The August Dispatch

In case you haven’t noticed, Europe is beautiful.

I’m writing this from California after being ‘home’ for more than three weeks. Naturally, I’m very much in US vs. Europe mode.

Several years ago my cousin visited me. As we were walking through the streets of Munich he commented on how nice it was to be in a place with so much public art and beauty. He’s a professor at UC Merced. Merced is a cow town which is not much more than a collection of strip malls and 6-8 lane roads and highways.

There’s a lot of talk about Europe being an open air museum. A fading civilization, dying and calcified, whose best days are behind it.

Maybe. But I’ll take declining beauty over growth and acceleration in an extended parking lot any day.

Arriving in LAX and sitting in the Uber is it drove in fits and starts down Lincoln Boulevard, it’s impossible not to notice just how ugly it is. The vibe is: ‘you don’t matter enough to have a beautiful environment, in fact, none of us do.'

European cities on the other hand, were and are designed for people, and making public spaces beautiful whether they were built in 1824 or 2018.

Newer buildings and public spaces are intentional and beautiful. Whether it’s Stefano Boeri’s vertical forest apartment buildings in Milan or city projects conceived by legendary Danish firm Gehl or even firms like Bauwerk building new apartments down the street from where I live. Granted, these aren’t the cheapest projects, but they demonstrate the value placed on beautiful public spaces in Europe.

One of the core differences I’ve observed between American and European lifestyles is that you spend more of your life in public, rather than private spaces. Private homes in Europe are smaller (at least in the cities) so you’ll want to get out of them and into the park, or the city more.

I’ve been struck by on this trip (where most of the time has been spent in Los Angeles) is how much people don’t leave their houses. I couldn’t help but notice the ubiquitous use of Doordash and Instacart, dumb food delivery robots and empty storefronts. Two of my favorite bougie restaurants shut down (and yes, I do want some cheese with my whine!)

But seriously, even in the strip malls, where you can find the kind of awesome restaurants celebrated in the beautiful documentary ‘City of Gold’ you’ll find 'For Lease' signs and half-full restaurants which have oriented themselves more for delivery workers than diners.

Of course there are beautiful public spaces. I took a stroll through the Venice Canals, walked passed the Disney Concert Hall in DTLA, and enjoyed time at the beach. But to get these little islands of beauty you have to cross entire Sahara deserts of asphalt, parking lots, abandoned lots, tire repair shops, squalor and nothingness.

My point is not to bash my native country, and if I had spent anytime in San Francisco this post would be much different. But it has to be said.

Chris Arnade puts it really well in this post where he compares grabbing a quick breakfast in a quite suburb of Milan (which, honestly is not known to be one of Europe’s most beautiful cities)

The café there wasn’t anything special by Italian standards, but to me as an American, it was outstanding: a display of fresh pastries and croissants, and an array of fruits, eggs, and sandwiches. Since it was my final day, I splurged and let the waitress-owner pick a sugary raisin pastry for me, and for the next hour, I sipped cappuccinos in the cobblestone square, watching the regulars come and go.Thanks to the delays and incompetence of Delta Air Lines, it would be another 50 hours before I had my next sit-down meal—in the bland lobby of a chain hotel, sitting on an indistinct service road, four miles from the Atlanta airport. That feast—four eggs on two paper plates with plastic silverware and gas station coffee—was five times as expensive. The eggs weren’t that bad, but the setting was bleak: a sterile corporate design meant to keep costs down while offending as few people as possible. A crude accounting of cost and calories shows little difference between the two breakfasts, but that’s exactly why such simple measures miss the point. My meal in Italy was uplifting; the one in Atlanta was depressing. The aesthetics of pastries and eggs might seem trivial, but they aren’t—because they point to deeper, more profound differences between two different continents, and two very different cultures.

I see this attitude dismissed by people, yeah yeah Europe is for sipping cappuccinos on beautiful Piazzas, but have you seen their GDP? Where is the European Open AI?

I don’t care. The tradeoff between growth and beauty is an easy one for me.

But also: Today, I walked back to my apartment rental in Venice from Santa Monica along the beach. At one point a black dude on an e-bike smoking…something rolled by listening to ZZ Top and a white dad-looking guy jogged past me listening to Juicy J. I was reminded that America is beautiful too, just in a really different way.

Next up: A post after I’ve been back in Europe for a few weeks about the grumpiness and pessimism of Europeans and how I just can’t take it anymore!

Other things that caught my attention

• Worse on Purpose an excellent site that goes into very thorough detail how some brands knowingly make their products and companies worse while seeking more profits. But they also highlight the good ones. Scan and you’ll see some great European brands.
• I will listen to or read anything by Stephen Marche. On this episode of his (relatively) new podcast about Canada, ‘Gloves Off’ he asks: How can middle powers win without returning to globalization and the same old system? How can they not just gain power but exert that power, and to what ends? A lot in here about Europe. And it was recorded before Mark Carney said FU to you know who!
• I’m going to order these from indie German stationery brand Fox and Poet to stay organized this fall.

ICYMI

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