Malling Ourselves To Death

Cheese Shop, Paris

On top of the insult of destroying the geographic places we call home, the chain stores also destroyed people’s place in the order of daily life, including the duties, responsibilities, obligations, and ceremonies that prompt citizens to care for each other.

— James Howard Kunstler, author of  “The Geography of Nowhere”

In the 17 years I have lived in the Keys, I’ve witnessed the steady and seemingly irreversible march towards homogenization in Key West. When I first arrived, indigenous shops and restaurants dominated the landscape and catered to tourists hungry for something different from what the malls and plastic tourist meccas of the United States could offer. Key West was no Disneyworld.

But that has all changed.

This change was thrown into strong relief by the month I just spent in Paris. This city is also a tourist center, annually attracting more than 70 million visitors from all over the world. The pressure of globalization, plus the strong force of Americanization, has certainly pushed the city of lights toward chain restaurants and even some shopping malls.

And yet the small specialized store not only survives in Paris but also thrives. In our long walks throughout this incredibly beautiful city – certainly the most beautiful in the world – we encountered store after store that sold single types of items. One had shelves full of what the French call confiture or preserves or jam. That’s all. Another sold only mustard, cornichons, and vinegar. We bought éclairs of many varieties at L’Atelier d’Éclairs. That’s all they sell.

We were surprised by how little inventory the specialty clothing stores stock. They have a wonderful simplicity and modernity that is both attractive and somehow reassuring. Rather than the large mall stores that feature row upon row of slacks and shirts and more slacks and shirts, these stores specialize.

The French resistance, which may be fading, to the mall-i-zation of the world (how shocking it was to read about a massacre at a shopping mall in Kenya – a shopping mall in Kenya!) is important because as energy supplies in the world diminish, we are going to have to revert to a regional economy that is less dependent upon the automobile. Paris is ready, though not necessarily intentionally.

In Paris residents and visitors alike can take the Metro, their subway, everywhere. Because it goes everywhere. Never did we get off the train with more than a-five minute walk from where we intended to go. And we walked. And walked. And walked.

Everywhere we came upon fascinating shops – cheese shops and bread shops, stores that sell only meat and others that display and peddle only seafood. The food we purchased at these small shops was always superior to what we occasionally obtained at larger places that offered many different kinds of food. We were lucky to be staying across the street from an outlet of a chain of organic food stores but the cheese we purchased there was not nearly as delicious as what we bought at a local fromagerie or cheese shop. Same with bread.

The Keys are headed in the opposite direction. People I respect are eagerly anticipating the prospect of a Target or even a Wal-Mart in the mall planned for Rockland Key. It’s no wonder that Fast Buck Freddies was forced to close. Fewer restaurateurs dominate Key West and show a lack of variety. Chain stores have started to take over Duval and the number of indigenous restaurants diminishes steadily. Plus, the city repeats the same events year after nauseating year.

New tourists will always arrive because new tourists are unaware of what we had before. It’s just like people who dive on the reef the first time; they don’t know what it used to be like. And the ever-increasing crowds on the cruise ships won’t be unhappy because they can spend their limited hours on the island at places that are comfortably familiar. But the trend is unfortunate for the rest of us. It’s pointless to discuss the idiocy of building a mall in an area that will be under water in fewer than 30 years as well as all the other environmental damage it will cause; no one seems to care.

But everyone in the Keys might want to care about the loss of our identity and of the character of the Keys that brought us all here in the first place. And, one day, maybe, even the tourists will figure it out and go elsewhere.