Even Starbux

No, it was not a nightmare. I was walking along Route 17 in Paramus, New Jersey. This is what a world looks like when people can imagine no life not totally ruled by the automobile. There are no sidewalks. This is not a limited access highway, but Jersey barriers separate northbound from southbound lanes and a pedestrian would literally risk life and limb to cross the road. To get to the other side, there is no choice but to get in the car and drive who-knows-how-far to the next overpass to reverse direction and then drive back.

On a short morning stroll to see what was around, what should I find but a Starbucks. A couple of doors down from the "Romantic Depot" porn shop and next to the plumbing supply warehouse was a recent incarnation of the once-thought-to-be-hip Seattle coffee cafe. Other than the sign outside and a hint of slightly nicer than average fixtures inside, there was nothing to differentiate this coffee outlet from a Dunkin Donuts or a McDonalds.

We have a Starbucks back home in Sharon, Massachusetts. It has become the focal point of our little town center. Friends rendezvous there and bicyclists begin and end rides there. Would-be high school hipsters hang out there. Business people meet there. Naturally, I would prefer some kind of funky locally-owned cafe, but for our struggling town center, a Starbucks is pretty cool.

Now, after about seven years, we get the news that the bean counters at headquarters are closing our Starbucks. There are two newer outlets nearby down on Route 1 (Our version of Route 17) that apparently get more business because automobile access is much better that will remain open.

Maybe I'm prone to romantic notions (In addition to those catered to by the likes of places like the Romantic Depot.), but I liked to think of Starbucks as the kind of place that would help build a community, a place for people who cared about their hometowns, a place for people to discuss the important issues of the day and form warm personal relationships. In my heart, I knew better. Starbucks is just another mega-corporation selling an illusion and focusing on the bottom line. If that means drive-up windows in Paramus, so be it.

Damned if you do...

A front-page article in today's Wall Street Journal tells us that Americans are driving less for the first time in about forever. That's the good news. Because the federal gas tax is a fixed price per gallon (18.4 cents a gallon) and not a percentage, as we drive less, money flowing into the Highway Trust Fund decreases. This means we have less money to repair our existing roads and bridges, to build new ones and to invest in public transit.

Naturally, as with everything in America, the Highway Trust Fund is running at a huge deficit. Any money spent from the fund on sensible public transportation would further decrease resources available for more public transportation, so this system has a built-in disincentive to conserve.

No politician without self-destruction fantasies would propose or endorse an increase in the gas tax. Indeed, John McCain got behind the push for a gas tax holiday. At least Barack Obama had enough sense and courage to point out the folly of that idea.

Watch as out wizards in Washington look for new sources of funding for our highways. They will raise taxes on other things so even more of our dwindling wealth goes into propping up the Happy Motoring lifestyle.

Not long after 9/11 when all those cute magnetic decals were appearing on cars I saw a wonderful political cartoon in the paper. An SUV owner was pumping gas. A magnetic ribbon on the vehicle said "Support Our Troops." Another on the gas pump said "Fund Our Enemies."

The gas tax should reflect the true cost of driving and be structured in a way that encourages conservation and transportation innovation. We have to stop sending more and more of our wealth to those who hate us. We must not further drain the life blood from America to prop up a lifestyle that has no future.

Pathetic Irony

I was watching the opening stage of the Tour de France bicycle race on the cable sports network "Versus" today. One of the ads was for "Auto Zone" car parts stores. It shows a young teenager riding down a dusty road on his bicycle. He comes upon an old junk car by the side of the road that has a cardboard sign stating "If you can fix her, she's yours." He spends the rest of the summer riding his bike back and forth to the Auto Zone store to gets parts for this shitbox. Finally, at the end of the ad he has the junker running and he states, "At least now when I have to go to Auto Zone, it won't be on my bicycle!"

This commercial makes me so sad for two reasons. First, who the heck at this channel matches up commercials with the programming? I mean, come on, people are tuning in specifically to watch the greatest bicycle race in the world (You can be pretty darn sure not many of us will stick around to watch "Tap Out" cage fighting and PBR bull riding!) and they play an ad with the punch line: "At least I won't be on a bike." I wonder if anyone at Versus or Auto Zone saw the ironic disconnect in that.

Obviously, the second reason this makes me sad is the way they perpetuate the typical American attitude that only kids and losers get stuck riding bicycles. It's better to cruise around in a broken-down, worn-out, junky gas hog than it is to ride a bike. Hello! Gas is at four bucks a gallon and heading up. People are dying in Iraq. We're getting ready to drill in National Wildlife Refuges. We're all getting fat, sick and lazy. Can you idiots on Madison Avenue wake up, please?

