
Cities and Ambition (2008) - joelrunyon
http://paulgraham.com/cities.html
======
_delirium
Living for a few years in the Bay Area, I didn't really end up with the same
impression, though that could be my fault. My biggest impression was that the
Bay Area _wants_ to be extremely wealthy, but feels slightly inadequate about
it. There was a constant palpable rivalry with both NYC and Southern
California, a rivalry that was mostly one-directional. And on the Peninsula,
in particular, there was a strangely obvious class structure. In particular
the startup scene around Stanford was super-weird. I didn't know the Googlers
(wrong years), but the kids I knew ranged from "comfortably upper-middle-
class" to "extremely wealthy". Mostly my peers were their employees, not in
the founder social group; the founder social group had a remarkable ability to
raise "friends & family" money despite having no product (the most recent
raised $750,000 from a company in China owned by an uncle, to develop mobile
games). The demographics are so unbalanced that Stanford actually will give an
automatic full-ride scholarship to any accepted student whose family makes
under $100,000/yr, since not many admitted students qualify for it anyway.

Overall I don't really miss it, though I did like eating VC food and drinking
VC beer at the ubiquitous lavish parties. But the culture might be even
weirder than NYC, in terms of what it promotes.

~~~
allochthon
_There was a constant palpable rivalry with both NYC and Southern California_

Living in the Bay area, I can't say I relate all that much. You hear about New
York in the context of food and finance, and about LA in the context of
fashion and Hollywood. But not really in terms of a competition of some kind.
Maybe it's a peninsula thing.

~~~
michaelochurch
The true rich (> $10M net worth) of the Bay Area are the self-loathing ones
who wish they were in New York. I wrote about this:
[http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/What-is-it-like-to-
be-a-...](http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/What-is-it-like-to-be-a-member-
of-the-Silicon-Valley-elite/answer/Michael-O-Church)

The upper-middle class isn't nearly as preoccupied with location. You don't
really identify with a place if you can't afford to buy a house there. (Or, if
you do, you're a sucker.) The NYC envy of the Silicon Valley elite is mostly a
phenomenon of the VC/MBA circle. (I've never heard of L.A. envy. Maybe in the
'80s or '90s it was strong, but I can't imagine anyone having that now.)

------
awakeasleep
I have to call out Paul Graham's idea that social class is dropping of the
list of important things.

What it means changed a little, and I think it's now more important than ever.
The thing is, someone like PG never sees or interacts with anyone lower than
upper middle class. Other 'incompatible' classes are invisible to us.

There is a whole world of people in this country that he wouldn't even be able
to talk to. Depending on your state, between 59 and 80% of people graduate
high school. That 20-40% isn't dropping out because they're running a startup.

There is a class of people that takes advertisements at face value, as sources
of information. There is a class of people that doesn't value education...
There are millions of people that don't even have the same goals or life
values as a middle class people do.

PG you used the cliche "second class citizen" a bunch of times in this article
without thinking about what it actually means!

~~~
barry-cotter
_There is a class of people that takes advertisements at face value, as
sources of information._

Not in America there isn't. Well, not a social class. The amount of tv the
average American watches is insane, something like 4 hours a day. It is
impossible to watch that much tv without developing some rudimentary media
literacy. Maybe less, and less sophisticated than smarter, more educated
people but the number of people who think drinking Bud Light will actually
make them more popular and win them a hotter mate is pretty damned small.

I agree with almost everything else you said. I do suspect that every YC
cohort has at least one American who grew up poor by American standards
though. I'm sure they're underrepresented though.

~~~
awakeasleep
You have not worked with seriously underprivileged people. Poorness is related
to the lowest social classes in the USA, but they're actually defined by a
lack of the basic tools it takes a person to survive in modern society, like
literacy and numeracy. Anyone from any walk of life can become poor.

I'd be surprised if a single y-com company had a single employee that was
raised by functionally illiterate American parents. I'm not talking about a
child of immigrants either, but the intergenerational trainwreck of the
American underclass. Keep in mind that 14-20% of Americans are functionally
illiterate.

Take a minute to imagine what your life would be like if you couldn't really
read. I'm not making this up-- there are _lots_ of people who think McDonalds
is healthy because Olympic athletes are on the bag.

~~~
barry-cotter
You know what, you're right. I should have sanity checked against IQ. For the
18% or so of the population with 70 or below IQs literacy is pretty good and
functional literacy is miraculous.

Yeah, I've worked with dumb people but not unemployable stupid.

------
eshvk
> New York is pretty impressed by a billion dollars even if you merely
> inherited it. In Silicon Valley no one would care except a few real estate
> agents.

The only defining common factor of all the VC shops in the bay area is money.
Sure a lot of them made that money in tech but it is money that lets them have
power.

Also some anecdotal impressions:

I lived in SF for two years. I think the constant humdrum of tech
(specifically a strange breed of big data + machine learning + web tech) is
making the place intolerably insular. When I first moved there, I thought the
opinionated twenty something year olds who think that their youth and opinions
mean that they matter were cute. Now, it is just fucking insufferable.
Building a company shouldn't be purely about getting sold, acqui-hired or
building products that no one outside your iphone addled tech circle will use.

I think there is utility in moving out of the bay area to build real products.
I recently moved to NYC. The tech scene feels refreshingly small, surprisingly
under-dog like, I am reminded of Austin. Most tech folks I meet here are
mellow, there is also a large overlap with incredibly smart ex-finance people
who are humble and sociable.

Everything also doesn't seem to be focused on shipping your shitty product and
tweeting about it, there is focus on building something that is not primarily
focused on acqui-hired or VC-driven.

Also, more importantly, NYC is superior to San Francisco as a place for your
social life. The men:women ratio is way more balanced, you are constantly
reminded that your "coding skills" are not all that define you. When I first
came to interview here, I had serious misgivings about the place (the climate
is miserable), yet I think the thing that made me decide to move here was a
conversation I over-heard in a coffee shop between two girls. It was about
Python. The snake, not the language.

