(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 316: Intro to the City

This week we’re joined by Professor Sean Benesh to talk about his new book Intro to the City. We chat about his love of Pre-Colombian cities, how being an ordained pastor connects to his urban thinking, and some thoughts about opening your mind when it comes to place.

Below is a full unedited transcript of this show:

Jeff Wood (1m 27s):
Sean Benish. Welcome to the talking head podcast. Thank you. Thanks for being here before we get started.

Jeff Wood (2m 8s):
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yes.

Sean Benesh (2m 10s):
So right now I work as a professor at Warner Pacific university. I teach a variety of subjects in different departments and yeah, that’s basically what I do. How did you get into cities? Well, that’s a good question. Since I grew up in rural Iowa, I did not come about it easily. So actually I missed part of my story. So I grew up terrified of cities. Didn’t like cities, I didn’t get cities. I wanted nothing to do with cities. And then fast forward the storyline, we were living in, in immigrant and refugee neighborhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, surrounded by the city.

Sean Benesh (2m 50s):
And that was really the first time that I began wrestling with what is a city and other related topics from urban design to transportation? Yeah, that’s kind of how I really fully started embracing cities,

Jeff Wood (3m 5s):
Vancouver, BC. So we

Sean Benesh (3m 7s):
Were working on starting an outdoor adventure, nonprofit.

Jeff Wood (3m 11s):
That’s cool. What kind of adventures were you going to?

Sean Benesh (3m 16s):
There’s a lot of little subplots of woven through. So for a number of years, when I was in grad school in Southern Arizona, I worked as a high-key and mountain biking guide just took people out into the desert for hikes mountain bike trips. And so that came about the idea of doing some of that, but really focusing on populations that don’t readily have access to outdoor adventure. So it was doing that both in intentional inclusion of different population groups.

Jeff Wood (3m 46s):
It’s cool. Your book is intro to the city, but it’s not your first book. What do you usually write about,

Sean Benesh (3m 51s):
I first started writing about cities, but from more of a biblical and theological perspective, and then it started kind of migrating outwards related to different courses that I’m teaching could be from bikeability to other kinds of ministry, topics to community and economic development to gentrification and more

Jeff Wood (4m 16s):
Well, that’s really interesting. Tell me about the connection between the church and city. And we’ll get into it a little bit more later, but I’m just curious, I thought it was an interesting that you had a chapter in the book about the things that are sacred.

Sean Benesh (4m 26s):
Yeah. So spoiler alert, I am an ordained pastor, so there’s that part of me, right. So my first doctorate I received in global urban studies was from a seminary and it was really through that experience. And my focus of my dissertation was researching churches, new churches in gentrifying neighborhoods, and basically what kind of impact that they were having. Were they doing anything in the community, et cetera. So that from that experience that led me to want to continue to pursue more education. And then when we landed in Portland, that’s when I started a PhD in urban studies with a focus on planning and development work there.

Sean Benesh (5m 10s):
So I’ve always had this kind of fusion of sorts. So there’s then a part of me where for a lot of years, I have worked professionally in the ministry arena, whether as a pastor or working for a church denomination, helping churches. And really, I would say the catalyst that got me really interested and involved in cities was when I was in Southern Arizona, particularly in Tucson. And my role was to help catalyze new churches, not just across Tucson, Metro, but all the way down to the border. That was the first time I had begun thinking about like what impact can churches in particular new churches have in communities in particular communities of color, places in neighborhoods or small towns in economic decline.

Sean Benesh (6m 0s):
So that’s these two worlds of development work and local church ministry started coming together.

Jeff Wood (6m 8s):
So you’ve got the two PhDs. What was the difference in education in terms of, from the secular to the religious?

