“
The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one
place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent
business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder -- its DNA -- Xerox(tm) it,
and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one
with a left-turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its
property lines.
In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Cafe for a bite to eat and a cup of
joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left
your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up
and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be
something you didn't recognize. If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel
at home anywhere.
But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk
into a McDonald's and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to
look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald's is Home,
condensed into a three-ring binder and xeroxed. "No surprises" is the motto of
the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every
sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin.
The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible
country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the
growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of
the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic
bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree
killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman's
March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bun-gee jumping. They have parallelparked
their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street
patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl
floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the
loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture.
The only ones left in the city are street people, feeding off debris;
immigrants, thrown out like shrapnel from the destruction of the Asian powers;
young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong.
Young smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city
because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it.
”
”