~~~
hnriot
I think you must have missed the good parts of SF, if you felt that your
coding skills defined you. Try Cole Valley, or the Lower Haight and skip SOMA.
I would take issue also with your men:women ration nonsense, SF is full of
women. I suggest you stop eavesdropping conversations girls are having near
you and get out more! NYC isn't the answer. NYC is an amazing place, it's full
of life and vitality, but so is San Francico. NYC has better galleries, but SF
has better weather. Might I remind you right now it's 70's in SF while you
have snow...

~~~
_zen
As a native to NorCal, might I remind you this weather is incredibly unusual,
and we're in a drought. I dislike the cold, but we need rain. If I wanted it
sunny all year long I'd move to San Diego. This lack of rain is irritating
many northerners right now because it's not habitual. The only people okay
with it are non locals.

The other problem with this pressure ridge, is zero precipitation is horrible
for your skin. You need lotion and humidifiers to avoid cracked skin,
especially through sleeping.

I like warm weather in the Spring and Summer, but most Northern California
residents enjoy living here for the seasons. It's almost depressing without
them.

~~~
wes-exp
_zero precipitation is horrible for your skin_

Despite the lack of rain, humidity right now in the Bay Area is still not
horribly low by national standards. Looking at the local forecast I am seeing
humidity in the range of roughly 40% - 60%.

Taking into account the effects of indoor heating and an outside temperature
well above freezing, this is still pretty pleasant compared to what happens in
cold climates _indoors_ when you heat frigid outdoor air up to room temp. Cold
air does not hold as much moisture, and when your furnace heats it up, the
amount of moisture content stays the same but the carrying capacity for
moisture increases, effectively making it very dry.

The upshot here is that even if it is a bit dry in the Bay Area right now,
it's still nothing compared to the bone dry indoor air you would get somewhere
where the winters are actually cold.

------
sanj
This may be my favorite line from a PG essay of all time:

 _So the kind of people you find in Cambridge are the kind of people who want
to live where the smartest people are, even if that means living in an
expensive, grubby place with bad weather._

I say this as I build out an addition on my already expensive house, while
holed up in a AirBnB victorian with drafty windows watching wet, sloppy snow
make the streets into mess.

On the other hand, I've chatted about web stacks with my landlord, auto-
correlation functions with a dinner guest, toy accordion repair with my
neighbor, and depth-perception optical nerve cross talk with my other
neighbor. That's in the last two days.

I love it here.

~~~
swalsh
You'll find some of the most intelligent public conversations that can be had
on the Red Line.

------
snogglethorpe
This was a slightly silly essay that seems to essentially be more "places PG
likes" than any sort of objective analysis...

Great cities certainly do have a vibe, but Cambridge (MA), although it's a
very nice place to live and obviously has tons of smart people, is actually a
pretty sleepy place in general; for all it's charms, it isn't a "great city."
The "density of the unfamiliar" which I think tends to characterize great
cities isn't really so evident in Cambridge (the presence of MIT / Harvard /
etc does generate some of this, but universities tend to be somewhat closed
societies).

~~~
secstate
Toss in a healthy dose of MIT becoming a shell of its former hacker-self, and
Harvard being, well, Harvard, and I'd say Cambridge is the least exciting
aspect of the greater Boston area.

Besides the fact that Bostonians are most definitely infatuated with pop
culture and hipness. Maybe across the bridge things get more intellectual, but
not so you'd notice.

I will say in PG's defense that I've never seen a city more excited about
selling you a master's degree as the key to your new future life ; - ) So I
suppose they do value education (an brick-for-brick there's probably more
post-secondary schools in the area around Boston than almost anywhere else in
the U.S. or even the world.).

------
oscargrouch
thats why i prefer nature over cities. The messages it sends is:

You can be whatever you want.. The observations and love for nature is one of
the big secrets of geniuses like Da Vinci and Newton.. florence or england,
just give them the means to achieve their goals..

Cities are stuck in the era they shine most.. and if you listen to them now,
you will be listening to the 20, 19 or even 18 century echoes.. not the XXI we
are supposed to

I think real genius has a transcendental and private path to somewhere, where
they can listen whatever, and bring it back to our reality.. if they happen to
listen to cities its just to give them new interpretations of it.. so we (the
voyeurs of their work) can see it with new eyes..

If you listen up to most cities, you will see more what them want you to see
than its own reality.. unless you belong there for more than 10 years.. and
you already know it... its pretty much fake, delusional..

