Soul Searching

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Find the heart of town.
Ask your friends this question: Where do you go to find the true heart of the city? In Seattle, many would say Pike’s Place Market. In Chicago, Wrigley Field. In Madison, the lakeside beer garden at the University of Wisconsin student union. Most of the people I interviewed in Washington, D.C., located the city’s soul not in the famous monuments and museums but in neighborhood streets, cafés, bookstores. John Johnson, founder of Process WorkD.C.–a multicultural group that meets to discuss race and class issues–took me on a tour of his favorite spots: a tucked-away Cheers-style café near Capitol Hill that is frequented by activists, a baseball field where Hispanic families gather on Sundays for games and picnics. Others cited Kramer’s Books and Afterwords, the popular Dupont Circle hangout, or ethnic restaurants with atmosphere and inexpensive menus.

Nearly everyone finds at least a slice of the city’s soul in Washington’s surprising wealth of parks and natural areas. I expect you’d find the same in San Francisco, where many people connect with their city’s soul in Golden Gate Park or on the winding trails of Mount Tamalpais, the gentle mountain rising up out of the ocean mists north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Discover the civic wound that needs healing.
All cities have problems, though they are often unacknowledged. While it’s usually difficult and politically risky to draw attention to shortcomings, especially in a place that prides itself on being a city that "works," ignoring them perpetuates a state of soullessness. In Santa Fe, for example, conflicts arise between the economic bonanza of tourism and its rich historic, Hispanic character. The influx of wealthy Anglos purchasing vacation homes has come at the expense of indigenous residents—the Native Americans and Spanish—who can no longer afford to live where their grandparents and great-grandparents lived.

Race, of course, is an issue affecting most American cities. Almost every person I’ve talked with in Washington mourns the racial divide between blacks and whites; some people describe it as a city of "two souls." To drive past abandoned buildings with the U.S. Capitol looming in the background, to see how dramatically the pollution-choked Anacostia River contrasts with the cleaner, suburban Potomac River, is to witness a visible tear in the city’s soul.

Volunteering at a shelter for the homeless, throwing yourself into a political reform movement, getting to know down-and-out neighborhoods, speaking out about community ills all can help you find the soul of your hometown, as well as contribute to healing it.

Find where people come together.
The polis, wrote Hannah Arendt, arises out of people acting and speaking together in a "sharing of words and deeds." Thus the living force of a city’s soul is most palpable in those large physical spaces—the commons—where the people of a city come together to celebrate, to protest, or simply to enjoy a Sunday afternoon. As a veteran of the anti-war movement, I fondly recall the boisterous rallies held in Kansas City’s Volker Park and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The first place I ever felt the true beat of Washington, D.C., was at the Georgetown Flea Market, an open-air bazaar where people from every corner of the city come each Sunday to barter with vendors for produce and craftwork.

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