Planet Starbucks

[rebness]

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.

Comments

[mothergoddamn.livejournal.com]

Are you mad? You lot have the best clothe shops known to man and we have...Quiz. How to look like a desperate, nympho in three pieces of string in one shop.

Bah to you and your St John's. Bah!

[rebness.livejournal.com]

You know what Liverpool city council did? They wanted to move ace store Quiggans onto the main street, and they vetoed it. I think they needed another Starbucks or something.

(avoid that shoe shop in St. John's! The shoes just fall apart. Trust me.)

[verastar99.livejournal.com]

*continues her mad boycott of all Starbucks shops on earth!*


Incidentally, there be many spaniards, and indeed people in Latin america that are, infact, naturally blonde and blue eyed...being from Europe, who'da thunk it?!

*shuts her smart-ass moth b4 becky shoves discount sandals into it*

[rebness.livejournal.com]

La Wencha!

Dyed cheap blonde a la Pamela Anderson!

LMAO! >:)

You'd better be careful, Vera... I can afford two pairs of discount sandals... now, where to put them? ;)

Becky Gets On Her High Horse

[saffronlie.livejournal.com]

"Lego-like assembly-store Europe? Into the bin!"

Re: Becky Gets On Her High Horse

[rebness.livejournal.com]

They're after me Yurp!

[jaffacakequeen.livejournal.com]

i think Manchester tries (sort of) it has a lot of history and great architecture. I think we get so used to seeing it and it becomes a blur. But when you walk around the city and compare the Manchester city art gallery to the historic huge library building, and then go to the hideous glass structure that has just built etc i do think they are trying hard to differientiate the city from others to attract more people to the city. But then you get like you say rows and rows of the same stores and its like ? why bother? i get the same shops at TRafford and stockport, where is the incentive for me to go into what is a lovely city? Manchester has different shops, but they have lost a lot of them, Aflecks isnt the same, the Corner Exchange has gone and replaced with designer boutiques. I loved Paris because it still had the Latin Quarter with independent shops with differnt products. I wish they bring that feel back to Manchester, it used to have it. Even the Craft Quarter in Manchester is now hidden and hard to find... making way for expanding high street yawn shops.