TO THE EDITOR:
I was strolling down Franklin Street the other day. As I passed the courthouse, a homeless man said, “Spare change.”
“I know, I know,” I responded. “It’s easy to deride, but I should spare change. Change is progress, after all.”
Franklin Street’s small businesses are vanishing. As corporations take over storefronts, a lot of folks are fretting over Franklin Street’s future. They shouldn’t. Small businesses are impractical. They’re too small to succeed. Besides, they’re provincial. This is a college town. We should think globally.
For instance, Ye Olde Waffle Shoppe calls itself a Chapel Hill “institution.” Anyone who eats there should be institutionalized. Now that Franklin Street has a Waffle House, Ye Olde is superfluous and inane.
Small businesses may be the backbone of America’s economy, but corporations are people, my friends. Would you rather support a vertebra or a person? Franklin Street needs less backbone and more personality.
Franklin Street needs an International House of Pancakes. International by nature, an IHOP will encourage us to think globally and stuff our faces with the stuff of diabetes locally.
Also, an IHOP will provide Waffle House a worthy competitor — not a competitor who’s bound to cry “Uncle!” when the landlord ups rent. Competition fuels America’s economy. It’s the gasoline that powers its engine, emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and increases the nation’s — nay — the world’s temperature. If small businesses can’t stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen.
Philip Thompson ’10
