but the city I had grown up in no longer existed. There were some holdouts—the cat-smelling bookstore where I had worked during college breaks, certain cultural institutions—but the neighborhoods I had known as a child were now dotted with restaurants playing overdetermined playlists and boutiques trading on a branded locality that I found comical and alienating. The new version of the city was inscrutable, baffling. Who wanted this? Who was it for?
