The difference between Barcelona and the Bay Area

Tech culture's "Aboutness" vs. a city built for serendipity

Sasha Chapin’s recent post about Bay Area culture is so well written, each sentence its own concise, well-observed world, that I hesitate even to make an attempt to follow in its footsteps.

It just struck me, the bizarre, tech-obsessed soullessness Sasha describes in such stark contrast to the warm, romantic decadence of Barcelona, that it had me wondering why anyone in their right mind would ever want to move there.

The Bay Area has a curse, Sasha writes: “Aboutness.” Everything has to be About something. People don’t gather for the pleasure of each other’s company; they gather for an exchange of information—a podcast discussion in real life. “In the Bay, most gatherings have the sweaty air of Purpose.”

Barcelona has almost none of this, except among expats who are themselves in tech. None of the throngs of young people crowded around metal tables outside of neighborhood bars are there for an exchange of information; they’re there because this is what Spain is optimized for—all the incentives and a thousand years of tradition and warm weather point toward four-hour dinners late into the evening, beer bottles and empty tapas plates strewn about.

Sasha writes of the Bay’s “famous gender imbalance”:

Is there a less sexual city than this? … The good, sweet men are scared of women. They find it unacceptable that someone, somewhere, could find out that they want sex.

Lol. The men of Barcelona are the opposite. Men into their 40s and 50s, charming, handsome, alive, impeccable salt and pepper stubble. And of course, they dress well. Of course, they want sex. It is Southern Europe.

Here there are none of the Bay Area’s “awkward people” writing popular posts on charisma and attraction, because neither of those qualities is in short supply. And as for the gorgeous woman Sasha describes as being self-conscious about wearing a pretty dress at a party?—I can’t imagine her existing anywhere in Barcelona.

I generally see Barcelona’s overt sexuality worn on its sleeve (pockets of Catalan modesty aside). Rarely have I been somewhere so densely packed with this diversity of attractive people. The Istiklal in Istanbul, a gigantic crossroads of half a dozen cultures, could perhaps compete. The Mediterranean climate here makes it easy to show skin, and beautiful tattoos are a matter of course. It would be rebellious and counter-cultural not to have beautiful tattoos in Barcelona.

Sasha writes of the Bay Area that “people are dreaming up the future here, who have never fully experienced their own bodies or emotions.” In Barcelona, for better or worse, few are dreaming up the future; perhaps they are too busy experiencing their bodies and emotions. Every day, I see people crying on the streets.

Then there’s this: “I talk to strangers at the climbing gym and it’s like I’ve startled a bobcat.”

Speaking as a climber who has relied on it for social connection wherever I go, the image of Sasha trying and failing to make small talk in a climbing gym startled me. My first friends in Barcelona were made at the gym or at the crags. Last month, I decided to join a friend at the climbing gym in the middle of the day on a Thursday, and was promptly introduced to five more would-be friends and climbing partners.

Of course, I know why the Bay Area gym is different. People all with the same tech-utopia mind virus move themselves to the Bay Area, and then they take up climbing, so that Sasha’s climbing gym is now one of the few places in the world where my beloved passion is not an inherently social pursuit.

I said I don’t know why anyone would move there, but in fact I know perfectly well: they move to pursue a memetic desire to change the world through tech and maybe get rich in the process. They’ve been sold the new American dream, where you become a “builder” who never picks up a hammer, but nevertheless is solving the world’s problems with a laptop, a PowerPoint deck, and an internet connection.

I don’t mean to speak so dismissively. Silicon Valley has been the preeminent driver of American GDP growth in my lifetime—an unparalleled wealth-creation machine that half the world’s leaders would desperately love to imitate.

I can only speak for myself when I say I think it’s a bad trade: the Bay Area and all the tech it’s given us vs. a culture as empty and lifeless as the one Sasha describes:

What’s relevant is that a place so erotically damaged has little eros, generally. Culture springs from the willingness for romance. Without it, life is less directed by wonder and attraction writ large. Fewer connected conversations with people who laugh easily and palpably enjoy each other’s company. Fewer moments when it feels like the human burden has been lifted.

This is the paragraph that made me think, Opposite of Barcelona.

I once had a friend (we don’t keep in touch) who would have fit right in. He used to say that the world would be a better place if it were managed by algorithm, so long as it was the right algorithm. One with all the inputs it needs to effectively manage the global economy, so that we wouldn’t even need politics anymore.

What a sad and naive idea. But at the same time, it scared me: what if men like him ruled the world? “The common view is that humanity is a problem which can be solved if we finally just put our heads together,” Sasha writes.

Of course, there are pluses to the Bay Area: “It’s a good place to work, to meditate, to experience solitude. I’ve grown more intellectually rigorous, because everyone here is so fucking literal-minded. My cardio is better because I can run along the ocean.”

In contrast, it may be difficult to experience solitude in Barcelona. The apartments are small, the streets full. Many people run and bike by the sea, but it’s a crowded waterfront. My Barcelona producer friend has a weekly meditation circle—which is so classic Barcelona, I can’t even: meditation, but social.

My friend and fellow Barcelona expat Brian Wiesner uses the word serendipity to describe what goes on here. What Sasha might describe as a life “directed by wonder and attraction writ large.” Chance encounters that create happy after-effects.

By now, I’ve had enough of those serendipitous moments in two years to outweigh a decade of living in the Washington D.C. area, a city one might also say is cursed by Aboutism, its gatherings infected with a sweaty air of Purpose. Here, I run into friends on the street. The city’s communities are interwoven. Seemingly random connections turn into meaningful moments at an unusually high rate.

Sasha writes:

The Bay sucks up bright minds and invites them to descend into insular parody. It also sucks up try-hards who imitate the genuine eccentrics and, in the process, merely become mediocre dysregulated people.

Barcelona sucks up wandering souls. It sucks up artists and musicians who imitate the Gaudis and Picassos of old with their own show—a cabaret, or an open jam session, a nude figure drawing class, opera on the beach, open mic and cocktails, comedy, weekly jazz in the old bordello. And it sucks up the Latin and Chinese and Moroccan immigrants, coming to study, to advance, to escape. To take over a neighborhood Catalan restaurant and run it the exact same way, with the exact same menu.

Eventually, we too get infected with a mind virus, the one advocating the daily siesta and the slow lunches, the evenings in the public square, and the Sundays with family. We may merely become mediocre people, in the end—but we will almost certainly not become dysregulated. Quite the opposite.

My favorite Barcelona night spot, which shall remain unnamed.