It brings that consistent Seattle blandness everywhere it goes.
Neal Stephenson said it best in Snow Crash :
"In olden times, you’d wander down to Mom’s Café for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn’t recognize. If you did enough traveling, you’d never feel at home anywhere.
But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald’s and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald’s is Home, condensed into a three-ringed binder and xeroxed. “No surprises” is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin.
The people of America, who live in the world’s most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto."
Now I have to re-read snow crash. Such a great book.
All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they’d grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain’t what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.
Same. Been to a few places in southeast Asia and Starbucks is pretty much the same everywhere there. So I can step off a street full of stalls selling all sorts of food items that I would class as “extremely adventurous” into a store with recognisable sweet/savoury cafe food options. I can relax in consistently dark-hued wood decor with a consistent assortment of tables/couches/chairs/charging points, and a consistent range of coffee drinks that each have enough calories to sustain a local family for a week.
It brings that consistent Seattle blandness everywhere it goes.
Neal Stephenson said it best in Snow Crash :
"In olden times, you’d wander down to Mom’s Café for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn’t recognize. If you did enough traveling, you’d never feel at home anywhere.
But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald’s and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald’s is Home, condensed into a three-ringed binder and xeroxed. “No surprises” is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin.
The people of America, who live in the world’s most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto."
Now I have to re-read snow crash. Such a great book.
My main reason to go to McDonalds on a business trip is, that you can eat there on your own without looking lonely.
Thanks but no, I can’t eat anywhere without looking lonely.
Snow Crash is one of the greatest books ever written.
It’s a little game I play whenever I am abroad to go check out a chain place to see how different it is. Very anecdotal
7-11 is all over the place. Prices and what they have will vary by country.
Starbucks is consistent on high end drink items both in price and what they make.
Dunkin is pretty much the same everywhere except you can’t seem to get drip coffee in some countries.
MacDonalds is the same with maybe one local item. Kinda cool getting a beer in Germany with some French fries.
Same. Been to a few places in southeast Asia and Starbucks is pretty much the same everywhere there. So I can step off a street full of stalls selling all sorts of food items that I would class as “extremely adventurous” into a store with recognisable sweet/savoury cafe food options. I can relax in consistently dark-hued wood decor with a consistent assortment of tables/couches/chairs/charging points, and a consistent range of coffee drinks that each have enough calories to sustain a local family for a week.