Dispatch from Sheffield, U.K.

I'm in Sheffield, the steel city of the U.K. It's kind of like Detroit and Pittsburgh mixed together, but with the steel industry now (mostly) gone. And that leaves Sheffield in a bit of an identity crisis. Is it a college town with two universities in the city center? Is it a place for art and artists? Can it attract tourists? Is it a working class town or an ex-working class town? Can its personality still be a steel city now that steel is gone?

Which makes it all pretty interesting. When you go to London, London does all the work for you--it grabs you by the shirt and says "There's the British museum! There's a double-decker bus! There's Regent's Park! There's Parliament! Look at all the people! Look at all the theaters! Look at the River Thames! Can you even believe you're here?"

You just sort of hop on and follow the flow.

But in Sheffield you're left to your own devices. You have to do some digging to uncover what's great about this old Yorkshire town. You have to fall back on yourself, figure out who you are (a bit) and what you're doing, and then reach out to meet Sheffield half way. And after a month or so, you've found the immigrant neighborhood and restaurants, the chatty professorial old man at the used book store, the soccer field in the low-income area, the waiter with the sly and ironic British sense of humor, and the guy who asks you about the Chicago Bears because he knows nothing of American football.