I dont know you, but i happen to like the real thing, i care more about the
truth.. thats why nature is more seductive to me than city people or concrete
walls

~~~
secstate
I couldn't agree with you more. I'm here reading hacker news in a rural town
in Maine (a summer town on the coast, granted, but hey, it's winter ... ).

I love your note about cities being stuck in the era they shine. That's
brilliant and so unbelievably true. I love cities and urban environments. I
grew up in Chicago and spent time living in our fair city (Boston) before
moving north.

But I settled up here to be close to family and to not let my ambition get to
heady. You can wind up feeling really important and powerful in a city, and
the discovery that barring 0.01% of the population you aren't actually very
important or powerful will destroy you if that's what you built your life on.
Instead I've built a life around family, farming and hacking (which
incidentally, farming basically invented ... every farmer has their own
solution to a problem).

~~~
kpennell
Cool!

------
bane
I grew up outside of DC and can probably say this about the city:

Washington D.C. thinks of itself as the center of power of the entire
universe. And in a lot of ways it is. But it's a weird city. Power in D.C. is
indirect and complex. You can't really start at the bottom and work your way
up to positions of extreme power (though it's a popular story)...hard ceilings
are everywhere. To be clear, I'm not talking about the more or less irrelevant
city government.

The best way I can explain it is this, power in D.C. is build on a tripod. You
must have all three of these things to be powerful: money, widespread
popularity, and cunning (not intelligence).

This is different than other cities, where elements of this tripod exist, but
aren't necessary to be powerful in that city. For example, in NYC, money is
sufficient to be powerful. But even billionaires have failed to attain power
in D.C. In NYC political connections are useful for making more money, but
aren't strictly necessary. In D.C. political connections are critical. In NYC,
you have to have alpha-like mammal aggressiveness (not necessarily
intelligence), but in D.C. it's reptile like cunning that's needed. You can
draw different but similar differences with other cities and power.

Power in D.C. is also incredibly transient and fickle. In theory, power in
D.C. can accumulate to the point that a single individual can more or less
wipe out all life on the planet, then just a couple years later has trouble
keeping reporters off of his vacation property. It's a tower of power that's
built on sands that shift so fast it makes the stock market look like a simple
linear function. _Everybody_ falls from power in D.C. It's the tallest tower
there is, but the downward drop is inevitable. The key is making a soft
landing when you do. That way you can take a "fall back" position to power in
NYC on the board of an investment company or the Bay Area where you can become
an Angel investor.

But you'll notice that people who are really powerful in one place rarely move
from where they know how to operate, and when they do, rarely gain positions
of equivalent power in their new homes. They just operate differently.
Throwing money around in D.C. might make you popular for a bit, but without
cunning you'll just be that guy who throws lots of parties.

It reminds me of the old saying

"Rich is being a millionaire basketball player, Wealthy is being the guy who
signs the checks"

add to that "Powerful is the guy who proposed the bill that got turned into a
law with teeth that regulated the NBA and bankrupted the wealthy owners."

~~~
wozniacki
Could you give an example of how this power dynamic might work in a non-House-
Of-Cards setting, you know, in a non-political setting?

Certainly everything in D.C. need not revolve around Capitol Hill/K-Street,
right?

~~~
bane
I'm not familiar with House-of-Cards sadly.

But yes, _everything_ in D.C., even for 30 or 40 miles outside of the city, is
absolutely consumed by the Federal government.

The downtown of D.C. proper, outside of the tourist areas, is almost entirely
composed of foundations and think tanks and non-government organizations who's
mission in life is to try and influence executive or legislative policy
decisions. There's almost no other real industry by comparison. The tech scene
in D.C. is dominated by fed contracting megacorps and small tech businesses
that exist only to partner with those companies in order to get the small
business set asides. The non-Fed tech sector in D.C. is abysmally small. It
exists, and there are hacker meetups and proper commercial companies here, but
the ecosystem for those companies is pretty sparse. _Most_ of the non-fed
commercial tech companies you find are IT services companies that help build
internal infrastructure for non-tech companies.

D.C., the city, also dies after working hours and on weekends. There's minimal
night life. It's slowly changing, but nearly everybody who works in the city
in the Fed space, lives outside of the city. It means commuting here and
traffic is easily as bad as L.A. It's so bad that many of the Agencies are
moving or opening very large satellite offices 20 miles or more from D.C. just
so they can find qualified workers.

The really powerful people, people sitting on all three legs of the tripod,
don't live in D.C. at all. They'll live in Northern Virginia or Southern
Maryland. If you want to bang into a Senator or a cabinet secretary while
grocery shopping, go shopping in McLean or Great Falls.

It doesn't help that the residential parts of D.C. are rather grim and not
very pretty. Even the old historic row houses are rather gritty looking piles
of old bricks with broken sidewalks outside and overgrown weeds and grass
everywhere.

But I think it's also that the atmosphere in the city is so stifling, the
constant ladder climbing and political backstabbery so intense, that people
just want to get away from it.

Take a look at the large West Coast tech companies with offices in and near
D.C. and you'll see that, down to the position, they all open up their offices
to cater to the Fed space. Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Google, etc. all
have offices near D.C. and if you check out the job listings all require
clearances and/or experience doing business with the Federal government.