Sean Benesh (6m 14s):
I would say some of it would be related to like on the seminary level, focusing more on kind of like a biblical and theological understanding of cities. Like, so what does the Bible have to say about cities? Is there like a blueprint in there for like a, just an equitable city? And I ended up writing about that in one of my books was called blueprints for adjust city and kind of rustling through these kinds of conversations, but from a biblical and theological framework. So I would say it’s a lot of that that would be kind of the, more of the focus. So it’s not just like community or economic developments from like the faith-based perspective, whereas like a Portland state, it’s just, you know, urban history courses, urban planning, bike, head planning, kind of courses.

Sean Benesh (7m 0s):
So a little bit different than the focus. One would be a more theological biblical and faith-based foundation. And the other is just studying cities.

Jeff Wood (7m 9s):
And that leads me to my next thought was, you’re really fascinated with pre-Colombian cities, cities that were here before the Europeans in North America. I’m curious, kind of how that came about and how that interest was sparked.

Sean Benesh (7m 21s):
Yes. So, I mean, honestly it was that five-year stint as a hiking and mountain biking guide. I would say I always had a love and fascination of history before studying it, you know, more thoroughly in school in particular urban history, but really as a guide going out on the trail every single day and where our trails were that we hiked would go through all kinds of remains from village sites from the whole camp. So you hike along, there’s pottery shards, everywhere there’s walls, there’s foundation walls from pit houses. And a lot of it was just on the excavated and all throughout the Santa Catalina mountains there in Tucson, or just hiking, whether it’s through washes on the trail, I just learned to spot pottery, all these kinds of things everywhere.

Sean Benesh (8m 11s):
And it just drew me in to go wait, like what, what is all this, why is this here? Who are the people? And that really began developing this deep love for pre-Colombian urban history and kind of expanding out on that. So the Southwest was a great place to be because of the arid climate. So many things are just so well preserved over hundreds, if not thousands of years. And that really started it. And then more formally, you know, in school and higher ed. And then later on teaching on urban history, I just continued to build on that. But to me, I guess in the fascination was again, growing up and learning about like American history and all that. Like we never talked much about like, actually there was an urban history, you know, pre Columbus and it was a pretty substantial urban history and I’m not talking just the Mayans or the Eakins, but here in the continental us, whether it’s, you know, Chaco Canyon in New Mexico or Cahokia in East St.

Sean Benesh (9m 10s):
Louis.

Jeff Wood (9m 12s):
Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, I I’ve been fascinated by those places and Mesa Verde and others like it, the Hill dwelling, my grandma was actually born in and you talk about, here’s another connection. You talk about copper mining in Arizona. And actually my grandmother was born in 1913 in Jerome, Arizona. And obviously that was a big mining town. And we went to a number of the places around there and Cottonwood and a lot of the ruins that exist. And it’s really a fascinating thing to go back and look at those places and think of what was there and why it was there. And then how did it disappear as well? Is that something that you think about fairly often? I’m guessing, so

Sean Benesh (9m 50s):
Probably way too much. So, yeah. And again, it comes out like in my urban history course, I get to teach because part of the course we look at since I’m here in Portland, Oregon looking at like kind of the, the, the history of how Portland got started. And it’s just like, it’s fascinating. Like, Whoa, why Portland? You know, when there’s a number of other similar size beginnings in the area, what was it about Portland that made it? And what was it about those other communities that didn’t same with the mining towns? Why did some cities make it, why did the Jerome’s of the world not make it? When I talk a little bit about in the book, another mining town Bisbee in Southeast Arizona, just the fascination that at one point it was the largest city between St.

Sean Benesh (10m 35s):
Louis and San Francisco yet probably most people never heard of it. So why did those cities make it? And what was it about Bisbee that was different? And that gets into other conversations about, you know, the economics of the city and even spills into other things like climate, et cetera.

Jeff Wood (10m 52s):
You have a city, a pre-Colombian city that if you could go back in time, you’d pick to live

Sean Benesh (10m 58s):
In the U S boy. Wow. I don’t know. I just finished reading a book, kind of a nerdy history of Chaco Canyon area and all those urban developments along there to me, that’s fascinating. Just the whole infrastructure they had with roadways and multi-story buildings. So I would probably pick there also because I love the desert. Nice. Okay.

