An Elevated Way to Explore Great Cities

💔 An Idea I Didn’t Date

This is a post from Ideas I Didn’t Date, a paid subscriber-only series where I share promising ideas for projects, products, businesses and art that I’ve chosen not to partner with. Maybe they’re made for you instead. Learn more about this series →

In Osaka, we followed a sign up an elevator three or four floors to a bar that was hidden behind a vending machine door.

Behind this door is Osaka’s Cocktail Machine.

In more than two weeks of living downtown, despite being surrounded by jam-packed all-singing all-dancing multi-story buildings, we only went up elevators or staircases a handful of times.

That's because there's so much enticing stimulation at ground level that it just doesn’t occur to you to look up.

But that means the overwhelming majority of the Osaka we experienced—probably more than 99% of it—came from just one floor: ground floor.

That seems like such a waste!