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Could St. Louis adopt some new London traditions? Please?
(by David Linzee - January 20, 2010)
Anthony Lewis, the great New York Times columnist, called his column “Abroad at Home” when he was covering domestic issues, and “At Home Abroad” when he reported from overseas.
Unfortunately, I can’t do such a nifty switch with the title of my column. So I’ll just have to state baldly that I’m writing from London, near the end (alas!) of a vacation whose previous stops were Vienna and Cambridge.
As my return nears, I descend from contemplation of castles and cathedrals to more mundane matters, comparing aspects of daily life that differ between Europe and home. Why do British washing machines take about an hour and a half to do a load, for instance, and why is the free coffee refill unknown in Europe? My heart swells with patriotism when I look forward to the free refills I’ll soon be enjoying. The wild frontier may have closed, but the “bottomless” coffee cup keeps alive America’s denial of limitations.
Other differences are just a matter of time; a trend I see in London today, I expect to see in University City tomorrow. Take closed-circuit television cameras. The U. City police are just beginning to talk about putting a few in the Loop, if they can ever afford to. Here, cameras are everywhere. We will soon be wrestling with the Big Brother issues the British have apparently settled, with public safety trumping privacy. And the St. Louis drivers who now complain about stoplight cameras will soon be complaining about speeding cameras, as bitterly and fruitlessly as the Brits do.
Other gaps between old world and new are more profound. At least they do not seem to be narrowing as quickly as you might expect. For instance, we Americans say that we’re very frank and unbuttoned these days, but we still haven’t come to terms with certain bodily functions the way Europeans have. We go on using that dainty ’50s word “restroom.” The British say toilet. The city of Cambridge, in fact, boasts that it has 20 public toilets.
And they’re right to boast, in my opinion. The U. City Loop had zero public toilets, last time I checked, which is a civic disgrace in an area with so much foot traffic and so many bars. The businesses put stern signs on their doors, warning that their restrooms are for customers only. The result, unsurprisingly, is that desperate people end up using such places as the back of my building (a block north of Delmar) as restrooms. Maybe if we could bring ourselves to call a toilet a toilet, it might be a first step to reasonable and decent action.
It would also be nice if the bars of Delmar would emulate the pubs of London in putting up signs on their doors asking departing patrons to be considerate of the neighbors by leaving quietly. I get awakened fairly regularly at closing time by drunks shouting and laughing in my street.
I don’t mean to say that Londoners are nicer than St. Louisans. Nobody’s nicer than St. Louisans, in my experience. But they and other Europeans are much more conscious of living in a crowded world than we are. Wherever you’re trying to go over here, on the street or at home, there’s someone in the way, or you’re aware of being in someone else’s way.
I expect that when I return to my sprawling, thinly-populated hometown, I’ll spend a few days looking around, wondering where all the people are. It’s liberating in a way to have all that elbow room, but ominous too; it’s not a sign of a healthy city.
What is a sign of a healthy city, on the other hand, is ability to resist cars. (Face it: anywhere it’s easy to drive and park is Dullsville.) When London’s traffic became impossible, then-Mayor Ken Livingston initiated the Congestion Charge — if you wanted to drive into the central city during business hours, you’d have to pay through the nose.
Drivers continue to complain, of course, but any tourist who rides the bus can experience how well it works. You move along steadily through the central city. Out of the congestion zone, you crawl.
As you would expect, the bicycle is a legitimate mode of transport here. Not that all is harmony in the streets; I’ve witnessed two biker-motorist confrontations in the time I’ve been here. But the bikers have the numbers to form a lobby and put on the pressure. British cyclists have lanes, their own traffic lights, plenty of stands to lock up to.
Still they complain that the Europeans have it much better. And they’re right: in Vienna I saw a bike stand with two attached air pumps and a vending machine that sold inner tubes. Back home, I will think about that stand with even more longing and affection than I feel for St. Paul’s Cathedral.
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