Practically, nobody cares about how much money you make, or your investment
abilities in D.C. It's your positional authority, and what that means, earned
through the tripod of power, that people care about.

~~~
epoxyhockey
I agree with most of everything you described about power in DC. I do think
you're showing a bit of staleness in experience when it comes to life in
downtown DC.

 _D.C., the city, also dies after working hours and on weekends. There 's
minimal night life._

In the past 10 years, there has been an absolute transformation in housing and
retail from Gallery Place/Chinatown, to 14th St and all the way up to Columbia
Heights. I challenge one to stand on the corner of 7th & H St and say that the
city dies after working hours and on weekends.

 _It 's so bad that many of the Agencies are moving or opening very large
satellite offices 20 miles or more from D.C. just so they can find qualified
workers._

Unless you work for GSA, I wouldn't make assumptions like this. It is
impossible for the federal government to open up a new 500,000 sq ft facility
in downtown DC because there simply isn't any available space at a reasonable
cost. Sprawling complexes are cheap and easy to build in the exurbs and the
employees don't have any choice but to follow their agency to its new
location. It has nothing to do with finding talent, especially in the hills of
Virginia where fewer people choose to live.

 _The really powerful people, people sitting on all three legs of the tripod,
don 't live in D.C. at all. They'll live in Northern Virginia or Southern
Maryland._

Suburban Maryland (esp. North of DC). Southern Maryland is Waldorf, St Charles
and La Plata, which I would argue are not places where Senators reside.
Though, I think you will find that more of the recent politicians _are_
residing in DC. For example, Obama, while a Senator, resided in an apartment
building in downtown DC.

 _It doesn 't help that the residential parts of D.C. are rather grim and not
very pretty. Even the old historic row houses are rather gritty looking piles
of old bricks with broken sidewalks outside and overgrown weeds and grass
everywhere._

Again, you might benefit from taking a walk anywhere in DC. H St NE, areas
around Union Station and even New York Ave & Florida are nice.

~~~
bane
I largely agree with you except on a couple points.

DC _is_ changing, but very slowly. The last couple mayoral administrations
have done a pretty good job of gentrifying (I don't think that's necessarily a
bad term) parts of the city and encouraging new residential construction.

There still isn't much of a nightlife in the city though. Sure there's been
little pockets of it at least as far back as the early 90s when I was old
enough to look for that kind of thing. But I think the loss of Chinatown in
favor of the Verizon Center and a few trendy bars is one of the great
tragedies of the city.

But still, most new transplants I run into looking for a hip place to move to
end up in Arlingon or Silver Spring and to some extent parts of Alexandria.
Many of my gay friends _do_ find homes and community in D.C. around DuPont and
a couple other spots, but even with a scene in the city, about half of the
folks I know live in Arlington/Alexandria.

In general, a constant theme I could apply to people I know (anecdotal I
know), they try to make it work in the city, then quickly move out as soon as
their lease is up. There just isn't the kind of benefit of city life that you
get in more regular cities.

It doesn't help that, while having lots of little parks, they're virtually
unusable due to deep rooted homeless problems in the city that haven't
materially improved since as long back as I can remember (the 80s). Getting
panhandled virtually every block in some areas gets old very fast.

As for the historic housing, lots of people have visions of this
[https://farm1.static.flickr.com/118/263237392_a4aacdd50f_m.j...](https://farm1.static.flickr.com/118/263237392_a4aacdd50f_m.jpg)

only to find endless listings for places like this
[http://sweetpaperdoll.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/100_0259.j...](http://sweetpaperdoll.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/100_0259.jpg)

which means on top of the already inflated price, they'll have to put in
endless expensive refurbishments to have a livable home.

It's kind of a shame since the public transport network in D.C. is one of the
few functionally useful ones in the U.S. I think the metro is the 2nd most
used subway in the U.S.?

The good news, like I said, is that it _is_ slowly changing. The population is
increasing for the first time since the 1950s (the city back then was over 3/4
of a million people, it hit 600k in 2010 an apocalyptic population drop.
Estimates say almost 50k people have moved in in the last 4 years).

------
WWKong
Having lived both in LA and Bay Area the biggest difference is that Life in LA
doesn't come with any baggage. You don't have to change the world. You don't
have to launch the next big idea. You don't chase money as hard as Bay Area
(yes). You don't have to keep telling yourself and the world that "my city is
awesome". You just live a good life with good food, good people, good work.

~~~
javajosh
My sense is that people in LA really want to get to be on stage. No, you don't
have to be a superstar, but people in the business want to keep working in
show business, more than anything. And for exactly the same reason game
developers keep doing it: because they love it. They love doing things just
because people enjoy it, and not because it has to be done.

There is joy in frivolity.

------
wwweston
"Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who
live there. If you can read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the
streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking
the same thoughts. What ever that majority thought might be- that word is the
word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the
city, then you don't really belong there."

\- _Eat Pray Love_, Elizabeth Gilbert.

------
Jd
Here are some cities I've lived in:

    
    
        Tokyo, Xi'an, Harbin, Rome, Assisi, Florence, Jerusalem, Berlin, Munich, Lyon, Palo Alto, DC, Boston, Providence, Philadelphia
    

My general assessment is that American cities feel more vibrant while European
cities feel more sleepy. Cambridge is one locus of intellect for its own,
perhaps the best left although I think American pragmatism chokes great
thinking. For true intellectual engagement I think you have to poke around
Europe and find the older generation of scholars and artists. As for Florence,
pg should know folks like Pietro Annigoni that at least were keeping old
traditions alive. Europe is in many ways like a very wonderful museum with a
few old curators, but that old museum beats most new museums by a large
margin.

------
k0mplex
Paul is describing an 80's New York. Paul doesn't use the word culture once in
the essay. The word art only appears in reference to Europe and Paris. The
strongest signal from New York is now much more about art, culture, and taste
than about money.

