not a step

Coming soon, a Staples on every corner

While the convenience of a store like Staples may be inarguable, I find it hard to believe that my relatively small community consumes office supplies at a rate that justifies five separate stores. Even if my next door neighbor ate paper by the ream and used computers as kindling wood, I'm guessing he wouldn't mind only having two of the stores within an easy drive of his apartment.

This same guy-perhaps due to his ingestion of so much paper-must go through a stunning amount of antacids and other pharmaceuticals. He also apparently washes the entire mess down with a domestic beer and a platter of buffalo wings, or at least that's my theory, based on the number of chain pharmacies and restaurants in the area.

At last count, the five-mile radius surrounding my new apartment contains seven CVSs, six Radio Shacks, five Staples, four Gaps, three Barnes & Nobles, two Bed, Bath & Beyonds and one Big Party, as well as countless other chain stores. A small sampling of the eateries in the area reveals at least six Dunkin Donuts, five Burger Kings, four McDonalds, three Sizzlers, two Boston Markets and one each of Fridays, California Pizza Kitchen and Pizzeria Uno.

The neighborhood has become so clogged with national brands that it seems the only markets not captured by these charmless conglomerates are Chinese food and maternity clothes, though I'm sure that's just a matter of time. Using a conservative estimate, America seems approximately six months and a couple dozen Wal-Marts away from becoming one giant, interconnected shopping plaza. While this would make purchasing an Orange Julius or buying a nose hair trimmer considerably easier, it offers few other benefits.

As these strip malls slowly spread from their home base on Long Island to the rest of the country, the concept of "local" has slowly disappeared. One town looks a lot like another, and if you were blindfolded and put on a plane, it would be awfully hard to know if you'd been dropped in Duluth, Des Moines or Danvers.

This creeping sameness has affected just about every locale. Once untouchable counterculture neighborhoods like New York's Greenwich Village and Cambridge's Harvard Square now boast chain stores. Even the corner of Haight and Ashbury-at one time the center of American youth rebellion-houses a Ben & Jerry's and a Gap. The main drag in nearly every community in the country has basically the same selection of stores, making where you choose to live more a question of nostalgia than anything else. You might choose San Antonio over Detroit because you prefer the weather, but you can be sure when you meet your friends for drinks after work it will be at Bennigan's, Chili's or some other themed eatery that serves "sizzling fajita platters."

Now I like fajitas as much as the next guy, and I haven't forgotten what chain restaurants have done for the advancement of potato skins. I'll even happily credit these places with helping build public acceptance for comedically oversized margaritas, but there has to be a limit.

Local stores tend to cost more, and local restaurants almost never offer a "super size" option. But spending a few extra dollars, or eating a few less fries, seems a small price to pay for maintaining an America where the difference between cities is more than a name on a map.

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