Jeff Wood (11m 22s):
Well, so this is a book of questions and I feel like I’ve done an interview on myself reading it, which is an interesting twist on a lot of the books that I read. What do you think I should ask you after you’ve already asked me so many questions?

Sean Benesh (11m 34s):
Well, I guess, pertaining to the book, you’re right. That’s, that’s what it’s for my hope is to spark curiosity. And I said it in the beginning, it came out of teaching a course called the same thing, intro to the city or introduction to the city. And these are students that had never really thought about cities before ever. And now all of a sudden, whether they’re an elementary education major or a business major they’re in my class. And so my job is to really cultivate that curiosity of cities and love for cities because, you know, my students come from suburbia, from rural communities, et cetera, but they had never thought about cities before.

Sean Benesh (12m 16s):
And so that’s why I love asking questions and whether we’re hitting this topic or that, or going on a field trip, I always love following up with like, Whoa, what stood out to you? What was an aha moment? Or what was something that you’ve seen or that you heard that you had never thought of before? And that would be, yeah. So for you, like even reading the book, like you said, it’s, there’s a lot of questions, but I’m always curious as to like, what was the takeaway from it?

Jeff Wood (12m 45s):
My takeaway was a lot of your interests, but I might be a weird audience for that specific question, because I do go through so much information on a daily basis. I mean, there’s not a lot of discussions about the things that you talk about, like religion, like sacred spaces, like thinking about economics in a different way and race. I was struck by a lot of those discussions as well. And the different way that you came about it, then maybe other authors might and especially other authors for maybe Portland. Yeah.

Sean Benesh (13m 15s):
And probably because I was writing it thinking about a 19 year old or 20 year old sitting in my classroom, having never thought about this, they’re not urban studies majors. They’re not aspiring urban planners or anything like that, but what would I, what could I present to them that would stimulate their thinking increase their, their curiosity and even fascination. And even for a lot of students just kind of warm them up to like, Sydney’s are actually pretty cool. They’re not like these terrifying places.

Jeff Wood (13m 49s):
I also liked that one of your classes is kind of an intro class that a lot of people have to take, even if they aren’t kind of urban studies, fanatics, you know, those students, they must be interesting to kind of see their eyes open a little bit to the world of cities as well. When you teach that class, I’m curious kind of what the response is generally from those students that come in.

Sean Benesh (14m 6s):
I think a common theme would be, they start off in the class saying I don’t really like cities. I don’t get cities. And I could understand because as I shared earlier, that was me growing up in rural Iowa. Like I just didn’t get it. So I, I understand that. So for me to introduce them physically as well, because half the course is field trips except right now in the midst of COVID. So yeah, I always love hearing the aha moments to go like, Oh, when we visited this homeless camp, like I just, I never thought about this before. I never saw this, or I never wrestled with this before.

Sean Benesh (14m 47s):
And so for them just to kind of eventually warm up to the, of cities that they’re great places

Jeff Wood (14m 55s):
And that’s, it’s an essential tool that field trip I feel like. And it’s something that I wish that we would have done more when I was in planning school when I was an undergrad at Texas and geography, one of my professors, professor Davies, you know, we got in a van like kind of like your, your decline van. You talk about it in the book we got in a van and we all went to go get central, Texas barbecue. And he talked about the history of the Hill country and the geography of it. And it was really fascinating and something that stuck in my mind, unlike, you know, studying in the study hall or go into the library every night, you know, it’s kind of something that repeats itself, but going out was really formative. I’m wondering, you know, now that the pandemic is here, you can’t do the field trips, but how many field trips do you go on and how do you think that impacts how people who are in the classes see the city with you?

Jeff Wood (15m 39s):
Yes.