~~~
michaelochurch
New York is all about money if you don't have it.

Actually, it's about real estate and legacy. Until you own a genuinely nice
place (those start around $4 million) it's about real estate. After that, it's
about preschool and grade school and making sure your kids have the
connections to make something of themselves. Once those are shored up, it's
about taste and the arts. Not before then, though, and most people don't get
that far.

------
southpawgirl
This post is brilliant. It puts into words an unspoken but pervasive sensation
I had in the small town I grew up in, before leaving for greener pastures: it
didn't ask me (or anyone else) to be anyone or anything better than I already
was. I hated it for its leniency, for its forgiveness that ended up being
suffocating. It makes sense to choose to live in a demanding place.

------
midwestthrowawy
I'm a 25 year old living in a smallish midwestern city. PG's "you get
discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do" is
something that really resonates with my experience here. Anyone want to play
fortune teller and suggest places I should visit/consider moving? Some
important personality points:

\- builder/hacker

\- eager learner

\- I'll step up for tasks right away

\- I deeply care about making people feel loved/included and finding people
who care about me

\- likes public transportation

~~~
lsc
First? I've got a Midwesterner working for me. At least for him? it doesn't
seem to be hurting his work.

My opinion is that while it's super nice, socially, to be around people who
are into what you are into in person, it doesn't make that much difference
when it comes to getting actual work done. Now, sales? raising money? all that
bullshit where you have to interact with business people? face-time matters a
lot. But for purely technical work, hell, I'll be working in the same house as
someone and I'll communicate via IM, because it's less disruptive.

On the other hand, he's working for _me_ \- If you want to make money? you
have to find a competent business person, or at least a business person with
money, and most of those guys want to look you in the eye. Not all, but most.

That's the thing; I get a _lot_ of offers to merge, to invest, and to do other
business-type things because I'm here and active in the community. I'm not
even that active. But you know what? I haven't made a dime off of any of
those. (and some of those have cost me enough to buy a central-valley condo) -
As for the parts of my business that actually make me money? I could do those
from just about anywhere. Of course, that probably says more about my skillset
than anything else; I've had serious offers from people with serious money
(well, serious money by my standards)

My own experience? moving to silicon valley was more than worth it. But, I've
lived in silicon valley, I've lived very near berkeley and I've lived in the
central valley. I haven't spent serious time other places. Avoid the central
valley. It's not cheap enough to put up with the culture and weather, in my
opinion.

Yeah, housing is expensive. but the thing about housing? well, the increase is
a percentage of the cost of housing, so if you are okay with modest digs? 2x
what you would pay for modest digs in the central valley (probably 4x what
you'd pay in the midwest) still not very much money compared to what you are
getting paid, and I'm okay with modest digs. (Of course, if you like really
nice digs... that percentage increase really hits you.)

One big downside to the south bay is that our public transit is absolute shit.
You might consider the Berkeley area for that. VTA doesn't look that bad on
paper? But it is nearly completely useless. BART, on the other hand, is pretty
good by west-coast standards.

~~~
leoc
> My opinion is that while it's super nice, socially, to be around people who
> are into what you are into in person, it doesn't make that much difference
> when it comes to getting actual work done. Now, sales? raising money? all
> that bullshit where you have to interact with business people? face-time
> matters a lot. But for purely technical work, hell, I'll be working in the
> same house as someone and I'll communicate via IM, because it's less
> disruptive.

As far as I know, the case for being on the ground with your fellow
enthusiasts and competitors in California was best made in 1985, by Arnold
Schwarzenegger:

"The kind of people who train alongside you in a gym makes a difference. If
you are surrounded by people who are serious and train with a lot of
intensity, it's easier for you to do the same thing. But it can be pretty hard
to really blast your muscles while the people around you are just going
through the motions. That is why good bodybuilders tend to congregate in
certain gyms. By having the example of other serious bodybuilders constantly
in front of you, you will train that much harder.

That is what made Joe Gold's original gym in Venice, California such a great
place—a small gym with just enough equipment, but where you would constantly
be rubbing shoulders with the great bodybuilders against whom I had the
privilege of competing-like Franco Columbu, Ed Corney, Dave Draper, Robby
Robinson, Frank Zane, Sergio Oliva, and Ken Waller. Nowadays, it's rare to
find that many champions in the same place, but if you aren't sharing the gym
floor with great bodybuilders like Flex Wheeler, Shawn Ray, Nasser El Sonbaty,
or Dorian Yates, it can be very motivating if there are pictures or posters of
these individuals on the walls or championship trophies displayed.

