My history is that of a child of a couple of poverty-stricken artists who lived in countries around the Mediterranean during my growing-up years. We couldn't afford an ice cream cone except as a very special treat and a meal at the local family restaurant was a once-a-year thing, good value though it was (and no such establishment would survive for long if it wasn't, in that time and place). Now, pasting "trattoria" on the sign over your door in the States is an excuse for charging seven dollars for a postage-stamp-sized pizza with a sprinkling of something unrecognisable on it, which you call focaccia alla Bolognese or some such nonsense -- so I do know what people are on about. But that's not how life has to be lived. To some degree it's a matter of insisting that we get respect from those who want our lunch money.
When it comes to discount hardware and department stores things get more complicated, but I think a lot of us can refuse more often than we do to fill the pockets of the already fat-pocketed and choose instead to support a local shop. Out of solidarity.
cheers, Joanna
At 07:59 22-01-01, you wrote:
>Personally I prefer Taco Bell's Mexinuggets to any other mass market
>fried potato.
>
>Also I'd say Rob and Dougs positions on McDonalds are based on
>different cultural contexts. We've had McDonalds in the U.S. as long as
>I've been alive (substantially longer than Rob). The cultural damage has
>been done -- more or less irreversible short of a revolution which won't
>happen in our life times. Any independent fast food vendors who exist
>are ones who have managed to adapt to the existence of big chain
>competitors.
>
>Apparently in Oz this particular damage is not quite so advanced. (I
>take Rob's word of course. Practically everything I know about Australia
>comes from his posts.) Not patronizing McDonalds may actually be a form
>of resistance there -- whereas in the U.S. it is only nostalgia (or a
>means of saving money and preserving health) -- without political
>significance.
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