Sean Benesh (15m 39s):
So the way that course is designed, it’s, it’s a block set up. So we’d meet three hours on a Friday afternoon, which is good and bad Friday afternoon, right? So over the course of a semester, you know, for 16 weeks, I would have it set up where we spend one week in the classroom, let’s say talking about the economics of the city, and then we’d spend the next week out in the city. So for like the economics, we were talking about like, you know, the transition to a post-industrial economy, the creative economy, the knowledge economy, and then we would go do for fun, like a third wave coffee tour. And we visit different roasters. We’d learned about, you know, the whole coffee scene and we’d drink coffee.

Sean Benesh (16m 22s):
And so for me, I like field trips because it makes studying cities tactile. So instead of just talking about like the history of Portland, we sign up to do like a historic walking tour of downtown Portland. And so we’re, we’re seeing the city, we’re walking the city, we’re smelling the smells. We’re hearing the sounds as they learn about the history of Portland. That’s just something we miss is just utilizing our senses in studying cities.

Jeff Wood (16m 49s):
And that’s something I took away too, from the book is thinking about how a place smells. I mean, that’s something that you think about it. I mean, I, I remember going to Northwest Arkansas and Fayetteville, which is where the university of Arkansas is and the track that we ran on after you’d finished the indoor track, you’d walk outside and you could smell the Tyson chicken that didn’t smell so good after you’re finished a race. And it reminds me of that place now, you know, like if I smell something similar, I’m like, Oh, that’s fair though, which is a little bit unfair because of the location where we were at. But it’s interesting to think about the smells and the sights and the feelings of a city. I know that there have been a lot of researchers that have been looking at, you know, how a city smells. Is this something that you’ve thought about in greater detail?

Sean Benesh (17m 30s):
I would like to say in greater detail. Yes. But no, it’s just paying attention. And probably because I bike most places in this city. So I’m always aware of not just weather, but the smells of the city and why this part of the city smells one way compared to the other,

Jeff Wood (17m 48s):
You structure the book in different. So you have temporal security, economic, spatial, social, and sacred, which one was easiest to write about

Sean Benesh (17m 55s):
For me by far it’s the spatial. And that’s because that’s how I see the city. I’m a visual learner, which is why I was drawn towards urban planning because I see cities, I can’t travel throughout a city, any city, whether it’s my city or a rural community and Oregon, and not think about like the design of the street, is there bike lanes? There’s no bike lanes or the buildings up front, are they set back or how walkable is the community or is it a car dependent? And so everything for me is interpreted mainly through that filter of spatial perspective. Is

Jeff Wood (18m 34s):
There one that you’re magnetically drawn to

Sean Benesh (18m 36s):
Beyond the spatial? It would be like we talked about earlier, the temporal is looking at kind of the changing nature of cities, which is absolutely fascinating when we look at modern history of like the storyline of a Detroit from greatness a hundred years ago to where it is at today. And then thinking through the implications, are there other cities that are just as vulnerable as the Detroit is the Bay area like that? So just thinking about, again, that the idea of the rise and fall of cities and how they’re dynamic and not static.

Jeff Wood (19m 10s):
I noticed a reference also to Kevin Lynch’s image of the city. How much did that book influence you and perhaps maybe also a pattern language?

Sean Benesh (19m 17s):
Very much so, because in part of our course, we go out and we map the neighborhood. So we utilize his framework for mapping, whether it’s looking at landmarks or nodes, we ended up mapping my neighborhood. So we break up into teams and we go out clipboard paper and we’re drawing. And then we meet up afterwards and we spend time debriefing what they saw.

Jeff Wood (19m 43s):
It’s really interesting. I mean, the book is so seminal in, you know, how planners use it. It’s interesting to see it, you know, used in the way that you all are looking at it. You know, you live in Hollywood. And I imagine that when you say that to people outside of Portland, you might get an eyebrow. I know of Hollywood from some of my work that I’ve done in Portland, but I’m wondering if you could explain this relatively unknown to outsiders and neighborhood to folks.

