The ubiquity of Starbucks locations in America’s dense urban centers is a running joke, and it’s not even a new one. The insufferable yuppie couple of the 2000 movie Best in Show famously joked about it: “We met at a Starbucks…not the same Starbucks. But we saw each other at different Starbucks across the street.”
My first blog post in San Francisco is atypical (if anything about this blog topic could ever be considered typical), but it’s probably a significant one given the socioeconomic context. The wealthy core to one of the richest regions in the country—probably among the wealthiest in the world—San Francisco is also the only city I’m
Hating social media in 2018 is about as edgy and anti-establishment as making fun of malls in the late 1990s: no one admits to actually liking either one of these communal-commercial spaces, but just about everyone uses them. (Or, at least, they used malls twenty years ago.) I have no doubt that if I were a
By this point, it’s not unusual to encounter a series of trash receptacles in public places, each with distinct labels, allowing passers-by to sort and separate recyclable from non-recyclable waste. On a college campus, it would be far more surprising if a row of receptacles weren’t standing sentinel at every prominent node; the opportunity to
This article will feature an assertion I’ve made in the past, and I have ruffled feathers for it then. In all likelihood, I’ll ruffle a few more this time around. Yet I’m sticking to my guns. So here goes: far too many communities embrace the notion of urban parks as an absolute good—of parks for
Regardless of the time of year, any coastal sunset should supersede something as stubbornly human-wrought as a church steeple. After all, the ephemerality of that palette reduces the comparable permanence of an opulent beachfront home—or even a charming fishing village—to banality.Yet here, along the north-central coast of California, in rural Sonoma County, far removed from
Photography courtesy of Linda Shaffer. Americans have never really valued housing for its permanence—certainly not like we see in many other, older settled lands, where it is common to find private residences that predate our little Declaration of Independence. It baffles most Europeans that a structure in the US can qualify for listing in the
The ubiquity of Starbucks locations in America’s dense urban centers is a running joke, and it’s not even a new one. The insufferable yuppie couple of the 2000 movie Best in Show famously
My first blog post in San Francisco is atypical (if anything about this blog topic could ever be considered typical), but it’s probably a significant one given the socioeconomic context. The wealthy core
Hating social media in 2018 is about as edgy and anti-establishment as making fun of malls in the late 1990s: no one admits to actually liking either one of these communal-commercial spaces, but just
By this point, it’s not unusual to encounter a series of trash receptacles in public places, each with distinct labels, allowing passers-by to sort and separate recyclable from non-recyclable waste. On a college
This article will feature an assertion I’ve made in the past, and I have ruffled feathers for it then. In all likelihood, I’ll ruffle a few more this time around. Yet I’m sticking
Regardless of the time of year, any coastal sunset should supersede something as stubbornly human-wrought as a church steeple. After all, the ephemerality of that palette reduces the comparable permanence of an opulent
Photography courtesy of Linda Shaffer. Americans have never really valued housing for its permanence—certainly not like we see in many other, older settled lands, where it is common to find private residences that
