I love Barcelona. As the people here say a lot, it has the perfect combination of “mar” (sea) and montaña (mountain). Beaches. Skiing. Great restaurants. Great food. Good-looking people. Great night life. What’s not to love? Carpe diem!

But lately I’ve begun to think that bohemian chic has its limitations. Let me explain. One of the things that I love most about Spain is that people here enjoy life. Too many people in the US have a 5-year plan they work like crazy to realize. On my very first visit to Barcelona, however, I realized that things here were different. I was 25 at the time, fresh out of law school. And I noticed that everyone here seemed so relaxed. Not a care in the world. They were all on the streets and partying. They embodied the Rent ethic that seemed so attractive after 7 years at Yale, busting my ass trying to be Maverick, trying to be the Top Gun. In this context, “La vie boheme! No day but today!” sounded especially appealing. You only have 525, 600 minutes in a year. How do you want to spend them? Forget all the bullshit and enjoy every day. Carpe diem!

That’s cool while you’re young and immortal. But as you get older, and you realize that you have fewer “todays” awaiting you, a long-term vision becomes unavoidable.

So what I loved about Barcelona when I first got here 7 years ago — the bohemian chic — looks more problematic as age gives me a little bit of perspective.

A few examples:

• Shitty service: One of my biggest pet peeves. The customer is the enemy, or at best irrelevant, in many Spanish businesses. If you want to come back, great. If not, who cares? Are you a loyal customer? That’s your problem! Just pay for your meal, and go — and I’m going to try as exploit you as much as possible while you’re here. Carpe Diem! For example, I eat at the same restaurant almost every day. For dessert, I usually get the arroz con leche, but one day I asked for the yogurt with honey. The waitress told me that they had honey, but I’d be charged extra for it. For a few drops of honey! Since then, I’ve been a little more reluctant to eat there. I don’t feel valued as a customer, so I’m trying to find my “Cheers” place — where everyone knows my name. And I’m not the only entrepreneur who laments this entrepreneurial short-sightedness in Spanish businesses. Yannick recounts a similar experience where a waitress charged for electricity when he plugged in his laptop! The title of the post says it all: A Catalan Starbucks, Impossible!

• Bye-bye 3GSM: A major international conference held in Catalunya? Impossible! Not quite, but given the oft short-sighted approach to business here, not far from the truth. A lot of blogs this week are lamenting that the organizers of the 3GSM conference want to leave Barcelona. The conference brings a lot of international prestige to Barcelona, but who cares? Let’s gouge the tourists! The petty thieves will rob them on the streets, the local businesspeople will rob them everywhere else, and the local government will remain largely silent because they’ll keep coming back, right? And all the taxi drivers that spend all day complaining in their smelly cabs about how tough life is will chat on their phones and drink coffee instead of attending to the surge of new clients, some of whom might even give tips. But who cares? Carpe diem!

Maybe it’s just a matter of getting old — from hippie to yuppie — or maybe bohemian chic really is an unsustainable way of life. Maybe as all of those long-haired, free love do-gooders of the 60s realized long ago, at some point we all have to grow up or suffer retarded development, both economically and personally.