Turning off New Jersey Route 17 toward my cousin’s house in Allendale it occurred to me that maybe opponents of sprawl and strip malls are overlooking one bright spot. There is something comforting about driving down Route 17 or the Rockville Pike in Maryland. You know that if you have a car and a credit card you’ll be able to get everything that you might conceivably ever need and, after all, isn’t that what American life is all about?
8 thoughts on “Strip Mall Land = Comforting”
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It’s more fun to drive when you don’t have to.
A tongue-in-cheek city boy like Phil may find it comforting, but as a former Rockvillian I preferred Congressional Plaza when it was still a grass airfield. If you have a browser and a credit card, you don’t need malls, strip or otherwise.
I think you’re right, and that’s why people who had lived in stinky cities their whole lives decided to build suburbs in the first place. The recent anti-suburb backlash is fueled by people who lived in suburbs their whole lives.
The cities have become prettier by kicking out the “stinky” blue collar industrial job providers, more comfortable to some by squeezing poor people out of certain parts of town and more fun to some by buildidng ridiculously expensive baseball stadiums where ex suburbanites and slumming suburbanites can buy sushi and beer without leaving their seats (or maybe that’s only in SF). Meanwhile the suburbs are trying to be more urban my importing espresso, gang warfare, prison-style fashions for youth and increasingly high-rise or mid-rise infill-style housing development.
There is something a little disconcerting the first time an American finds themselves in a small European city after 10PM and realizes that they couldn’t buy food for the next 8 hours if their life depended on it.
Rockville Pike, ptui! That road is one of the most unpleasant I have ever driven on, a soul-destroying apogee of frantic ugly consumerism. It was a major factor in the depression of a friend of mine (who got better after she moved away from Rockville to a place that wasn’t so hostile to pedestrians and young children).
Sushi at ballparks isn’t only a San Fran thing anymore. I had sushi at the SkyDome a few years ago when I saw Boston at Toronto. Pretty crappy. Canadians are nice, however. Boston lost.
It might be comforting but that doesn’t mean we should build lots of them. After all, apple pie and ice cream are very comforting AND American but if that is all you ate, you would eventually become a fat dead American.
You must have been there on Sunday.
After all, route 17 any other day of the week is gridlock. Bewteen the malls, townhouses and office parks, there just isn’t enough highgway space.
I grew up just north of this bastion of commerce. It is nice to know that within a short drive I have a greater concentration of retail shops than almost all of Manhattan. And unlike shopping in Manhattan, you can load your car up and go back for more.
After all, at one time there were 3 Barnes and Nobles within 5 miles of each on route 17 [that has since been reduced to 2, but of course, I’m accounting for the Borders] [Speaking of B&N, be sure to check out the big one on 17 South just past Liberty Travel. They have a used and over stock section that most B&Ns across the country don’t].
Anyway, the point is, yeah, its nice having all those convienent parking spaces and all those available goods to buy, but what kind of state of mind are you in after sitting in bumper to bumper traffic?
For those of you wondering what a typical Saturday afternoon on route 17 is acutally like, picture an exit ramp leading to a stadium hosting the Super Bowl.