Main Street
One result of the extended bailout debate has been to make me pretty sick-and-tired of metaphorical invocations of “Main Street.” This isn’t 1908. Normally in the present-day United States, I see a traditional Main Street being the center of activity when I’m in a picturesque vacation spot for rich people. Aspen, Colorado and Blue Hill, Maine are both focused on their Main Streets. But just about everyplace else you go, people are shopping and working either downtown, or else in a suburban mall or office park. We need an economic recovery plan that works not only for Wall Street, but also for people shopping at big box stores.
In some respects, it’s not a big deal. A cliché is just a cliché. But I do think it’s harmful in some ways that American political culture continues to have such a small town orientation long after the country ceased being primarily rural or small town in nature. Most people live in suburban portions of large metropolitan areas and participate in an economy that operates in part on a global scale and in part on a metropolitan scale. It’s important, it seems to me, for our basic language about our politics and our society to reflect reality and not some dimly recalled echo of the past.
81 Responses to “Main Street”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
What, you’re not still spinning your own wool?
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Richard Nixon was always sticking up (in his own mind) for Main Street over Wall Street.
But, yes, as unbearable cliches go, I’ll put it up there with “take it to another level”. (I always quietly add “in hell” to that one.)
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
We need an economic recovery plan that works not only for Wall Street, but also for people shopping at big box stores.
Similarly, financial institutions aren’t nearly as likely to be on “Wall Street” as they used to be. In New York many banks and investment funds have moved uptown to the Park Ave / Fifth Ave district north of Grand Central. What’s more, the country’s biggest bank is based in Charlotte! Yet you don’t have anyone talk about bailing out Tryon Street (I looked it up).
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Yeah, everybody shops at the mall these days, but somehow “The Food Court” vs. “The Four Seasons” just doesn’t trip off the tongue as nicely.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Matt-
Thank you! As far as obnoxious political cliches go, the Wall St. Vs. Main st. metaphor is one that really gets under my skin. I also hate when pundits/pols refer to the “Heartland of America”. I’d prefer it if someday a pundit/pol could praise the “Cranial-land of America”. That would really speak to me.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Matt, please please kill Ross on this:
“So the typical family will get their $5,000 credit from the government, and something like the remaining $7,000 they need to buy health insurance will show up in their paycheck”
He’s basically saying that when employers cut health care when McCain repeals that tax credit employers are going to pay everyone back in raises. I didn’t know Ross believes in magic.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Hey, I work in a building on Main St. so I care about what happens there. Of course, my building is part of an academic institution so I don’t really count.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I like my Main Streets adorned with Canadian flags.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:07 pm
The only Main St in my area is an artless collection of national chainstores that surround a really fake block, yes, a shopping center called Main Street. It includes a barber shop like Floyds of Mayberry..except for the basic trim being a mere 55.00. Every other Main St in my state(Pa) are a series of boarded up storefronts thanks to Walmart and the like. You are correct, it is a myth.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Matt, thank you for saying this. The use of this cliche is getting ridiculous. “Main Street” is in trouble but not in the simplistic way this rhetoric would have people believe. Let’s move on shall we?
Steve, I spin my own wool and I happen to live in new york city. What are you trying to say?
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Of course there’s a Main Street.
It leads straight to Fantasyland.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
What, you’re not still spinning your own wool?
Poser. I card and spin my own wool.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Main Sreet in my town was turned into a pretty good song by Bob Seger.
I like Maxine Waters’ (paraphrased) “Screw Wall St., I care about Martin Luther King Blvd.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Non-rich small towns also have bustling Main Streets. I work three blocks from Main Street in Seattle, WA although it’s not really the center of anything.
But, point well taken; the center of gravity these days is the suburbs, not small towns.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
In small towns across the US, “Main Streets” still exist. I’ve never looked at the demographics, but I’d wager that the percentage of the population that lives in small towns (say, less than 10,000 in population) is a definite minority group and that that number is getting smaller and smaller.
KO
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Of course there’s a Main Street.
It leads straight to Fantasyland.
