The Deleted Scenes - New and Old #175
I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better, The New York Times, Pete Wells, August 6, 2024
I wrote something along these lines, from the customer perspective, here. A couple of people who worked in restaurants before thought I was just doing the whiny customer thing, but it really does feel like the human element—the, you know, hospitality element—is being squeezed out of the dining out experience. Restaurants feel transactional in a way that feels like it used to be obscured or hidden. It’s interesting to see a professional restaurant critic notice the same trend. This is probably the most important bit:
“Being served in a restaurant wasn’t passive. We had to participate.” Yep. There’s also stuff like this, that reminds me, or makes me hope, that I live in a cultural bubble. Actually, even in the D.C. area, I’ve never encountered a restaurant that doesn’t have a phone number or pick up the phone):
And there’s this: it’s impossible to enjoy all of this “convenience” without our tolerance for discomfort being forced down, almost against our will or despite ourselves. That’s the cost that convenience extracts from you.
And this, which identifies in fuller language what I mean when I criticize “concept” restaurants:
The kind of simple but nice restaurants I remember as a kid, where you knew the owner and waitress and the menu never changed but it was big and good and you could just casually show up and not think about a huge bill? I miss that. Read the whole thing. Also, here’s a Reddit thread on the article with a lot of commentary from all angles. Jerry’s Apartment, City of Yes, Ryan Puzycki, August 2, 2024
Is this ever true. It’s a great piece, and it goes on further into trying to answer this question (spoiler: physically spread-out communities make low-stakes, semi-random socializing difficult). But it raises a deeper question for me: has suburbia created an idea that loneliness is a normal part of adulthood and maturity? Which is to say, has the designed isolation of America’s predominant land-use pattern become so invisible to us that we mistake its social costs for something inherent in growing up? How much joy do we give up because we associate the social benefits of urbanism with immaturity? With rootless young adulthood? With college? Has suburbia screwed up our causal arrows so much that we don’t even realize that what college and traditional urbanism share is a dense, mixed-use, proximate physical design, and that this, not being young per se, is what makes them so delightful and serendipitous? Yeah, I think you know how I’d probably answer those questions.
This once again makes me think of this point I make about innovation/modernity/suburbia—there are things we lose when technology saves us work, or when modern capitalism creates material abundance, or when we have the ensconced privacy of the suburbs. We become aware of the elements of the old way we miss, but it’s an almost impossible mental lift to choose to do things the old way when necessity no longer requires it. There’s this longing that comes from wishing one could be freed from the psychological necessity or material comfort of the most efficient, modern way of doing a thing. Innovation and convenience, I guess you could say, exert a pressure to make use of them. This is a deep point and has a lot of elements, but here’s a specific example of what Arnade describes as wringing messy, unplanned, chance encounters and activities out of everyday life:
Here’s the sort of crux of it:
Is that really true? Europe isn’t really as affluent as the United States. Maybe we’re just a little further along the gain wealth/lose community continuum. As an urbanist I like to think these are choices we make (or don’t realize we’re making, but which can be made differently), but maybe there really is something inexorable going on here. The steps of memory, Smita Patil, September 2, 2023
What a nice little read. And to tie it into the “Jerry’s Apartment” piece, what sorts of physical settings are most ripe for creating and reliving memories? Related Reading: Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only piece, plus full access to the archive: over 1,000 pieces and growing. And you’ll help ensure more like this! You're currently a free subscriber to The Deleted Scenes. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
Older messages
Where Do Your Memories Happen?
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
On knowing that you won't care later ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
A Pre-Fab Little Town
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
How much of an improvement would it be for this to be standard? ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Unsticking
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
When you do things, you do things ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Faux-Natalism
Monday, August 12, 2024
Housing, JD Vance, and why bashing childless people isn't being pro-family ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Urbanism And Natalism
Saturday, August 10, 2024
Some table-setting for exploring these ideas more thoroughly ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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