Imagine you've just arrived at a new town and you're chilling at a coffee shop and you get into a conversation with a local. "Tell me about this place" you ask

Imagine you've just arrived at a new town and you're chilling at a coffee shop and you get into a conversation with a local. "Tell me about this place" you ask them. "Well, Lexington is 3 blocks away from Jones St, the bakery is located on 875 Jackson Heights Rd and you can't park on Woodrow St between the hours of 8 & 6 PM." This makes about as making high school students memorize dates & places. Historical facts provide context to the broad sweet of history. They help you navigate through the historical space. But they're close to useless if you don't have an understanding of the historical space to begin with. Now, imagine you've been in town for a few years, you're starting to understand how everything is oriented around the hill, what the major thoroughfares are, the general nature of different suburbs. You're starting to get a feel for how the city operates. Now it's helpful to know if someone lives on Lexington St, you can just go down Jones and turn right at the light, that it's ok to drive to meet someone at a bar on Woodrow because the streets are free parking after 6pm and that the bakery is 3 blocks south of where you're meeting your friend because she's at 511 Jackson Heights Road. What were previously useless pieces of trivia are now what make you "street smart" around the place. They're what help you navigate around the city by feel rather than directions. Of course, you're never going to be a professional taxi driver so it would be pointless to memorize all the streets and how they are laid out. But, at the same time, you understand how owning a GPS and relying on that exclusively is missing out on some vital part of what it is to live in this city. So many people I meet pooh pooh history because they don't understand this analogy. They're bumbling around without a mental map and they don't even know it.