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Comment by burntoutfire | Hacker News Reader

> Have you perhaps considered that they're not very diverse?

This. Being a European, after seeing NYC, SF and Las Vegas, I passed on an opportunity to go for a week-long business trip to Seattle. Even though I had the time, I imagine Seattle being just mostly more of the same (an uniform, boring city consisting of XX century architecture built on a grid) and absolutely not worth the trip.

Americans speaking about large cultural differences between regions always surprise me - I often suspect they don't understand what "cultural differences" mean and instead talk about political differences.

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What the US lacks for in city/cultural diversity it makes up for with natural diversity, you should have gone! The Pacific Northwest is very beautiful.

I'm not sure I'd have much time to venture outside of the city. Plus, I live in climate that's similar to PNW (coastal Poland), and actually the desert surrounding Las Vegas and semi-desert Bay Area were much more interesting for me. I'd much rather go to Florida for example, as I've never experienced the tropics before.

I really don't think the PNW and coastal Poland is similar (if it's anything like Sweden). The PNW is like if the Alps had a huge coastline and almost no population to speak of. Check out Olympic National Park and remember that pictures are not the same as being there. It's breathtaking, pristine nature. Florida is extremely boring, the only thing it has going for it is the warm water. Hawaii on the other hand is completely amazing, paradise on Earth, but the water is a bit chilly.

> I really don't think the PNW and coastal Poland is similar (if it's anything like Sweden). The PNW is like if the Alps had a huge coastline and almost no population to speak of. Check out Olympic National Park and remember that pictures are not the same as being there. It's breathtaking, pristine nature.

Yeah, that's what I imagine. A better, more beautiful, more pristine version of what I have at home. I'd gladly see that. But places like deserts or tropics or arctic are nothing like home, and a bit like traveling to another planet - more interesting to see, although there may be not that much to see there after a first couple of days.

> Florida is extremely boring, the only thing it has going for it is the warm water.

Doesn't Florida still have some pristine swamps? It would be cool to see them. Also, I've just never been to a place with oppresive heat, aligators, plenty of mosquitos (in the swamps) and all the rest of it - it'd cool to experience it once, even if to swear it off for the rest of my life.

This being hn, I'm struggling not to be sarcastic about how similar Seattle and Las Vegas are.

Apart from tiny tourist part of Las Vegas, are they really that different? I've walked around Las Vegas to see how the real city (not the tourist part) looks like, and it was just an endless grid of streets with condos, houses and mini-malls at intersections. Is Seattle different?

Yes, just like Las Vegas and NYC, Seattle is just mini malls and intersections. (Ok I couldn't help myself from sarcasm there.)

It may be European perspective, but there are dozens of absolutely gorgeous historic cities within an hour or two of flight from where I live, so flying sixteen hours to see Seattle (where I could fly two hours to see Paris or Rome) is just a sorry proposition.

Paris and Rome are indeed lovely. But they're just like NYC and Seattle... Mini malls and intersections.

Haven't been to Seattle so can't comment in earnest, but from that I've seen on pictures and Street View, the downtown is just your typical American large city downtown (once you've seen Manhattan, you've seen them all, they were mostly built in the same culture, architecture era and following the same urban patterns). It's essentially efficiency-driven and business-driven uglyness (or nondescriptness) that permiated XX century urbanism, at least in capitalist countries [1].

[1] In the Soviets, the cities were built on different premises, so they look very different - although the countries were so poor that, even though urban planning was excellent (ubiquitous parks, public spaces, houses built far away from busy roads etc.), the buildings themselves are drab due to resource constraints.

Street view as cultural analysis. Is this postmodern art?

Equating Seattle with Rome, this is just an absurd statement.

Read the thread. It is intended to be absurd.

Thanks for being helpful...

If you can't distinguish the architecture of Las Vegas style strip malls (and the culture therein) from the neighborhood oriented grids of Manhattan (and its vastly different culture), there's no way to be helpful.

I never said that. (What I said is that, after already seeing NYC, SF and Las Vegas, I didn't expect the trip to Seatle to be worth it). Next time, please read more carefully before you start posting pointless comments.

You said: "after seeing NYC, SF and Las Vegas, I passed on an opportunity to go for a week-long business trip to Seattle. Even though I had the time, I imagine Seattle being just *mostly more of the same (an uniform, boring city consisting of XX century architecture built on a grid*"

You later changed to "worth it" because you didn't want to admit that these places might not be "more of the same", because they aren't the same at all.

I suspect you also realized that if you find yourself "bored" in NYC, the problem is not the city. There are few places in the world with more things you can do 24/7 than New York.

> You later changed to "worth it"

I didn't change anything. I think it's clear that I passed on opportunity to go to Seattle because I didn't think it was worth it (why else would I pass on it)?

> I suspect you also realized that if you find yourself "bored" in NYC, the problem is not the city.

Where did I write that I was bored in NYC? I think it's great, but I also think it exhausts the experience of "large, dense American city built mostly in XX century" to the point where seeing another one doesn't add that much. Aren't Americans travelling to places like New Orleans or Nashville precisely because they're not like most ordinary American cities?

s/intersections/intersections of precisely ninety degrees/

To the European eye, all parts of all American cities look exactly the same, with the exception of those bits that directly touch a body of water.

All parts of all American cities? Quite a broad brush. Maybe they should visit Boston. Or Taos. Or Santa Fe. Or Boulder. Or Santa Cruz. Or...

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