Pittsfield, Far Away

Go, Pittsfield! In its biggest splash yet, the city was featured in the Travel section of last Sunday's Times. Leave it to the Times, though, to homogenize such a varied place. Every neighborhood or city that's featured in this part of the Travel section -- called "Surfacing" -- ends up sounding exactly the same, whether it's in rural Massachusetts, a gritty part of L.A. or south Delhi, India. (When Hauz Khas Village in Delhi appeared earlier this year, my friend who lives there [and whose girlfriend was in one of the photos] wrote me to say that he didn't realize Delhi sounded so much like Budapest or Brooklyn.)

Each profile, without fail, includes some combination of a coffee house, a stylish ethnic restaurant where you can order small plates, an art gallery, bartenders with thick beards and cool glasses, people selling you something they made in their garage, and a park that doubles as a warehouse. Not that any of these are inherently objectionable as individual places, but it's squarely disappointing to realize that 21st-century leisure can be so easily boxed and sold. What was once meant to be intriguing is now rather familiar. I suppose this is also a byproduct of trying to capture a place's spirit via four stores and a quick write-up.

Pittsfield, of almost any U.S. destination to leap into this profile, shouldn't be susceptible to this. The city's combinations of buildings, people, industry, struggle, charm and delight are wonderfully distinct, and no fuzzy portrayal in the Times will change this. In the Times, the city comes out looking relatively uniform, but Pittsfield can shrug it off. Hopefully, the publicity at least entices more people to go and realize there's a lot more than the Times suggests. The city deserves the larger profile.

Above is a photo from Third Thursdays, the summertime monthly stroll in Pittsfield, when North Street, downtown's main drag, closes to cars and everyone enjoys themselves in the great Berkshires air.