Wait, so is the NYT now saying the French do work?  I'm confused.  Which is it?  ;)

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

• McDo was, for a long time, the only really non-smoking restaurant in France. This is still a relevant argument today;

• it was also the only place, for a long time, where you were sure to find clean and free toilets. This is no longer so relevant

• unlike elsewhere, they have ahd to adjust to the fact that people in France eat at fixed hours - so you have a huge rush at 1pm and 7pm, and a lot fewer people the rest of the time.

• in addition to beer, I think they pionnered the ideas of selling yoghourts, salads, and other similar stuff to adapt to local taste.

In my defense, it was a bunch of English boys we'd picked up who dragged us in there in the first place.

BTW, I actually toured the McDonalds factory in Russia!  It was surprisingly clean and even the dead cows struck my as being humanely & sanitarily dealt with. I thought the Moscow McDonalds' were also pretty delicious.  That's how much Russia will mess up your head...

And everyone shoud read "Fast Food Nation" if you have not.  Apparently McDonalds has higher standards for the quality of meat it will serve than our own public schools do.  Yikes.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

He claims that people like Thomas Friedman see the success of globalization (using McDonald's as a metaphor) because their eye catches the familiar American markers but overlooks the non-branded local ethnic restaurants.

He also claims that since McDonald's adapts to local preferences it is not really projecting a Pax Americana of cultural tastes, but is simply a transnational company operating in many markets.


Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

Fla. restaurant sells $100 hamburger

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

1. McD has taken great care to open their munch joints in the most central and prestigeous parts of Rome, Florence, Milan, Naples, Venice, Paris and Lyon etc.. These parts were traditionally no-go areas for working class kids from the cities peripheries. McD has made a phenomenal effort to offer these poor, disenfranchized kids a new opportunity to rediscover the beauty of their cities centres on a small budget. All the cinemas, museums, beautiful squares, historic buildings and parks! A guy from Centcelle in Rome can now take his Vespa on a Tuesday night and invite his girlfriend to go to the movies, which cost half price, and have a romantic tete a tete in the McD at the Spanish Steps. The McD all inclusive night out formula will cost him 25 Euros. The classic Italian bourgeois formula bar - cinema - ristorante will cost him 120 Euros.

2. McD does serve all clients as equals. They follow the democratic principle that every citizen deserves the same respect. Paris inner city restaurants are totalitarian. They despise equality and cherish the aristrocratic culture of class difference. Their staff behaves like strict schoolmasters who have to give out notes and little favours to their customers. They expect the customer to know their wine card and to formulate an opinion on the menue. McD on the other hand is not treating the clients with such arrogance. Indeed they promote a communist policy, that is, that the quality and preparation of the meals and drinks don't need to be questioned by their guests. The guest can relax. Their clients are not drawn into competing with each other (tabel versus table) for the best display of food and the most expensive drinks. Why? Because the McD concept - furnitures HIDE the drinks and the food from the eyes of other guests situated in the proximity of your table. Instead they promote the social interaction between the guest, who have free eye contact and can cherish the group dynamics of the other costumers.

3. McD munch joints in Rome dedicate their Thursday evening activities to cultural events. These are gratis and deal, as do the frequent art exhibits on their premises, with historical facts of the neighborhood. (Piazza di Spagna, Piazza della Repubblica, etc. pp.)

Quick learning point: Democracy - as practiced by McD - always wins the support of free citizens!  

"The USA appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Simon Bolivar, Caracas, 1819

  What was to stop the kid with the fucking Vespa--no toy, that, and it doesn't run on water, either--from making some sandwiches at home, wrapping them up, putting something to drink in a bottle, corking it, going and fetching his girl friend and zooming into the supposedly closed quarters of the belle ville and, there, enjoying the sandwiches, the drink, the girl and the city centre?

  Mc Donalds has given back the city centers, previously hors limites pour les pauvres, to these same disadvantaged surburbs?

  Here's what I call a Quarter-Pounder with cheese here in Paris: de la merde!  

  You can make a far better sandwich at home for far less money; want to sit down to eat it?  Sit on a public bench or, if handy the Spanish Steps.

   Fucking sheesh!

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge