Is your town starting to look like every other town?

Great!

It is actually a John Deere and Autozone doesn't carry my size oil filter. Why come to the set of "Deliverance" and not carry John Deere yellow or green touch up paint.

Just kidding. I have one of those contraptions called a Honda.

I heard ASDA has a big push going in NW England. Followed by a herd of Starbucks. G'day.

G'day. ASDA I'm not sure about, coffee-wise. They are mainly known as a supermarket chain.
TESCO seem to be winning the supermarket wars here, at the moment, and they have TESCO Express stores which are smaller, very convenient, very efficient. They are a very successful and popular retailer.
For coffee shops, we see the same ones here, Costa Coffee, Starbucks, etc. ...I don't use them so I can't quote you all the names.

Joe Nation, I have never discovered how to post photos on A2K. Can you point me to a helpful link, or give some instructions please?

McT

Good morning all and especially McTag:

This should have been a pm, I know, but it's my thread and I'll post what I want to.

How to post pictures: there's a thread = So you want to post a picture...

And here's a place to put them so you can post them.
Raven's Realm

Basically, you have to upload your pics to to a website, and then post them onto A2k. I use Image Shack because it allows me to do addtional editing, but Raven's is a good place to start. Once you have a picture (image) on a website, you can RIGHT click on it. That opens a box. Click on Properties. You will see a URL for your picture usually ending in with the letters jpg. Like this:
http://img257.echo.cx/img257/339/newyorkcrowd34vf.th.jpg

COPY that address.

Now to post your image: When you are replying you'll see a set of buttons Quote Code IMG URL click on the IMG button and paste
the image address into another box that appears. Then they ask you to name your image. Make up something.

Note: Some images are huge. I try to use clickable photos (Thumbnails) so that people can see a small picture but if they want they can click on for the full effect.

Have fun

Joe(click, copy, click, paste, ahhh)Nation

I've been contemplating the meat of this question since it was posted.

Remember, in most departments I'm not an enthusiastic shopper. Shopping is work, not recreations.

I'm very partial to mail order shopping--small stores and large chains--because I can flip the catalogue pages--or scroll the computer screen--right past ugly inessentials. There are no parking problems.

I do enjoy buying books--and usually use Amazon, supplemented with the local second hand bookstores and the annual library fund-raising sales. I tried supporting a local bookstore (23 miles away) but the clerks were mostly minimum wage slavies who were more interested in the produce code than the content.

The local independent office supply store (which is also the office for a local animal shelter) doesn't carry a great variety of stock....very few fine point pens....several typewriter ribbons and correction tapes--but not for a Brothers machine....memo pads, but no loose sheets of memo paper....
Staples gets a lot of my business (unless I'm closer to Office Max).

I buy most groceries at the chain supermarkets. There are no convenient local bakeries--and the ones that exist (20 miles away) specialize in sweets rather than bread. The local delis carry Boars Head cold cuts--as does the supermarket. The supermarket carries other brands as well and is cheaper. Cheese? The cheese store is 25 miles away and open only on Thursday and Friday.

In the summer and fall there is a local produce stand with excellent locally grown fruit and vegetables. The supermarket is cheaper, but the difference in flavor is worth the extra money.

I'd like to do more "local" shopping--but the "local" stores are very limited.

I live in San Francisco, in the various neighborhoods, there are hardly any chain stores except Starbucks. And the chain stores there are blend in to the neighborhood.

It is quite amazing how this city is so totally not like any other.

You betchya 'bout the neighborhoods of SF, Chrissee - each one damn near a little world unto itself, and there just ain't a city anywhere else quite like it. Neat place.


Now, my town ... many of the roads are paved (though not mine), most of the dwellin's have indoor plumbin', and there's phone and electric almost everywhere. There are precisely 5 licensed commercial establishments within the township - one's a tavern, another is a motorcycle repair shop, there is a tractor and implement dealer/repair facillity (as close as we get to a chain store; you can get any sorta chain you want, in any length), and the other two are service firms (of which mine is one). The nearest traffic light is a half-hour drive away, in a different county, and in my particular county, there is only one traffic light, which only operates a full 4-way cycle on weekends and holidays. I like it here.