In 1980, training at World Gym for my final Mr. Olympia competition, I showed
up at the gym at seven o'clock one morning to work out and stepped out on the
sundeck for a moment. Suddenly the sun came through the clouds. It was so
beautiful I lost all my motivation to train. I thought maybe I would go to the
beach instead. I came up with every excuse in the book-the most persuasive
being that I had trained hard the day before with the powerful German
bodybuilder Jusup Wilkosz, so I could lay back today—but then I heard weights
being clanged together inside the gym and I saw Wilkosz working his abs, Ken
Waller doing shoulders, veins standing out all over his upper body, Franco
Columbu blasting away, benching more than 400 pounts, Samir Bannout punishing
his biceps with heavy Curls.

Everywhere I looked there was some kind of hard, sweaty training going on, and
I knew that I couldn't afford not to train if I was going to compete against
these champions. Their example sucked me in, and now I was looking forward to
working, anticipating the pleasure of pitting my muscles against heavy iron.
By the end of that session I had the best pump I could imagine, and an almost
wasted morning had turned into one of the best workouts of my life. If I
hadn't been there at World Gym, with those other bodybuilders to inspire and
motivate me, I doubt that day would have ended up being so productive.

Even today, when I'm training for other reason, such as getting into top shape
for a movie role, or just trying to stay in shape, I absorb energy from people
working out around me. That's why I still like to go to gyms where
bodybuilders are training for competition. Even today, after all this time, it
still inspires me."

/The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding/, by Arnold and Bill Dobbins, p.
87 in the 1999 edition.
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0684857219/](http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0684857219/)

~~~
lsc
I... hate how people re-package the anti-intellectual culture around sports.
"Give 110%" \- It's all about effort.

I mean, for some things? that's great. It's annoying even in sports, if you
ask me, but it's effective there, and hey, that's what matters, right?

But for technical work? the "give 110%" attitude is extremely destructive.
Extremely destructive. you will get far more done working a 30 hour week than
you will a 70 hour week. Far more.

It's not about how many hours you put in. It's not about Tony Robbins style
emotional bullshit. We aren't bodybuilders, and while many people here /are/
sales (and like I said, for them, face time matters) technical people aren't
sales.

~~~
leoc
... Well. To begin with, the reason Schwarzenegger was up and in the gym at
seven in the morning was so that he could train—with massive intensity,
yes—for maybe two hours ... and then spend eight to ten hours relaxing and
doing nothing strenuous in order to recover in time for his second and final
session in the evening. That's what he did six days a week with Sundays off, a
routine that makes G.H. Hardy's schedule with its afternoon cricket
[http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Hardy.html](http://www-
history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Hardy.html) look packed, and comes to
probably significantly less than 30 hours of iron-pumping a week. Keeping your
schedule clear for months on end to focus on your work while not actually
working all that many hours a week? Sounds more similar to technical work than
sales to me.

------
gavinh
The Valley urges its inhabitants to become more powerful... by creating cat
photographer social networking iOS fart apps?

------
gavinh
Perhaps the title should be "Cities & Ambition & My Snarky, Arrogant
Generalizations".

------
joelrunyon
Seeing as this came out in 2008 - I'm really curious to see if PG has any
updated thoughts on the cities he mentioned as well as some of the new rising
tech centers (Chicago, Austin, etc)

~~~
qntmfred
not to mention NYC, and especially so since he specifically mentioned whether
New York could grow into a startup hub to rival Silicon Valley

~~~
michaelochurch
I like New York a hell of a lot more than the strip mall called Silicon
Valley, but New York is nowhere near SV as a startup hub.

First, the VC climate is different and employee option pools are just shitty
(5 to 20%). You won't find good engineers willing to work for non-founder
equity. The people who work for 0.1% of a mediocre startup are not good and
you'll have to hire $200-400/hour freelancers to fix their work after you fire
them. (One startup offered me $275/h to fix its Rails app and I've never even
used Rails.)

Second, the quality of startups is just not there. Granted, 97% of the
startups in the Valley are total garbage as well, because the VCs have no
taste or insight, but at least SV has that other 3%. New York doesn't. Most of
the founders are people who failed out of finance but managed to snag enough
connections (as a consolation prize) to raise VC.

Third, there are startups that luck their way into a few good engineers for a
little while, but in NYC, they never keep them. There's a lot of title
inflation in NYC (Senior Engineer by 24, Managing Data Scientist by 26) but
the people with any ambition leverage their inflated titles into better
positions in finance (starting around $300k) or at companies like Google and
Facebook.

New York is the place where you use startups to get better Wall Street or
Google jobs.

~~~
wcummings
A title describes your responsibilities, not your seniority.

------
danhak
He had me until he said this in the fifth section:

"DC and LA seem to send messages too, but I haven't spent long enough in
either to say for sure what they are."

...and then went on to opine on both those places, with relatively shallow
stereotypes.

