I was in the process of moving out of the east coast, closing out of this frankly overrated sector in our nation — I have a condo almost on the water and some other limited interests, and the real estate agent and bank were gladly willing to sell them and then all this devastating nostalgia hit me…
Although I now have a relationship and some business ties in the other part of the country, the east coast is finally meeting me where it matters: the food is excellent, the Bitcoin ATMs have even found their way into nautical supply stores and gas stations on the water, recreational dispensaries near the mall now serve up Colorado, California, or Vegas grade pre-roll doobies to unsuspecting tourists from far inland … it all comes too late, my sights are on other parts of the empire, but it is nice to see the east experiencing a kind of renaissance; in flouting everything its big brother D.C. has asked of it, the east coast is finally flourishing — a mix of old and new, San Francisco with only a fraction of the crime and lower fixed overhead costs for the enterprising corporations who are arbitraging away as America experiences a growing quality gap… some places are really awesome, and some places are just not.
Cities, airlines, banks … the quality gap is growing.
Some places, you can still have a truly great American first-class experience. And other places, well, they never recovered from COVID, and 9/11, and 2008, and everything else — some places are just so down and out that you can’t even trace a specific cause to their demise. But you can feel it, the loser vibes and sense of a place that’s living on past glory embers.
NYC is the model of an east coast city that can reinvent itself; the Bitcoin startups with rich anti-social people in flip-flops are welcome, the dispensaries are everywhere and proud, the futuristic skinny skyscrapers — true sky scrapers — are sprouting up all around Central Park, a form of architectural evolutionary adaptation, the nightlife a softer version than during the pandemic, where weed is welcome, bartenders are artisans with hard liquor as their artist’s palette, and conversations weave and wind into the night with beautiful people visiting from afar.
All are drawn to the legacy analog Atlantic geofenced social network known as NYC.
Maybe there’s only room for a few cities like that along the east coast, I don’t know. Certainly Boston has some catching up to do. Short of Los Angeles 2,500 miles away, can’t think of another city as “world class” as post-pandemic 2023 NYC, with currency exchange kiosks, dispensaries, Asian-language first restaurants, and other modern oddities first and foremost.
Was very impressed on my most recent visit as you can tell… Mayor Adams elevated from one painted as destructive Joker to a kind of founding father of the city archetype — remaking the city in his vision as a former cop who turned toward weed tolerance and crypto savvy, just as both things were becoming politically very popular on the east coast.
Borg-like, NYC chose to embrace and utterly assimilate the two hottest trends in American consumerism over the last 10 years, rather than shunning them as some other states and cities have chosen to do.
So I’ll continue to watch this east coast renaissance with a perch here, for now. Yet the midwest and Pacific have never been more valid or exciting parts of the country, to leave them is to immediately miss them — the Pacific for its sophistication and power, and the South-Midwest for the pure opportunity afoot, an orgy of latent oil money, crypto tolerance, Christian theology, pro-weed legislative wins, and agriculture 2.0 innovations.
I suppose to become gradually successful in America is to have more than one perch always, to always feel as if you’re far off from the center or heart of things, because there is no true center. Is that what keeps our vast nation together? Certainly, at an oyster bar, hotel, or pricy wine bar in DC, you don’t feel in the center of empire… it’s just another place, you can get identical wine vintages and oysters at a seafood bar in a major airport or train station anywhere within 1,000 miles.
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