Sean Benesh (20m 6s):
Yeah. I mean, I’ve been in this neighborhood for going on 10 years, so it’s called the Hollywood district. It’s in kind of inner Northeast Portland. And it’s just a weird neighborhood in a good way. It’s a, it’s a, it’s an anomaly and a lot of ways. So for us, what drew us here was thinking in terms of its walkability. So w we had just moved to Portland from Vancouver, British Columbia, where we had lived for a few years, even as a family of five without a car. So we had grown accustomed to walkability transit and all that. And so when we landed in Portland, we wanted to find a similar kind of a neighborhood.

Sean Benesh (20m 50s):
And that’s how we landed in Hollywood, which is definitely a neighborhood of contrast. So you have, you know, very expensive single family, detached homes across the street from, you know, multi-story residential housing apartments, where a lot of the units are affordable. And so you have whole foods across the street from a dollar tree. Yeah. It’s just, it’s such a weird contrast and it continues to be infill with new apartments. So, yeah, it’s just a fun, eclectic, not in your typical Portland eclectic way, but just it’s in a collecting neighborhood.

Jeff Wood (21m 27s):
I also enjoyed your case for the McDonald’s.

Sean Benesh (21m 30s):
Why, why is that

Jeff Wood (21m 31s):
Just because of you cover this in the book to a certain extent, but kind of the standoffishness of some of the places that you mentioned, the whole foods and things like that, the ability of people to go in and create a third place, basically from a McDonald’s where they can go and get a cup of coffee for a dollar and hang out and, you know, just be, and I think that’s really a good thing to remember that there’s places there that everybody can go to.

Sean Benesh (21m 56s):
Yes, to me, that’s a theme that comes up a lot. When I think about is just the accessibility of a neighborhood. Like if it’s all a whole foods then really who is that accessible? Or who’s that for? I mean, what about having spaces in the city that, you know, that are for everyone doesn’t matter what your socioeconomics are.

Jeff Wood (22m 17s):
Yeah. And, and like I said, that piece about the students walking into the whole foods with you and kind of not feeling welcome. Is that something that happens a fair amount when you go places with your students?

Sean Benesh (22m 28s):
Yeah, very much so. So our school has roughly 60, I forget the last number 60, maybe upwards of 70% of our students are minorities. So when we go out and do our walking tours, to me, it’s been one of the greatest opportunities I’ve had is just walking the city with students and debriefing our experiences and learning from them, particularly learning how students of color see and interact and experience the city. So when I go into a whole foods, which I wrote about in the book and it’s me, and four young, Hispanic women, and 10 feet in, they kind of walk in and they stop.

Sean Benesh (23m 9s):
And they’re like, ah, this is kind of weird. Like there’s no one like us, or when I take my group on the coffee tour and we walk into a very well-known beloved Portland roaster, and, you know, my students are kind of squirming because, and we debrief it afterwards. Like, yeah, this is weird. Everyone’s looking at us like we’re out of place. There’s no one like us. So again, it just gets me thinking about like how to see the city from other people’s perspectives and how much that I’ve missed as well as kind of that conversation about a McDonald’s is like, some places are more welcoming to others, not just welcoming in terms of socioeconomic, but even in ethnicity as well.

Jeff Wood (23m 50s):
The roaster piece is also interesting. You mentioned in the book, how things become kind of stale. And at some point they hit a point where you have this kind of point of sameness. I’m wondering if you know what that tipping point is in terms of replica.

Sean Benesh (24m 7s):
Well, you bring up one of my pet peeves of how every new coffee shop and coffee roaster looks the same. Right. And my joke is can have a new coffee shop without succulent plants now. So, I mean, it reminds me to a degree of it’s like the new suburbanization, right? It’s like, and what do we hate about the suburbs? It’s kind of a sterility uniformity of urban form. Everything kind of starts looking the same. And after a while, even in the city, in the heart of the city, especially with a lot of new spaces, like coffee shops, et cetera, or know mixed use residential, there’s surprisingly a lot of uniformity and they all start looking the same. And like every coffee shop may have a different color palette, but it’s like, well, it looks like the last one.