~~~
meritt
What is LA about if not fame, vanity and an acceptance that it takes hours to
drive a few miles?

~~~
wwweston
It's true that there are some people who are there in LA because they've
gotten the message that entertainment fame (vs a startup) is the only way
they'll matter in the world, that there's vanity, and that traffic can suck
away your will to live or do anything if you don't figure out a way to avoid
it.

It's also true there's lots of people who participate in entertainment because
they _love_ it. They love making stories, they love acting, they love singing,
dancing, they love making sets, effects, animation, soundtracks, songs,
whatever. They know their products can change minds and change the world, too.
A lot of these people aren't so different from your typical hacker.

There's also a lot of shenanigans and bullshit from people looking to hustle a
buck or make their next fortune. I'm sure you can find the analog.

I'll also note that I live in West LA in a few miles from my job, which takes
me 10 minutes to commute to, and which pays wages which are probably average
for an SF webdev job (though possibly somewhat above average for an LA webdev
job).

And you can find 2 bedroom apartments are available for under $2000, 1
bedrooms between $1000-$1500 (though you _can_ get a luxury place or something
by the beach if you really want to pay a lot more).

It's certainly not a perfect place (I'd be happier with it if there were more
varied weather, and more access to nature and quiet space), and of course, not
everybody's experience with LA is like mine. In fact, LA is _so big_ and so
varied that what I've come to suspect over my experience there is that there
simply isn't any single summary that can capture it.

~~~
majormajor
Yeah, I think you could make a convincing argument that the difference between
(parts of) LA and SF is that the non-tech creative people in LA are more
likely to be doing it because they love it because the big money boom has
peaked. There's still a dream of making it big, and there's still a lot of
very visible success, but you're not going to raise nearly as much money for
your indie film project as you would if you were pitching a new app in the Bay
Area.

(That's a rather cynical view of the Bay Area, but hey, it balances out the
rather common cynical view of LA that was expressed above. :) )

Disagree on the weather, though. I'd appreciate a bit less fog (not that it's
anywhere near as bad as SF) and like my constant highs between 60 and 80 just
fine. Maybe some better close skiing would be nice, but I've found lots to
keep me busy between the Malibu Mountains and then further up the coast like
Santa Barbara, Ojai, etc, outdoors-wise.

------
hawkharris
I can relate to the intellectual energy that PG describes. Going to a high
school in Cambridge, equidistant from Harvard and MIT, I used to feel
intimidated by the city's collective brain power.

It was the kind of place where confidence intervals are a subject for
smalltalk and ads for genetic research are geared toward everyday commuters.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think something interesting happens when you
live in a place like Cambridge for several years. You start to feel less
intimidated by the competition for knowledge.

Don't get me wrong — you still try to keep up — but Cambridge begins to
calibrate your ego. You realize that you're never going to be the smartest
person in your domain, let alone every domain. For this reason I appreciate
the city more as I get older, and I'm glad I moved back to work as a software
dev.

------
jqm
Interesting observations.

I have noticed the inverse is also true (as a few posters have already pointed
out).

Some places just scream ignorance and sloth.

But hey... do you want good conversation or good weather?

If you do want good conversation how much is it worth to you?

Enough to spend 50% of your income on housing?

Sometimes being alone is where you get real thinking done.

Not always, but often.

------
manuelflara
Loved the article and its key idea that big cities send some kind of message
about what people living there care the most about. Barcelona's message is
clearly "enjoy life".

------
ptc
I'll just leave this here:

[http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)

~~~
grey-area
What a hateful, small-minded little diatribe.

------
ycmike
This is one of my favorite ever PG posts. It's what is driving me to get out
to the East Coast as soon as possible and eventually the Bay Area.

~~~
mindcrime
I've often thought about the allure of moving to the Bay Area and being part
of "startup central", but I can't help but suspect that I have an overly
romanticized view of what it would be like. And there are existence proofs
that a startup can be founded - and succeed - in North Carolina. So while I
get what you're saying, I have some major doubts about moving out there.
Higher cost of living, more traffic, more smog, more competition for talent,
etc., etc. - these all strike me as factors that argue against moving.

OTOH, the energy, the vibe, the ambition that pg talks about here... I so want
to be around that and more like minded people. And while the Raleigh / Durham
area has a burgeoning startup scene, I don't get the impression that it can
come close to touching the energy in, say, Palo Alto or Mountain View, or San
Francisco.

Guess I need to just drag my ass out West and take it all in sometime. I keep
hoping a consulting gig will take me out there and give me an excuse to go for
a few weeks, so I can check it out. :-)

~~~
impendia
I've lived in all of Durham, San Francisco, and Menlo Park (next town over to
Palo Alto).

Durham, in my mind, had a weird vibe. Despite growing up there, I think what I
remember best is taking a swing dance workshop (in my mid-twenties) from
Sharon Ashe. Sharon had been at the heart and center of the San Francisco
lindy hop community, possibly the best swing dance scene in the world. She had
co-founded the 9:20 Special, which still attracts a crowd of hundreds every
week.

But apparently she had burned out, and had too much of the cost of living and
the competition (there isn't really any smog) and decided to move to Durham.
She wanted a lower-key, quieter life, while still enjoying most of what she'd
enjoyed in San Francisco. At the time, this struck me as a profoundly sad
thing to do, and soon after I left town.

I would say that _compromise_ is at the heart of what Durham has to offer.
This is ultimately why I left, but it has got great restaurants, good weather,
a lot of culture going on, and above all a wide range of diverse, interesting,
active, intelligent people. Just not quite as much of any of the above (except
for the weather) than SF or Cambridge. Take that for what you will.

e-mail in profile if you have questions.

