This vital dimension didn't exist

But I knew I was coming to a point where I would have to make up my mind about Puerto Rico. I had been here three months and it seemed like three weeks. So far, there was nothing to get hold of, none of the real pros and cons I had found in other places. All the while I had been in San Juan I'd condemned it without really disliking it. I felt that sooner or later I would see that third dimension, that depth that makes a city real and that you never see until you've been there awhile. But the longer I stayed, the more I came to suspect that for the first time in my life I had come to a place where this vital dimension didn't exist or was too nebulous to make any difference. Maybe, God forbid, the place was what it appeared to be - a melange of Okies and thieves and bewildered jibaros.

Hunter S Thompson - The Rum Diary, 103