The sandwich we deserve

Time changes a place. We never want to admit this. Our favorite stores should stay open forever. Our favorite restaurants must serve the exact same food forever. Our favorite bars should contain the same regulars forever. We fix an idea of what a thing should be in our minds, and we get mad when the overall landscape deviates from that idea.

Two cities

I visited New York last week, land of constantly deviating from the idea of itself. When I first visited New York, Williamsburg was a hellhole and Hudson Yards was an actual hole. Much changed under the surface, too, with many thousands of places opened & closed. Of course, I am mad about all of them.

Florence, on the other hand, is perhaps the slowest-changing city in the universe. It is preserved in amber, a love letter to the Renaissance made into a rolling pile of flesh & stone. If you want an apothecary, one has been open since the 1400s. If you want paper, the stationery store has been open since the 1700s. The church Santa Maria Novella has the word “new” in its name. It has been functioning since 1420. I visited Florence in 1998 & 2014; the only thing that changed was me.