Amsterdam is a modern European capital with culturalcachet and an easygoing lifestyle, attracting a large immigrant population and people across the country to its historic streets.
These days using a Yahoo e-mail address carries all the culturalcachet of carrying a Zune, signaling membership in the bridge-and-tunnel crowd of the tech world.
Were Brooklyn still its own city, it would be the fourth largest in the United States, with all the culturalcachet you can expect from a metropolis of 2.5 million.
In general, as people cling ever more tightly to markers of elite status as a ticket to success, their actual culturalcachet is declining, due to everything from the atomizing forces of the Internet to the culture war and political gridlock.