Traffic author Tom Vanderbilt writes this week about the history and future of the American Drive-Thru:
But despite the Stakhanovite quotas being met by the Bluetoothed cadres across the land, all is not well with the drive-through. The facilities saw a 4 percent drop in business in 2008 due to the recession. And—more threatening still—a number of communities have recently passed anti-idling ordinances, some of which implicate even the fastest drive-through windows. ...
Meanwhile, people who would actually contribute no emissions at a drive-through window—pedestrians, cyclists, and the like—haven't exactly been having it their way. Any number of carless individuals have broached the drive-through fortress, only to be rebuffed with vague rejoinders about "company policy" (though there are some exceptions).
But not everyone is taking drive-through restrictions lying down. One Portlander—a cycling mom denied service at Burgerville—went viral, forcing a public change of heart from the company. And cyclists aren't the only ones clamoring for access: A Minnesota woman suffering from degenerative arthritis, driving a Pride Mobility Celebrity X scooter, was refused service at a White Castle, whose policy is to serve only licensed motor vehicles. ...
Sojourning as I am for a fortnight in an area with a walking score about half that of home, I still can't quite bring myself to use drive-thrus. Maybe with more socialization...
Want frequent-flyer miles? Try this:
At least several hundred mile-junkies discovered that a free shipping offer on presidential and Native American $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to printing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 million in coins until the Mint started identifying them and cutting them off.
Coin buyers charged the purchases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the shipments straight to the bank. They then used the coins they deposited to pay their credit-card bills. Their only cost: the car trip to make the deposit.
Add that to the list titled "Now why didn't I think of that?"
A bunch of people went over to Ruckus Pizza on Wednesday for their weekly trivia contest. I do much better at College Bowl-type quizzes, and this one was all pop culture, but that didn't diminish the company and the pizza. All good.
The second round featured advertising slogans. See if you can find one product for which all these slogans work beautifully:
- "The quicker picker-upper"
- Two for me, none for you
- Get up to four hours longer
- Makes mouth happy
- Stress stinks, ____ works
- Any time's a good time for ___
We thought "Viagra" was a pretty good answer...
I tried to get out ahead of the weather on Tuesday, but it found me. The trip started out at just past 7am with the car in this condition:
By mid-Indiana Parker had had enough:
And on the arrival end, the residents have still not fully accepted their houseguest:
Parker and the cats have had words. Barks, growls, and hisses, actually. We're still trying to get them to stay in the same room together without either freaking out. This means, in practice, one of us coaxing the cats from behind the sofa while the other explains to the dog, with one hand on the choke collar and another firmly pressing down between his shoulder blades, that he is not to bark or growl at the cats. We'll see. After two days they'll ignore each other for half an hour on end, which is encouraging.
Via Strange Maps comes a field outside Minden, Neb., shaped like...well, like Nebraska:
Strange Maps writes:
Is Nebraska Field a coincidence, then? When not being centrally irrigated, each of the mile-by-mile blocks is often divided into smaller fields, mostly rectangular but not really symmetrical. That sort of describes the shape of Nebraska – but still, chances of a field mimicking it so perfectly seem very remote indeed.
Nebraska is rectangular in an oblong sort of way, with straight borders everywhere except in the east, where it is bounded by the Missouri River. An immediately recognisable feature on its western border is the square chunk bitten out by Colorado, allowing that state to be completely rectangular.
The field mimics all these shapes: the straight lines north, west and south, the indentation in the southwest, the slightly slanting eastern border, near what looks like a little, elongated lake. And all in the right proportions too.
So: coincidence or design? It has to be one or the other.
Pretty cool, though.
We got to Raleigh in one piece through a billion liters of rain, it seemed. Then this morning we got right back in the car to rescue one of our hosts after her radiator blew a hose:
We also got out of Chicago just ahead of the bone-chilling cold and snow that has started to make living there a true test of character. I love Chicago, but you know, sometimes, it's not bad to skip out for a little while.
One of Chicago's largest real-estate companies has defaulted on $1.72 bn in loans:
The portfolio, which also includes 161 N. Clark St., 30 N. LaSalle St. and 1 N. Franklin St., already illustrates several recent real estate trends, such as rapidly falling property values after prices peaked thanks to large amounts of cheap debt. With credit now virtually gone, defaults on downtown buildings are likely to rise, forcing them into foreclosure or onto the market at big discounts that will put more downward pressure on prices in a spiral similar to the struggles of residential real estate across the country.
"Virtually all the assets bought between '05 and '07 cannot be refinanced today without a significant capital infusion," says Shawn Mobley, executive vice-president at real estate firm Grubb & Ellis Co. "These buildings need to be recapitalized to get back in the business of being active real estate."
Without a financial restructuring, the properties are likely to join a new trend — "zombie buildings," which can't compete for new tenants because they lack the money to cover brokers' commissions and interior office reconstruction.
My friend Gina has some things to say about using economics to figure out one's personal life, with heavy emphasis on seeing decreasing marginal utility as a leading indicator. More on that later. Right now, though, Chicago commercial real estate has some serious problems, but still not nearly as threatening as New York or Orange County, California. Right now.
Or, why anyone who cares about America—left or right—should be concerned:
[The argument] really isn't about Palin. Or about [Levi] Johnston.
It's about our democracy's apparent lack of interest any more in what is true and what is false. It's about the mainstream media's willful decision not to tackle a story that was integral to a major candidate's core integrity; it's about the Republican party elite's cynicism and condescension to millions of voters; it's about the decision of Harper Collins, Adam Bellow and Jonathan Burnham to publish a book so riddled with untruth without even a gesture toward ensuring its accuracy; and it's about the recklessness of John McCain, a man hollowed out by careerism and cynicism, selling out every scruple or principle he may have had to make his way in the modern GOP; and it's about the power of fundamentalist religion to blind everyone to the banal but vital details of secular politics.
It's about the constant struggle of being human: take the quick-and-easy route to ruin, or the slow-and-hard route to the future. Aaron Sorkin said it better:
America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say, you want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free."
It's so much easier to call people names and make up stories, to make lying and cynicism the planks in a party platform. To the people leading the Republican party to its own ruin, and taking American democracy with it, I recommend meditating on Matthew 26:52.
Chicago woke up to 25 mm or snow of fluffy snow this morning, our first measurable snowfall of the year:
We don't mind this kind of snow. It took about 30 seconds to brush it off my car, the streets got cleared before sunrise—nothing heinous. No, "heinous" describes the forecast starting tomorrow night:
Tuesday Night: Snow before midnight, then rain, snow, and sleet. Low around -1°C. Breezy, with an east wind 30 to 35 km/h becoming southwest. Winds could gust as high as 45 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 100%.
Wednesday: Snow. High near 2°C. Breezy, with a west southwest wind between 25 and 35 km/h, with gusts as high as 65 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 80%.
Wednesday Night: A 20 percent chance of snow before midnight. Mostly cloudy and breezy, with a low around -12°C.
Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near -7°C.
Thursday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around -16°C.
The best part about this forecast? I won't be in Chicago. I'll be in North Carolina working on a project, and there it will be 21°C on Wednesday.
Don't get me wrong—Chicago is the greatest city in North America. But you know, just this year, maybe I don't need to build more character?
If she can't see you, then you can't see her...
