Some cities reveal what I cherish about them much more immediately than others. I've noticed that what I love about SF can be hard for visitors to see. How do you visit "weird people taking ideas v seriously"? How to put that in a guidebook? You've gotta go to the dinner parties.
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Last Sat I met someone on their first visit to SF, at a small informal event. An attendee gave a lightning talk on computational theories of consciousness; I thought: aha, excellent! Weird, sure, but *now* this visitor got to see the SF I love!
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By contrast I feel like what I love culturally about LA and NYC are much easier to "visit".
(But maybe if I moved there I'd develop some more niche "taste" for the city which would be hard to "visit".)
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Somehow forgot: I absolutely got my heart broken when I visited SF for the first time at 16. I was quite isolated growing up, pinned my hopes on SF as a place where I'd feel culturally at home. As an outside visitor (who didn't know how to travel), I was so disappointed!
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Sure, great views, great food, fun to walk around, but… where was the magic? I couldn't find it!
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my favorite twist: you have to have a facebook account to know about a lot of these
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That is odd! I've noticed that this seems to be mostly true of younger invit-ers? Maybe it's a gen Z thing? Runs counter to the narrative that FB is dead among young people. FWIW I 100% ignored FB for years and still had a full calendar of events! But from different people.
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Conversely I think LA is terrible as a visit and excellent if you live there! But once you’ve lived there it can become an excellent visit.
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LA without a sense of the city (cities) — where to even begin? Where to go? Where’s the center/main concentration/LA thing to do? Maybe go look at the Hollywood sign?
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I wonder if the organizers - especially of big-audience events - could direct still-interested audience people to a mini-unconference nearby, afterwards. Make it standard, to have a followup place for discussion.