This Could Get Nasty

I was riding my bicycle on a bunch of work-related errands yesterday. I was in a small shopping plaza, riding down the strip of stores along the edge of the fire lane out front. A guy in a dirty Mercedes SUV zoomed up and drove right behind me getting closer and closer. He was approaching so rapidly and closely that I felt compelled to put out my left hand to signal my intention to pull to the sidewalk in from of the stores. As he passed within just a few feet of me he yelled something at me about "Why didn't you tell me what you were doing?" I yelled back "That's what the hand signal was for!" Now this was a quiet little parking lot on a bright sunny morning. There was plenty of room for him to drive around me or simply slow down. As he pulled over to park (illegally in the fire lane) I heard him squabbling with a woman in the car and saying something about "I'll wrap that damn bicycle around his neck." This guy was clearly just fundamentally annoyed that a bicycle should in any way disrupt his happy motoring.

This is the sort of thing that would have upset me when I was younger, but now I just find it amazing. Every now and then I encounter behavior that is irrational and bewildering. It would be amusing if it wasn't so troubling. This episode got me to thinking. I fear that, as times get harder, we will see more and more selfish and anti-social behavior as people squabble over the scraps.

Just yesterday, I heard a story about people stealing manhole covers (Below-the-street utility worker access hole covers, if you prefer.) for their value as scrap metal. Can you imagine, opening a hole in the road that could lead to serious damage and even death for a couple of bucks? Stories about thieves stripping copper pipes from basements and copper roofs from churches are common. In some places, motorists are puncturing the gas tanks of their neighbor's cars to let the fuel drain into cans.

As more people start feeling angry, confused, cheated, fearful or neglected as they witness their American dreams crumbling around them, I worry that we will see more and more bad behavior.

Let's stick together people! We're all in this together.

Two Ways To End the War

Here's another letter I sent to the Globe. It was prompted by columns by two of their regular columnists:

In his response to Alex’s mom in MoveOn.org (“Answering Alex’s Mom”, June 25), Jeff Jacoby’s “John McCain” answered as only a politician running for national office could. He said how the war is actually going quite well and he didn’t mean that Americans would by actually fighting and dying there for a hundred years, but only babysitting the fledgling democracy.

What he couldn’t tell Alex’s mom is the truth. The truth is that if we were drafting the kids of white, affluent, upwardly-mobile, educated parents like Alex’s mom, this war would be over in about a week. Most of us go through the day without giving the war a thought. Why? Because the burden is inequitably borne by the children of those with little voice and few options. The rest of us get to worry about getting our kids into the very best schools and whether or not high fuel prices will affect our summer vacation plans.

Speaking of fuel prices, Derrick Jackson (“Big Oil and the War in Iraq,” June 24) tells us that, thanks to the sacrifice of those brave American kids, Iraq is finally safe enough for big oil companies to line up to get their hands on Iraqi oil. We whine about four dollar gasoline, but if the price at the pump included that portion of our military budget that is aimed at securing current and future oil supplies for all those crude oil cronies, the uproar to end this war would be deafening.

Malthus Was Only Postponed

Here's a letter I sent to the Boston Globe in response to an opinion piece stating that a global decline in birth rates will lead to woe for future generations. I think we're in for a world of trouble, but too few people is not at the top of my list of concerns. It was published in the June 21, 2008 Boston Globe.

Jeff Jacoby refers to a Malthusian fallacy (The coming population bust, Boston Globe, June 18) and suggests that the world is not overpopulated by humans. The crises of starvation, disease and a destroyed environment that Malthus predicted have not been canceled but merely postponed by the unforeseen discovery of fossil fuel. By using oil and natural gas to power machines, pump water and manufacture fertilizer, we have expanded food production way beyond what we could produce by organic, muscle-powered agriculture alone. When the oil runs out - as it inevitably must - we may well discover that there are, indeed, too many people on this small globe.

Praise For ZBA

Here's a letter I wrote to our little town newspaper about a proposed shopping mall in town that will destroy many acres of mature forest adjacent to a cranberry bog. I just e-mailed it in and, just as letters to my local representatives go unanswered, I suspect this will go unprinted, so I put it here:

I applaud the ZBA for sticking to its guns on requiring the developer of Sharon Commons to provide an irrevocable letter of credit before denuding many acres of forest in Sharon. We only have to look at a recent project on North Main Street to see what we are left with after the bulldozers scrape away thousands of years of natural and human history for yet another ill-conceived project.

Look around. Walpole Mall is expanding. Patriot Place in Foxboro is building a moonscape of asphalt and big-box stores. A new mall just opened in Mansfield. There are plans for a mega-development in Westwood. Store after store have just opened in Stoughton and Avon. Who on Earth is going to patronize all these malls? The chances of another mall in Sharon thriving are slim indeed.

The age of happy motoring to the mall is OVER. Gas just hit four bucks a gallon and the price of all energy has nowhere to go but up. We need developers with a new vision for a new century. We need communities where people can live, work and shop without constantly hopping into the car. We need architecture that lifts the spirit and is built for the ages, not just more flat-topped boxes with fake stucco exteriors and high fossil fuel inputs. We need community-based businesses, not just more giant corporate parasites who suck wealth from our home town by selling more of the same imported junk.

Sweeping changes to the "non-negotiable" American lifestyle are being negotiated right now by forces largely beyond our control. We'd better take a place at the table before it's too late.