Posted on 12/09/2006 3:35:25 PM PST by SamAdams76
Every well-traveled cosmopolite knows that America is mind-numbingly monotonous—the most boring country to tour, because everywhere looks like everywhere else,” as the columnist Thomas Friedman once told Charlie Rose. Boston has the same stores as Denver, which has the same stores as Charlotte or Seattle or Chicago. We live in a “Stepford world,” says Rachel Dresbeck, the author of Insiders’ Guide to Portland, Oregon. Even Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, she complains, is “dominated by the Gap, Anthropologie, Starbucks, and all the other usual suspects. Why go anywhere? Every place looks the same.” This complaint is more than the old worry, dating back to the 1920s, that the big guys are putting Mom and Pop out of business. Today’s critics focus less on what isn’t there—Mom and Pop—than on what is. Faneuil Hall actually has plenty of locally owned businesses, from the Geoclassics store selling minerals and jewelry, to Pizzeria Regina (“since 1926”). But you do find the same chains everywhere.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Mom and pop stores are gone because they are inefficient (exception: certain niche markets). What rational person would want to pay significant markup and have less to choose from simply to keep an outmoded and inefficient business model going? Personally, I like the idea I can travel anywhere in the US (and many parts of the world) and still pick up a Big Mac when I want one.
This is a terrific article. Thanks for posting it.
Better weather and good golf courses!
Reference ping to a great article...
ping
About 8 years ago, I arrived in Perth, Western Australia after the long trip from Los Angeles. I was hungry and needed to stretch my legs so I found a MacDonald's about 2 blocks from the hotel. The Big Mac tasted entirely unlike anything I'd ever had stateside. It really sucked, but the fries were good!
Perhaps the happiest day of my life is when my family stumbled upon a Wendy's restaurant in Athens.
We had been eating squid eyeballs wrapped in soggy grape leaves smothered in stinky goat cheese for a week. We were about to starve.
We coulda died without that chain....
Why go anywhere?
Hunting seasons don't follow the same schedule and fishing varies from place to place.
Why go anywhere? Because there is only one Grand Canyon, one Santa Fe, one Mauna Loa volcano, one Mt. McKinley, one Everglades, etc. etc. You can't see all that staying in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
And no matter where you go, only a small percentage of the stores are chains. And thank God they are there. It's comforting to find a McDonald's for a quick breakfast on the go, alongside a local Little Rock diner where you can get real grits and buiscuits and sausage gravy with your eggs if you prefer. It's a damned myth that once city is like another. They just all happen to now offer more choices than were once available.
ErnBatavia wrote: "The Big Mac tasted entirely unlike anything I'd ever had stateside."
Yeah. I think McDonalds varies the food a bit depending on what's available locally. I ate at a McDonalds in Turkey once. Its food tasted pretty similar to the US stuff.
There is nothing wrong with local culture or chains. You sample the local flavor when you are adventurous, and when you're tired and hungry and homesick, you go to Cracker Barrel. :)
Choice. What a concept!
Think it will catch on?
Not to mention that many Mom & Pop stores pleased their customers, had a lot of babies and became chains themselves. It's not like Sam Walton started out with $500 billion and 1,000 stores.
VirginiaConstitutionalist wrote: "It's not like Sam Walton started out with $500 billion and 1,000 stores."
Good point!
I've often wondered what it is like to breathe pure ozone...
http://atlanta.metblogs.com/archives/2005/12/the_lantern_inn.phtml
LOL!!
KRAMER: Yeah, of course you do. And do you know why? Because you're a bunch of yuppies. It's your go-go corporate takeover lifestyles that are driving out these Mom and Pop stores and destroying the fabric of this neighborhood.
GEORGE: Well, what's so great about a Mom and Pop store? Let me tell you something. If my Mom and Pop ran a store, I wouldn't shop there.
LoL!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
"To [Robert Gibbs'] frustration, he finds that many cities actually turn away national chains, preferring a moribund downtown that seems authentically local. But, he says, the same local activists who oppose chains “want specialty retail that sells exactly what the chains sell—the same price, the same fit, the same qualities, the same sizes, the same brands, even.” You can show people pictures of a Pottery Barn with nothing but the name changed, he says, and they’ll love the store. So downtown stores stay empty, or sell low-value tourist items like candles and kites, while the chains open on the edge of town. In the name of urbanism, officials and activists in cities like Ann Arbor and Fort Collins, Colorado, are driving business to the suburbs. “If people like shopping at the Banana Republic or the Gap, if that’s your market—or Payless Shoes—why not?” says an exasperated Gibbs. “Why not sell the goods and services people want?”
Why indeed not? If people like doing business with a particular company, they should be free to have that choice. The character of our communities is not determined by what's outside the sign of a business; its shaped by the local culture, climate and living preferences. For frequent travellers, all of America looks the same. That's a snap judgment from people passing through a place. For the local folks though, its always the place they call home.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Yeh. Sitting in the middle of Wisconsin with a strong hankering for a stuffed sopapilla smothered in green chile sauce from the Elkhorn Cafe, Pagosa Springs...
Yeah, Wallaby does take some getting used to.
"Who put the 'roo in the stew?"
Didn't he start with Franklin Five and Dime stores?
Walmart is my general store on the road. Remember the horror stories about automotive parts and repairs on the road. I have paid through the nose for belts and tires.
It's fun to try new places, but there's a sense of security in knowing that a chain store (or restaurant) is in the same town if it doesn't work out.
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