Stuff Road

as our world continues to homogenize, more and more i find myself traveling down a "Stuff Road". i'm sure your community has one or three of these. they are roads that have all that usual stuff: a target, a walmart, a couple of chilises, a t(fucking)gi fridays, an olive garden, a noodles and co, max & ermas, a starbucks every forty-or-so feet (now complete with drive thru for maximum consumer laziness), crate and barrel, old navy, barnes and noble, the gap and its absurd little offshoots like baby gap, and on and on and on.

my point is, they all have the same shit. you're hardpressed to find a "one-off" mom and pop shop on Stuff Road. every stuff road looks the same. the buildings are all designed the same; designed by architech John Stuff, i presume. the parking lots are the same, the sidewalks are the same. the lack of trees is always the same. Stuff Road has a sorry lack of nature -- everything is pavement and brick.

Stuff Roads make me uneasy. where i live, they are starting to take over areas normally reserved for forest preserves and expansive fields. this is not even to mention the ticky-tack condos and mcmansions that are going up one street off Stuff Road in order to provide the necessary consumers to buy all that Stuff.

i know it's not easy to resist the allure, but if you can, skip Stuff Road. find the authentic part of town and shop there.