Struck by the iconic hotel at the center of the city, a building I've walked past many times, probably every day when I was staying in the older half of the city. It's named for a distant capital, but it's of the place. Much like, perhaps, the Roman theatres were invariably places for stories about Greeks, and The Theatre in early modern London was a conscious appropriation of a Roman/Latin word. The perfection of the great, distant place, sometimes shifted in time as well -- at the center of the present place and time.
From my yeoman's knowledge of local history, there was apparently a time in which local sentiment looked very strongly towards the UK, and its pananthropos -- Shakespeare. But the F.O. couldn't come in on their side against the foes to the south without offending the great power to the east. Additionally, there's the ancient post-reformation shift in trade routes that caused much commerce with the Sublime Porte. Church-bells melted down into bullets, and sold to those suppressing the revolts in the Balkans. Metal has its own story. Much of the steel from the old 9th Ave. El was sold to Japan before the war, and was built into the battleships that the folks from the neighborhood went off to fight.
Motion and becoming. We're born into the middle of the adventure story, and quite likely won't see the credits roll. But do try to mark the changes, and know them.