Why Gap, Hollister, Abercrombie, et al. can shove it.

So I was out gift-shopping this past Christmas Eve, regretting every second of the time spent power-walking in wild-eyed desperation with the rest of those last-minute holiday shoppers. My little brother, 19, had indicated that a new belt would be nice, leaving me scrambling around looking for an appropriately hip clothing store. Now my brother is very much a Hollister kind of guy (mostly because he works there and gets good discounts). However, even during the mad rush, I realized I couldn't countenance the idea of actually entering one of those stores and buying something.

For one thing, I feel like there is something inherently wrong with a clothing store that uses more floor space on showcasing their wood floors and their lighting than on the clothing itself. Funny, when I go into a clothing store, I look for clothes. I realize that their goal is to highlight the finer points of their merchandise and draw attention to each individual item, but I don't like feeling like I'm paying them to waste potential shelf-space. Every square foot of empty space is extra overhead that the consumer, which is you, subsidizes. The same goes for interior design gimmicks like Hollister's beach shack image. I'll allow that this sort of contrived originality may help sell the brand, but it doesn't mean I'll be getting duped too.

Which brings me to my second point: the voracious appetite of today's suburban youth is satisfied only by dishing out contrivedly unique products for their exquisitely nuanced sensibilities. That is, and I suppose this is necessarily true of popular culture in general, it's not really unique anymore when everyone's got that shirt. So what's a pitiable suburban youth to do? Well, there is no shortage of options, but there is something to be said for the franchise phenomenon in American consumerism. Aside from a handful of our major metropolises, we Americans seem infinitely more at ease when patroning a well-known franchised establishment than an unknown independently-owned alternative. Why go to Emiliano's Café or Las Margaritas when you've got TGI Friday's and The Olive Garden? Or, if you'd prefer, Chili's, Flinger's, and Chotchky's?

I guess I'll have to expand more on this franchise phenomenon later, but back to the original point: Why Gap sucks. And it's not because of sweatshops in Bangladesh or wherever; hey! that's valuable foreign capital investment there. No, they suck because their products are uniquely unoriginal and cheaply overpriced; because their decor is distinctly inefficient and studiedly stultifying.

That said, I ended up finding a belt for my brother after all. I got it at PacSun. Hey, at least there were clothes strewn all over the place.


"Hey what are you doing for lunch today?"
"Well, our specials are barbecued chicken - it's actually right over there on the board. Excuse me."
"I was asking what you were doing for lunch. Would you like to have lunch with me?"
"Oh, are you serious? Yeah, I don't, I don't think I'm supposed to do that."
"Oh. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go next door and get a table and if you'd like to join me, no big deal. All right? And if not, that's cool too. Okay?"
"Uh, when you say 'next door', do you mean Chili's or Flingers?"
"Flinger's."
"Okay."