I saw a man he danced with his wife

In downtown Chicago, it seems that 90% of all the stores on the first floors of the buildings are represented by one of the following businesses: McDonalds, Au Bon Pain, Sbarro’s, Wolf Camera, or Dress Barn. Starbucks is also fairly ubiquitous, but this is the case for every major city, and every minor city for that matter, and so we shall give it no attention. The existence of Starbucks the corporation as a virus infecting all of civilized creation has been established by philosophers far more prescient than I.

And what of McDonalds, you ask? Surely that is viral as well? Certainly, but you must understand the scope of this. As far as redundant McDonalds locations go, this beats out even the brief time I was in Milan, Italy, and there were three McDonalds restaurants within one block of the train station. In the course of a fifteen-minute walk through the downtown area, I passed by at least five separate iterations of each of these businesses, many of which occurred multiple times on the same block, and as soon as I passed one set of these businesses, the next began. It was as if I were Fred Flintstone running endlessly through my granite house, with the same scenery scrolling behind me over and over again. Similar to that, except my feet didn’t make the “dinkydinkydink” sound.

Sbarro’s, of course, is an international chain, but one that does not have nearly the cachet of the aforementioned two. And yet, its popularity is natural, because people like pizza. The most recent claim to fame Sbarro’s has to offer, unfortunately, is that one of its downtown Jerusalem locations was the site of a Palestinian suicide bombing which killed a number of people.

Au Bon Pain, “the French Bakery Café”, is an unknown quantity — for me, at least, because I’ve never eaten there. I can’t imagine there is a high demand for quiche anywhere in the midwest, but I suppose that if it were going to be anywhere it would be here amongst the uppity and well-traveled attorneys and politicians, and not out in the sticks somewhere.

Wolf Camera is interesting, because it proves that people are still, by and large, taking pictures with film cameras. And taking a lot of them, too, based on the number of locations available to do one’s business at.

I have no idea why anyone would shop at a place called “Dress Barn”. It’s like buying a bicycle at a place called “Bike Silo”. It just doesn’t make any sense.

So why do these businesses have so many locations in close proximity to one another? My father points out that downtown Chicago is a very crowded place with a high population density, implying that these businesses are playing it smart by putting in locations that will catch the overflow from busier locations. (“Oh, honey, this Dress Barn is too crowded, let’s go to the one across the street.”) I think it may be more complex than that, and upon further reflection it becomes fairly clear that it is all due to the fact that the failing economy has left municipal governments little recourse in raising money for their programs; thus, they have adopted Dress Barn, Au Bon Pain, and the rest as their Official Sponsors. I mean, come on, that’s some valuable advertising space that’s getting sold on the ground around City Hall and the Daley Center. Next time you eat or shop at one of these locations, check their storefront signage. In tiny print, it will say, “Official Sponsor of the City of Chicago”.

Why, I almost guarantee it.