Planet Starbucks

Making the news in Britain this week is the issue of the High Street Clones. Namely, each city and town in Britain, and even on the Continent, are looking increasingly the same. The high street is dominated by four banks. Go to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, London, Leeds, Carlisle… you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference. Every high street will have New Look. Next. Boots the Chemist. Starbucks. McDonalds. H&M. Every high street will have a Link cash machine ripping the customer off with charges to get their own money. Every high street will be done out in that red brick style.

I look at it two ways. There is the fact that these corporate pigs of stores are good for my pocket. I wouldn’t be able to buy a funky top for £4 like I can from H&M. My local newsagents sells spaghetti hoops for nearly a pound when I can get them for pennies from one of the big stores. I can rant and rave all I want, but at the end of the day… these places do help the consumer.

And then there is the self-righteous, angry side of the coin, which I favour. IT’S SO BORING. What is the point of a shopping trip with my friends to another city if I could get the exact same things down the road? How is a person supposed to have any individuality if 30 million people in the UK female population all have the same “choice” in clothing as I do?

I don’t have all that much love for England, so I can just about deal with it. Well, as best can be expected. What I can’t take is that… that Paris, Barcelona, Rome and Cologne are increasingly getting to look like each other.

I loved Barcelona. The city is so vibrant, and alive, and full of Catalan history. Homage to Catalonia came alive amidst the splendour of a city that even the Nazi raids had been unable to destroy. Unfortunately, amongst the funky stores on the Ramblas? Burger King. McDonalds. The usual suspects. Burger King was so vulgar. The workers were dressed up as if they were in a theme park of western “ideals”—beautiful Spanish girls with their hair dyed blonde, spouting Burger King hospitality phrases. McDonalds was…well, McDonalds. Oh, with pictures of Gaudi’s timeless architecture adorned with “I’m loving it.”*

Europe’s sense of history and its sheer breadth of aesthetic difference in such a small area is its strength. If every town and city that has seen so much turmoil, so much celebration, bloodshed and history turns into a sterile world of red-brick paving and clone stores, that identity and the lessons we’ve learned will be lost amid foil-wrapped sandwiches and discount clothing in a way that Hitler and Caligua and Napoleon never quite managed.

*I was recovering from illness and was feeling dizzy so needed a drink. Even a bone-eroding fizzy carbonated drink. McDonald’s was the nearest place. I hate myself.