...and put up an - Aldi???
On Saturday we made the trek to Brooklyn Park to get Dunkin Donuts coffee. As we got to the bend on Brooklyn Blvd (at Zane Ave), I said, hey, shouldn't it be there on the right? B said, no, I think it was after the first bend and before the second.
So we drove all the way to Xylon Ave, no DD, turned around and came back. B remembered some of the the places around the DD, but it seems that the building and parking lot have been replaced by an Aldi. Across the boulevard they demolished the strip mall and it's just a big vacant swath of dirt, awaiting something else.
Later B checked the Internet-of-all-Knowledge, and it's true: there is no longer a single DD left in the metro area. The corporation isn't even selling franchises in this area at the moment.
What was so weird is, in a temporary landscape like Brooklyn Boulevard, how a couple of changes make the place unrecognizable. I wasn't even totally sure the Aldi's was in the DD location, because I didn't recognize the adjacent properties, even though I surmised that the heap of dirt across the street was where the strip mall had been. For an infrequent visitor, there really is no there there - just a succession of relatively interchangable national chains. Disposable architecture.
I suppose that if you grew up near there and traveled the strip frequently, you'd have memories that would help to fix the places - here's where the IHOP used to be where we went after parties; here's the plaza where the KMart was, remember the time that sales clerk threw us out, etc etc. But this whole notion of place associations is a tricky business. Memory is fiction, and the place re-seen is both different than it was, and different than your memory of what it was, even when it hasn't changed a bit.
I resist the temptation to go all Snob Designer on the strip - because the memories of such places are what, very often, constitutes place for Americans. But I think of my adopted hometown, and wonder: has it really gotten that much uglier in the last 2 years? Or am I seeing it differently? You get used to the visual impoverishment, and seeing it anew is always a shock. (See: I can't get over the snobbishness.)
Anyway. RIP Dunkin Donuts. Hello Rainbow Foods coffee.
Posted by otto0114 at February 21, 2005 01:16 PMYes, disposable architecture. Interesting. That's what it is. It's easier and probably more 'cost effective' to tear down and rebuild something new than it is to rehab and re-use. It seems like many things in our society are disposable.
Posted by: John at February 23, 2005 03:07 PMInteresting that Minneapolis is getting rid of DD at the same time that the chain is growing by leaps and bounds here in NYC. Just since Sept., we've had 3 added in our neighborhood and I now see them everywhere around town. Apparently they really want to compete with Starbucks here and seem to be fighting them on key corners. So if you want Dunkins coffee, you'll have to come see us!!
Posted by: Vicky at March 1, 2005 11:38 AM