Sean Benesh (24m 52s):
I mean, it doesn’t mean I don’t love it and appreciate it, but it’s like a little creativity would be nice every now and then

Jeff Wood (25m 0s):
You want something different, something eclectic. Maybe there’s also discussion about gentrification, but also I was interested in the, in the idea of neighborhood succession. Can you explain kind of what that means as far as like a definition of thinking about what neighborhood succession is and how it, how it operates and how it might be a little bit different than gentrification?

Sean Benesh (25m 19s):
Yeah. So that’s a good conversation. So I try to, I mean, again, like with the topic of gentrification, I mean, there’s just so many, so many angles and ways to look at it, to address it, to talk about it, right. And so from the urban planning side, you have that angle from maybe the architecture side, you’re looking at the actual physical homes, buildings, et cetera, from the economics perspective, from the sociology perspective, even from the history perspective. And so in that there’s, you know, kind of not on necessarily on parallel tracks, but there’s also the realization that at the same time the gentrification is happening.

Sean Benesh (26m 2s):
There’s also the reality of the changing dynamic of neighborhoods and neighborhoods are never static, right? So throughout the history of the city and in particular, the older the city is the more, this happens as neighborhoods change over and over and over and over again. So case in point, like here in Portland, we have neighborhoods that started off is full of German immigrants, and then they become primarily African-American. And then now, because of gentrification, there’s other groups that are moving in as well. So this idea of kind of neighborhood succession is kind of the migratory dynamic reality. That neighborhoods are always in flux.

Sean Benesh (26m 44s):
Yeah. I think,

Jeff Wood (26m 45s):
You know, here in San Francisco, we have the mission district and we have no Valley and you have the Castro and those areas are, are known for, you know, right now certain demographics, but they’ve been changing over time. There’s been Italian neighborhoods, there’s been Irish neighborhoods. And so I just, I thought that was interesting to think about it from that perspective, rather than just a plain gentrification narrative. And I don’t mean plain in a bad way. I’m just thinking of, it’s a discussion that comes up.

Sean Benesh (27m 10s):
Yeah, exactly. And that’s why, again, why I love walking and biking the city because you see things up close and you see the cornerstone of a church building that says it was founded by German immigrants in 1913, and yet then it became in the fifties and sixties, a congregation of African-Americans and then later, you know what I mean? Just that, that reminder that neighborhoods are always in change doesn’t mean that it’s not to be dismissive of gentrification. It’s just looking at that more, that the longer history of the neighborhood to go, all right. Well, neighborhoods succession is a constant reality and in a hundred years, how many more times will this neighborhood flip over?

Jeff Wood (27m 55s):
Much of the book was written before the pandemic versus after it starts?

Sean Benesh (27m 60s):
Probably all. I’m pretty sure it was mostly written before the pandemic.

Jeff Wood (28m 5s):
The reason I asked the question is because there’s a lot of topics that are, you know, something that touch close to what the pandemic is doing, but not necessarily like getting there. There’s the safety question, which obviously Portland is kind of a hotspot for the protests and the, and the clash between two different groups that you don’t address, obviously, because it didn’t happen yet. I mean, it’s been happening in Portland for a while, but not to that kind of level. Correct. But it’s, it’s interesting to see those things and then think about the pandemic and what that’s done to kind of thinking about what’s in the book.

Sean Benesh (28m 37s):
Yeah. And I would have to say that if I had written it afterwards, while most of it would stay the same, I think it just adds that extra layer of again, how do we experience cities and how does the pandemic influence our experience of the cities and how, you know, we’re a lot more home bound. We’re not going out in social spaces as much in particular restaurants, coffee shops, et cetera. So it really has put a damper on our experience of the cities.

