First Love

London is my first love, as cities go, and where I fell in love with cities. So any time I return it’s a bit of a nostalgia tour. Come with me, won’t you (as Abbie just had to), as I believe there is much here to explain who I am today.

When I arrived in 1992, I’d never lived in a city before, and had really no conception of what urban living was like. Well, you can imagine the introduction that London provided. I was enrolled for a semester at the august London School of Economics. I joined the school’s Tequila Society and the boxing team (punching each other to the uplifting sounds of Stereo MCs). I ate in inordinate amount of kebabs. I navigated the wonderful public transit system. I stood in awe of all the ways people were, how they expressed themselves, both in keeping with and opposing their heritage. I was inspired to be different. I could reinvent myself in the way an awkward college kid needs to reinvent himself.

I came back in 1994 to continue the process. While the rest of my friends moved to NYC to become bankers and lawyers, I worked as a dorm manager for a building full of student from Beaver College. I parlayed my philosophy degree into a series of waitering jobs, culminating in me serving a fruit juice to Bjork at the original Wagamama. I moshed to Mudhoney. I taught myself to play guitar. I was on my own, for the first time. I was still an immature arrogant little wiseass. But I was heading in the right direction. When I was emotionally deported (i.e., my work visa expired and I had no practical black market-able skills), I dreamt I was moving back to London every night for months, sad to wake up in DC (where I’d relocated to, trying to recapture the magic). Only when I moved to San Francisco in January 1996 did those dreams of London subside, replaced by the joy of my new home.

I’ve been back to London four times since, and I recognize that on each visit I spend more time being nostalgic as seeing the City anew. I return to the old dorm, eat noodles at Wagamama, pay my respects to the Arnolfinis at the National Gallery and Ophelia at the Tate. Only on our last day of this trip did I realize, in fact, that I had shrinkwrapped London in my mind, bemoaning any changes instead of celebrating the freshness I loved about her in the first place. Especially how the whole world lives here. How the density is supportive of hundreds of walkable, overlapping neighborhoods. How the incredible transportation network serves millions of people. And how those conditions have transformed a stodgy, hierarchical, declining society back into one of the world’s most vibrant and transformative cities.

We came to London first because it was a soft landing (many thanks again to our hosts DJ, Keely, and baby Isla). We leave rested and ready to see with those fresh eyes, even the city I’d put under wraps nearly 20 years ago.