~~~
benihana
Don't forget the beer. Durham (and all of the triangle) has amazing beer.

I never really found the vibe to be weird. It seemed like a less pretentious
Brooklyn (I live in BK now). And I can understand why you would think an area
you grew up in is about compromise, but I respectfully disagree. Durham is a
great mix of southern charm, unique quirky culture, down home feel, and high-
tech progressiveness - I haven't been able to find that mix anywhere else.
It's also large and varied - the area near Southgate mall is completely
different than downtown Durham.

~~~
impendia
> a less pretentious Brooklyn (I live in BK now).

Interesting. My main complaint about Durham was that it was very suburban; the
idea of traveling between any pair of locations other than by car was wholly
ridiculous. (But last time I was there, there were a bunch of new bars and
restaurants downtown! This is a quite recent development.)

There is no "Southgate mall" in Durham. That said, I'm not disputing that it
has a lot of good points. Including the beer :)

~~~
greg5green
A little late to the convo, but guessing he meant Southpointe and the rest of
the suburban buildup at Fayetteville Rd./I-40, which is definitely a different
feel than downtown.

------
malandrew

        "Maybe the Internet will change things further. Maybe one 
        day the most important community you belong to will be a 
        virtual one, and it won't matter where you live 
        physically. But I wouldn't bet on it. 
    

I would say that this is somewhat the case already, it's just that recognition
online doesn't translate to the real world. Many people in open-source
community wield as much power as the CEOs in Silicon Valley. Depending on what
you've open-sourced, you have power over the powerful. Linus Torvalds and the
community he fostered for example is responsible for empowering many of the
powerful in technology.

------
hnriot
" in London you can still (barely) hear the message that one should be more
aristocratic."

spoken like a true tourist. that is just nonsense.

~~~
cperciva
You know PG was born in England, right?

------
rarrrrrr
My city does a pretty good job saying "we like you just the way you are."

------
andy_ppp
London would probably be "get on that fucking tredmill so you can buy a house
you can't afford in an area you don't want to live, with a job you hate, to
pay for a lifestyle you don't agree with".

~~~
disputin
Precisely why I'm reading this post - in the hope of finding somewhere else. I
was hoping there would be more mention of European cities.

------
doktrin
This is an inspired, and inspiring, piece of writing.

On a slightly snarky note, I always do appreciate a jab at DC, where I was
both born and raised. It really is LA with bad weather and less attractive
celebrities.

------
lsc
PG makes me want to move to Boston/Cambridge. And his summation of silicon
valley sounds... almost sick. But then I review my own behavior, and perhaps I
am motivated more by power than I like to think?

I've always thought of the will to power, beyond power over yourself, as an
ugly thing. But looking back at choices I've made? Yeah. I've wanted to change
things. Even change things for others. And I've chosen power over money at
several junctions. So, maybe I'm in the right place after all.

~~~
visakanv
Will-to-power isn't ugly in of itself. It's what you do with it that counts.
You can use it to support the weak and oppressed, you can use it to insure
yourself and your loved ones (and more!) from damaging external stressors.

Everybody wants more power, nobody wants less. Also, power-over-yourself is
the most fundamental thing about will-to-power (in an enlightened sense).

There's no point getting power over others if you have no power over yourself-
then it's merely your appetites that have power over others, not you. As Da
Vinci put, no man can have any dominion greater or lesser than over himself.

~~~
lsc
>power-over-yourself is the most fundamental thing about will-to-power (in an
enlightened sense). >There's no point getting power over others if you have no
power over yourself- then it's merely your appetites that have power over
others, not you. As Da Vinci put, no man can have any dominion greater or
lesser than over himself.

Yeah, now you are talking about a different kind of power, which is really a
different and nearly unrelated thing. "Self control" or what have you. The
ability to control and direct your mind and body. Sure, it's a great thing,
and can be a great tool... but it's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about the power to live where I want to live, and to be secure in
my person and my property. To work when and as much as I want to. To obtain
the goods and services I want.

All of these things require convincing others to do things for me, which is to
say, power over other people; so to have a reasonable degree of power over
your own life, you need a reasonable degree of power over others.

------
OldSchool
One thing I don't see in the article or discussed here is that (at least I
believe) a sign of reaching maturity is that you don't need to define yourself
by where you live. While these places can be helpful in achieving your goals,
ultimately wherever you go, there you are.

------
malandrew
pg, out of curiosity, what's your view on Berlin and other international
cities of note?

~~~
MatthiasP
I guess he would have a much harder time getting a feeling for a city where he
could not casually pick up what people are talking about due to language
barriers.

~~~
wellboy
Though, at entrepreneur meetups/event, it's funny EVERYBODY speaks English.
Just yesterday at hy berlin, all the pitches were in English and 1/3rd of the
people getting food/drinks are non-Germans. So almost every conversation
between 3 people had one english speak and was thus held in English.^^

------
zw123456
Come to Seattle and learn about another dimension.

~~~
brenfrow
What kind of things do you think Seattle is know for, or breeds?

~~~
crucifiction
Marijuana and IPAs

------
ilamont
Where would London fit on your continuum?

------
waitwhat123
I need to get out of new york :(

