2012-01-31
post/16839532341
quote 22:49:06
I’m someone who would rather return to a city that he’s visited many times before than visit a new city. I don’t know many people who are like that; I like going back to the same place over and over, for years. Because it yields a different experience. If I were the sort of person who went all over the world and only visited each city once, that would be a different sort of experience. I find to really get into a city, I have to go back again and again, and get deeper and deeper into the history and texture of the place.
William Gibson, interviewed at The Verge.
Whether it’s a sign of that same desire to burrow under the surface of the city, or just because I have a lack of imagination, I’ve found myself visiting the same places repeatedly: New York five times, now (and more to come, I’m sure), Berlin twice (and, again, I’d love to return), Paris perhaps four times (with more yet to see), San Francisco (three times before I moved here), and of course London (multiple times before I moved, and then ten years of infatuation). I like Gibson’s justification, anyway.