Don't blame ya, Timber. Sounds a lot like the little NH town I used to live in. But then two different chain supermarkets got building permits for properties right on the edge of town and the place ain't been the same since. Although that's not the reason I moved back to the big city.

That is the saving grace, America's vastness and the real differences amongst the way our cities look. Chicago does not look like Dallas does not look like Miami does not look like New York does not look like Boston.
BUT
and this is what started the little worm of thought in me,

So many other places look like each other. The news was on and so was the mute so that we would glance up at the screen every now and again from our reading just to see if it was time for the weather forecast, when video of some kind of disaster -tornado- hurricane- something- came on the screen. There was a street shot of a housing project, a nice one full of McMansions and such, and a series of shots of a devastated mall. "Where did that happen?" I asked myself because from the video you couldn't tell if it was Kansas or Georgia, Stuebenville, Ohio or Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. All those places look alike. They have all been developed in the past twenty-five to thirty years by apparently the same bunch of guys and gals who did the towns of Long Island and the suburbs of Indianapolis.

Photos to follow

Joe(You can't tell if you are in Kansas or not)Nation

The BIG difference to me between our two countries (sure there are many differences, and now sadly also many similarities especially in the world of displayed advertising) is in the treatment of electric power lines.

In this country, all MV and LV power lines, in urban areas suburban areas and many country areas too, are underground.
Only the big cross-country HV transmission lines are seen, the National Grid as it is called.
In your country (please correct me if I'm wrong) most electric cables seem to be carried on poles. Else what would Glen Campbell have to sing about.

This looks messy to me. Maybe you get used to it.
No disrespect intended.

It is messy.

Some newer areas have the lines underground and some older areas have had them put underground, but doing that extensively is very expensive.
I suppose we have different priorities than unjumbled spatial views, what with funding this and that far and wide. (I tend to disagree with funding allocations m'self.)

Try to guess where this is?

Yeah, I know the photographer was seeking to a make a general statement, what offends me is that it is so easy to do.

Joe(Sorry, I walked into your house, looks just like mine two towns over.) Nation

"Little boxes, on a hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes, all the same ..."

The thing is, I like some old tracts. There are two Rattery tracts in west Los Angeles built in the forties and fifties; their lots/houses have become quite individualized over time.
I see less of this now - with more instances of rules that must be obeyed, there seems to be less individualizing going on.

Thanks to ImageShack®

wonderful, Timber..

Until a few years ago when I got "civilized" I could look out my kitchen window to the mesa across the river and watch the puma chase rabbits, then one day my neighbor went out to his garage and when he opened the door that puma was sitting on the hood of his car. The next morning that same puma was in my barn trying to pull the chickens through the wire screen of their cages. I lived a long way from Levittown. I now live in mayonnaiseville usa albeit on the wrong side of the river.

Thanks, Osso, I gotta say I agree; I think its pretty wonderful, too. And so do The Puppies.

Dyslexia, there's prolly no more cunnin' a critter than a puma. They're real rough on traplines, too. Quite irritatin', as I recall from my Idaho childhood in the shadow of Soutwestern Yellowstone Park. The West Slope of the Tetons make for great puma/cougar country (we called 'em cougars - when we weren't bein' real uncomplimentary about 'em)


Thanks to ImageShack®
The roads you see are on a grid 1 mile East-West (which would be left-right in the image) by ½ mile North-South. The scale of the satellite image is such that only the very largest structures - dairy barn complexes - are distinguishable. My house is located roughly at the third "O" in "neighborhood". The darker green is all forrest, the irregular darker shape to the right of center is a year-round wetland; fabulous for duck and goose - in season, of course