Coola Göteborg

För coolt är det, det tycker i alla fall Stephen Metcalf som i söndagens New York Times Style-bilaga skrivit en lång artikel om Göteborg. ."A community of Creatives is turning Göteborg into one of Europe's coolest towns"

Själv är jag uppvuxen i en förort till Göteborg och dialekten sitter där den sitter trots att det nu var många år sedan jag flyttade därifrån. Coola Götaborg alltså - här har ni några utdrag ur artikeln:

"Together the two cities are like textbook examples from a birth-order study. Stockholm, the older sibling, is smart, bold, so royally self-possessed it occasionally forgets it is not an only child. Little Goteborg — its population hovers around half a million — is puckish, tough, creative and streaked through with a certain dark impulsiveness and self-doubt."

"Enduring pockets of utter charmlessness, however, have lately become the city's secret weapon. In an age of global supercapital, of triplex pieds-à-terre and velvet ropes, Goteborg has stayed, unlike Stockholm, unassuming and fairly cheap. In the past, Swedes would get their degrees here (it is the country's largest university town) and flee. But increasingly, musicians, artists, designers and shoestring entrepreneurs — the youth-ish culture that gives a city its raffish vitality and, arguably, its economic vitality — are staying, or returning, the latest wave of un-Swedish Swedes to colonize Goteborg for their own purpose."

"Goteborg is now vying to become the culinary capital of Sweden, with four Michelin-starred restaurants and seven of the last 12 Swedish chefs-of-the-year."

"I visited with some of the city's fastest growing companies, and at each I heard the same story: in Stockholm, Stockholm is enough. In Goteborg, Goteborg is not nearly enough, and so, ironically, its smallness forces people to look first inward, then outward, to Europe and then the world."

"From out of the decay of its industrial infrastructure, the city is recreating itself as a kind of anti-brand brand. Its fashion labels — Velour, Nudie Jeans — have become global cult favorites and economic drivers, even as they make self-conscious use of the DIY ethic of their home city."

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