Jeff Wood (29m 8s):
Yeah. It’s a bummer. You can’t go out. I mean, you can still walk around, but you can’t kind of experience cities the same way. And I hope we get back there soon.

Sean Benesh (29m 15s):
Yes. I agree. You mentioned

Jeff Wood (29m 17s):
Before, you’re also in an ordained pastor, there’s a section that delves into kind of what is sacred parks, churches, secular spaces, and even planning ethos to a certain extent. Do you think there’s a discussion that’s missing from our usual discussions about religion and play?

Sean Benesh (29m 30s):
Yes, very much so. And I think of all of the conversations where I’m thinking about my intro to the city class of all the conversations or of all the perspectives that we look at the most challenging one is this idea of looking at the sacred perspective of the city. And that’s because, you know, we’re all products of the West and we just, we’re not worldview wise. We’re not accustomed to having the sacred as part of our worldview. Whereas a lot of other cultures and nationalities around the world, there is no separation, right? It’s just, everything is sacred where for us it’s so compartmentalize.

Sean Benesh (30m 13s):
And so it ends up being a very challenging conversation is how do we think about cities as sacred, beyond simply looking at particular sacred spaces, whether it’s a shrine or temple, a church building, et cetera. So it’s just, yeah, it’s a fun conversation, but it’s just really challenging. Yeah.

Jeff Wood (30m 34s):
It brought me to, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a little bit. I watched recently a kind of a documentary. I think it was secrets of the dead on PBS about Notre Dom. And I was actually in Paris the morning that it burned down. We took a train outside of the city that day, but we were there that morning. And I don’t know if there’s any place, maybe there’s a couple, but I don’t know if there’s any place that would get that reaction in the United States that Notre Dame did on that day. I mean, you know, people all over the world kind of pouring in their feelings and their thoughts and ideas about this space that was built in the center of Paris. Is there a place maybe in the United States that’s like that? Or, or is it like you said, it’s, it’s something that’s compartmentalized.

Sean Benesh (31m 13s):
That’s a great question. I’d have to, I’d have to do a tour in my mind of all the cities I’ve been and you know, what places stand out. But again, how much of that is related to it being a sacred space, as much as just a great historical structure or, I mean, obviously it’s a combination of both. And I don’t know if there is because of the historical nature of it. Is there anything that even like, yeah, you’re asking more come close in the U S that would be hard pressed.

Jeff Wood (31m 44s):
Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe if the golden gate bridge.

Sean Benesh (31m 50s):
Yes.

Jeff Wood (31m 52s):
Because intro to the city, Sean, where can folks find it if they want to Amazon, Amazon, can you find your local bookstores?

Sean Benesh (31m 59s):
That’s a good question. Yes.

Jeff Wood (32m 3s):
I’ve been promoting bookshop.org. So folks can support their local bookstores if they get online and in order it, some of the proceeds go to their local bookshop that maybe they can’t visit in the pandemic. That’s good. Yeah. For sure. Where can folks find you online if they want to find you, or if you want to be found?

Sean Benesh (32m 18s):
Well, you can find me on Twitter on Instagram. That’s the easiest way just at Sean Bennett.

Jeff Wood (32m 25s):
Awesome. And the book is intro to the city, 150 observations to understand the city. Sean, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Sean Benesh (32m 32s):
Thank you for having me

Jeff Wood (32m 37s):
And thanks for joining us. The talking head waste does your project of the overhead wire on the web do overhead wire.com. Sign up for a free trial of the overhead wire daily or 14 year old daily city’s news list by clicking the link at the top, right of the overhead wire.com. And please, please, please put the pod going to pitch on.com/the overhead wire many thanks to our current patrons for their ongoing support. And as always, you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, overclass Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. And you can always find a traditional home at USA dot Street’s blog.org. See you next time at talking headways.