Word: marte
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...increasingly homogenous and media-saturated country, one utterly devoid of places with real individuality. We drove through town after town, always seeing the same thing: a depressed downtown area dotted with closed shops and "For Sale" signs and an area on the outskirts of town where Wal-Mart, Taco Bell and other such stores existed in all their banal, sterilized splendor. There was a stretch in Minnesota and Wisconsin where there were definitely more Pizza Huts than grocery stores...
Consumers pay less for a frilly, carpet-covered toilet seat at a cavernous Wal-Mart or K-mart than they would pay for that same glorious throne at a local mom-and-pop store. And, thus, the consumer is better off. Who am I to stand in the way? By criticizing this trend, I am not trying to advance a socialist agenda, I am merely lamenting the disappearance of small-town America, the America suggested to me by Norman Rockwell paintings...
...what's the solution? We must be aware of the cost of both our new warehouse style of capitalism, as embodied by Wal-Mart and Costco, and the revolution in communications technology. Small-town America no longer exists the way it did when our parents were growing up. You can still find unique places, but they are becoming more and more rare...
...hope that somewhere out there, some town can withstand the onslaught of modern culture and consumerism and retain some element of their history and individuality. And, if that fails, there's always the "inexhaustible" array of useless garbage you can buy at Wal-Mart for those of us still seeking variety. Timothy F. Sohn '01, a Crimson editor, is a history and science concentrator in Adams House...
...become less lurid. Vivid is happy to peddle videotapes in a more Main Street manner through the Adam & Eve catalog, which is mailed to 2.5 million people a month, and Tower and Virgin record stores, where the "Vivid girls" have done signings. Castle Superstores, a chain of eight Wal-Mart-size outlets in the West, is trying to bring a sense of class to the business. By getting rid of peep shows and strippers, the Castle stores have been able to attract a clientele that is nearly 50% couples, much higher than the 20% most stores get. "People want...