McDonald's low-fat vanilla soft serve ice cream is not, in fact, the same price everywhere, as we would be led to believe. Being able to get the same thing anywhere in the world is part of the appeal of the fast food leviathan, but apparently this standardization does not extend to pricing. It is more expensive some places, and less expensive others. At the McDonald's at the corner of 40th and Walnut, it is more expensive.
There may be a reason. Just up the way, the puke-green Hub Office on 40th and Chestnut has dubbed its digs as the "Corner of 40th and Everything." Thankfully, Everything extends down the block as well. And at McDonald's, apparently Everything costs a dollar more.
Meanwhile, Everything is starting to resemble The Jetsons circa 1963, when the greatest animators of America believed it would only be fifty years before humans flew in saucers, walked on moving sidewalks, employed sentient robots and wore angular, shiny clothing.
On the southwest corner there is Marbar and the Bridge, with their "retro-futuristic" bachelor pad d‚cor. On the northwest corner is Fresh Grocer, a nouveau-technologie gastronomic emporium of glass, perforated tin and steel caging. The southeast corner has been taken over by "The Plateau," an architectural intervention that rivals Frank Gehry and aims to unite the disparate people of this bifurcated community through gesture, light, leisure. Deep.
Now McDonald's, on the northeast corner, has finally caught the wave. Last summer it revamped its look, installing swanky barstools and ambiance-enhancing partitions. And wireless. Wifi. Mickey D's: nourishing both your body and your soul with absolute crap. But due to the stringent rules regarding loitering, you can barely google "Brave New World" before you're kicked out onto the concrete.
The future is coming, and fast. It may be here as soon as August of 2008, when Radian, the future of student apartment complexes, will begin extending its "daring lines and angles at 39th and Walnut Street" next to shitty Campus Copy. Nothing says progress like living in a prefab ant colony named for a unit of trigonometric measurement.
Where did architects get the idea for this space age makeover? And are McDonald's ice cream prices linked? Is that extra seventy-four cents covering the wifi? Perhaps this scam has something to do with the oft-repeated declaration that "children are our future." We are, after all, going to inherit the earth. Like the devil on our shoulder, University City developers have been whispering, "You're too good for the present. Come on, we can give you the future if you're just willing to pay a little bit extra"
