Paleo Retiree writes:

Back in NYC for less than 24 hours after a couple of months away and already my brain is jangled, and my mind and eye are overstimulated …

On my walk this morning I stopped by the recently-reopened SoHo Apple Store to see how its redesign has turned out. Verdict: it’s just like the old SoHo Apple Store, only 30 feet deeper. The main thing to take note of, it turned out, was the crowd of eager shoppers lined up to buy iPhones. To my surprise, at least 3/4 of the people in the very long line were Asian — and most of them weren’t (at least judging by the languages they were speaking) Asian-American.

Feeling my inner lifestyle journalist stirring to life, I struck up a conversation with one of the Apple Store’s staffkids.

“Hey, big line,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s day #1 for the new iPhone.”

“Lots of Asians, right?”

She opened her eyes wide and, with a covert smile, nodded her head in assent.

“Are they even bigger fans of the iPhone than Americans are?”

The Applekid looked to the left. She looked to the right. No one was watching us or listening in. In a low voice she said, “Resellers.”

“Really? They buy a bunch of iPhones and then sell them along?”

She nodded.

“But how many iPhones can they buy at a time?”

“There’s a limit of two.”

“That doesn’t make for a big reselling business, does it?”

“Once they’ve bought their two iPhones, nothing stops them from getting in line again and buying some more.”

So there you have it, I guess.

Anyway: city living, eh? After many, many years of being based in the red-hot heart of Manhattan, I find myself tiring of it. Manhattan life is very exciting, there’s nothing like it, and the cultural and sidewalk energy are really something to experience. But for me these days, the big, exuberant city — any big, exuberant city — is something I’d rather visit than call home. A few years ago, for instance, The Wife and I spent eight days in Istanbul. What a place! It’s as glorious and amazin’ as Rome or Paris. But after four days of noise, crowds, splendor and squalor, I was exhausted. The too-muchness of it had done me completely in. I dragged my sad tail through the rest of our visit and then, once back home, needed a week to recover.

What do you make of big cities these days? Do you dream of living in one? Do you avoid them? Do you enjoy a yearly visit? And how has your attitude towards them changed over the years?