The Unbearable Sameness of Cities
What my journey across the United States taught me about indie cafés and Ikea lights
The light fixtures were what tipped me off. You know the ones I’m talking about — you see them every time you go to Ikea, coolly geometric, and every time, you wonder if they’re worth the effort of getting them installed in your ceiling. (They’re not.)
I was in a non-chain coffee shop in Columbia, South Carolina. I was on a mission to the cities and towns closest to the geographic center of each state, and this was only stop №6 of 50, but I remembered seeing the same lights in coffee shops in Bend and Portland in Oregon, and innumerable others I had frequented while living in New York and the Chicago area.
This one small observation opened up the floodgates. I noticed the same kind of person was behind the counter: young and tattooed and bespectacled. The same kind of patrons: young and tattooed and bespectacled, clacking away on MacBooks. (Full disclosure: Your correspondent is young and tattooed and bespectacled, clacking away on a MacBook.) The WiFi passwords were all some cutesy variation on “coffee culture”: !Java!, TheGreatBambeano, that sort of thing.
I couldn’t stop noticing. I’d go on to see the same in Colorado Springs, in Fresno, in Indianapolis, in Oklahoma…
