On global homogenetic culture. “GHC is Trader Joe’s bags outside of the States. GHC is people en masse wearing the same exact outfits on accident in public. GHC is adult dorms. GHC is a Louis Vuitton in every city. GHC is Shake Shake going global.”
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"on accident" will never cease to annoy me, and makes me realize that I have entered the yelling at clouds phase of my life.
It appears to be a generational thing and happens more in speech than written text.
Old man yelling at clouds, indeed.
It's ironic that the headline photo is in Venice–In Invisible Cities (a sort of homage and ode to Venice) one of the cities Calvino imagines is Trude:
"If on arriving at Trude I had not read the city’s name written in big letters, I would have thought I was landing at the same airport from which I had taken off. The suburbs they drove me through were no different from the others, with the same greenish and yellowish houses. Following the same signs we swung around the same flower beds in the same squares. The downtown streets displayed goods, packages, signs that had not changed at all. This was the first time I had come to Trude, but I already knew the hotel where I happened to be lodged; I had already heard and spoken my dialogues with the buyers and sellers of hardware; I had ended other days identically, looking through the same goblets at the same swaying navels.
Why come to Trude? I asked myself. And I already wanted to leave.
"You can resume your flight whenever you like," they said to me, "but you will arrive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail. The world is covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the name of the airport changes."
Agree w/ the article and this feels like a continuation of Kyle Chayka's "Airspace" piece from almost ten years ago(!).
It also bought to mine "Premium Mediocre", something that came to mind frequently on a recent visit to Amsterdam (no the city is not PM, but so many of the international brands are, and it stands out in a city of idiosyncrasies and local neighbourhoods)
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