaxed attitude towards public drinking and graffiti; the rest would fall into place. She told me that was Berlin. The first time we visited together I bought a beer from a dude with an ice cream cart and we watched people bomb the wall of the stadium in Mauerpark.

The second time we visited, we went to the club. I was convinced I would hate it--fist-pumping douches aren't my kind of people. And there was this fist-pumping douche ahead of us in line, purple face, no neck, wearing a wife beater, saying "'ey, 'ey, 'ey" to nobody, and I thought it was going to suck. But then the girl working the door--she was really cool, wearing a beret and a gun holster--told this big idiot to talk to the big guy beside her, and he told him he wouldn't fit in. The douche proved them right by calling them faggots and stomped off with his deltoids around his ears.

That was all I needed to see. I married that girl I ate mushrooms with and we moved to Berlin. My good decisions come in bunches. In a way I'm worried about what happens next, after Corona, but I'm excited to get back on the quest. Cities are complicated things. They should, in some measure, be irreducible; they should evince a je ne sais quoi. Reconciling a government that lets a half-dozen e-scooter companies litter the sidewalks, with going for a piss in the bushes and finding a half-dozen dudes sucking dick, shouldn't be possible with terms any more specific than "freedom".

Exquisitely interesting story. Great read.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

Tokyo. It's ugly, because it has a tendency to be completely flattened by one thing or another every forty or fifty years or so, and it looks as though it consists almost entirely of brutalist concrete parking decks. It's the biggest city on the face of the planet, which precludes it from being a relaxing, slow-paced, or low key sort of place by default. They do strange, terrible things to pizza, and my sole experience with Mexican food in Tokyo can best be described by the adage that once is curiosity, and twice is perversion.

And yet, I found Tokyo to be inexplicably comfortable. I have no idea why, but it felt like the city existed in some kind of eternal pleasant summer afternoon.

I absolutely loved Tokyo. Could be my favorite giant city on the planet. I always thought nothing could touch New York City....but Tokyo irredeemably seduced me, notwithstandng its often grotesque ugliness. There is a bigness about Tokyo that even New York doesn't have. The kind where, even after visiting 3 times, like I have, you discover yet even more bustling nodes of development/entertainment. You could travel an hour on the subway away from the (alleged) city centre, surface, and find yourself still extremely deep in the extremely dense urban jungle. A gigantic but nonthreatening city. Shanghai and Seoul share many of these properties (well Shanghai doesn't have the naughty "fun factor" that Tokyo and to a lesser extent, Seoul, have), but in Tokyo, the gel has been fully set for a longer period of time.

[JManc]

Agreed about Tokyo; ugly but inviting.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

And yet, I found Tokyo to be inexplicably comfortable. I have no idea why, but it felt like the city existed in some kind of eternal pleasant summer afternoon.

I've always wanted to go to Tokyo. In so many photographs of Tokyo that I've seen, the city and/or its neighborhoods can be so ugly as to be beautiful. If that isn't "je ne sais quoi," I don't know what is. It seems to have this ordered disorder. I find it fascinating.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

^me too. I was blown away by Berlin, but I can't put my finger on why. Montreal, well, that's my hometown, but it has the secret sauce. Berlin reminded me greatly of Montreal.

Interesting you being these two up... I was in Berlin a little over 4 years ago for the first time, and while exploring the city extensively on foot, I was thinking “this feels kinda Montreal-y to me”.

I like both cities, but neither are places I’d necessarily want to reside for too long. The bleak Quebec and Prussia atmospheres chill me a bit too much... yet they share a familiar vibration that I could feel myself somehow slipping in line with and whiling away a couple bohemian years with a sexy girl in a small apartment.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I agree with Berlin. The other "it" city for me is Rio de Janeiro.

I’m pretty sure Rio’s attributes are apparent and quite easy to put a finger on!

Originally Posted by Crawford

I mean, yeah. Again, Germans (generally speaking) don't like Berlin, and non-Germans (generally speaking) like/love it. And it's (relatively) cheap and English-friendly (because foreigners/expats). So, yeah it's probably the best place in the Germanic world for "international" parties and it's probably easier to get laid, I guess. Yeah, I know I sound like an old fart.

Berlin, to me, feels like the standard anodyne "global city" that has no real attachment to anything local. Its history destroyed any rootedness. And it's really fucking ugly and in possibly the ugliest natural geography in Europe (that endless bleak Prussian/Polish/Ukranian plain).

And Tokyo and SP are archetypical Japanese and Brazilian cities. Berlin isn't a German city, really, it's a Prussian city that was a Cold War island and now serves as a center for something globalish.

This sounds like a good summation to me.

Originally Posted by Blitz

I'd have to agree with New Orleans. I was expecting it to be different but it was just...really different. There was something about Philadelphia that I enjoyed as well but can't put my finger on it.

I think attraction to New Orleans is easily described. It’s a deeply historic, vibrant, colorful place resulting from location and mix of cultures, where enjoyment and indulgence is central to its foundation... a true gumbo, to use the clichéd phrase. Old, tropical, colonial urbanity is a magnet for expression, style, and vice.

But I think Philadelphia does possess that je ne sais quoi... obviously it has the American history part... but its natural setting is rather boring and bordering on kinda ugly (easily the worst of the east coast megalopolis cities), it’s roots conservative Puritan, it’s decay rather depressing, and the attitude of its natives can reek of inferiority complex... yet there’s something that I really like about it. Why? Because it has that certain je ne sais quoi, I guess.

[Centropolis]

while the contemporary milieu is in decline - san francisco is still a pretty special place - at least to this midwestern boy. sitting on top of the marin headlands with the bay and downtown on one side and the sparkling pacific on the other is an unparalleled metropolitan panorama in north america in my opinion. looking across the city from hoyt tower and innumerable other vistas it feels almost like a scene from Inception - when im there it is The City and everywhere else is far away in grey scale.

i guess when you slip in doo doo downtown it may not go that way.