Indeed. Like so much about American, Main Street is a fabriation of Walt Disney. But note Main Street ends at Cinderella’s Castle. Let’s hope that’s not a metaphor for America’s political future.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
But the cliche makes the title of Sinclair Lewis’s book all the more effective. Now Sinclair Lewis is viewed as a kind of sneering urban elite before his time, but the novel does expose how perverted “small town values” can really be.. As I read about Wasilla, I think _Main Street_ every time(especially the outdoor conversations in 50 below temperatures). Half the people I know who romanticize about their small town roots (those who actually have them) wouldn’t go back and live there for anything.
“Steve, I spin my own wool and I happen to live in new york city. What are you trying to say?”
Haven’t you heard? Making your own soap, shopping at farmer’s markets, and spinning wool isn’t down-home anymore, it’s “Stuff White People Like”, as in, a stereotype of white liberal elitists.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Not only is the pictured Main St. adorned with a Canadian flag, but those blue morning glories are totally psychedelic, man. All you’ve gotta do is grind up the seeds and ingest them somehow: speaking from ’70s experience I recommend an aqueous decoction of about ten grams of ground seeds.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I know this is off-topic but since the Main Street topic is silly, I just want to 2nd this request. Ross has got to be out of his mind if he thinks this is the way that the world works.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
That picture of Main Street looks just like our Main Street here in Mississippi! It is an old fashioned town, in fact it is the oldest settlment on the Mississippi River.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
What happened to Yglesias’ urbanism agenda? A healthy “metropolitan scale” comprises a network of main streets (among other things).
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I think the Main Street/Wall Street dichotomy is largely code language for class divisions in this case — rich vs. poor. When the national myth refuses to acknowledge class differences you get some odd substitutions.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Yeah, everybody shops at the mall these days, but somehow “The Food Court” vs. “The Four Seasons” just doesn’t trip off the tongue as nicely.
Really? I say that “the food court” is horrible political cliche just waiting to happen. Can’t you picture Chris Matthews explaining how something will play at the food court? What do the people in the food court think about this?
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Olsson’s Books closed shop this week. That’s Main Street in DC and environs. How ya like the selections at Borders or B&N? Maybe its not really important as the economy shifts into a lower gear, but the American belief in its small town values is taking a beating this week too.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
This criticism is silly. “Wall Street” or “Main Street” is the use of a term “for a concept or object associated with the concept/object originally denoted by the term.”
In other words, it’s the metonymy stupid.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Hey, I just got back from voting on Main Street in my town of 9000. It really is stuck in the 19th century.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Here’s the link. Sorry.
http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt487011qt/
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I think there’s a racial aspect to this, too: the nostalgic aspects of “Main Street” figure folk America as white. I blogged about this a little while ago.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Postcards from Main Street:
Santa Ana, CA The description is priceless — a sign in the middle of the road reads: Keep to the right.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I actually do work on Main Street, but that’s because I work at City Hall.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Matt’s right that the term “Main Street” glosses over an awful lot of America, but I think “Wall Street” is actually the more offensive here. “Wall Street” removes the villains to the safety of New York City, so that the rest of us can feel free to attack it. But really this whole mess was caused by plenty of people far off Wall Street, including unscrupulous lenders in all corners of the country. But since those people might reside in more “American” places like Dallas or Des Moines, our leaders can’t be seen to be fixing blame there. (I mean those places have Main Streets!)
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I live on Main Street. 825 Main Street in Evanston, Illinois. It’s a small but highly urbanized “suburb” immediately north of the Chicago city limits, connected to the city by bus lines, trains, and taxis.
My Main Street is, in its own way, idyllic. In the two or three block stretch on each side of the el train stop, we have a coffee shop, several restaurants, second-hand stores, hair salons, a newspaper stand, guitar shop, post office, fabric store, bank branches, and so forth. We also have some homeless people and a care home for developmentally disabled people. So when people talk about Main Street, I can look out my window and see it. My apartment building is the most racially and economically diverse place I’ve ever lived, and much more so than the surrounding neighborhoods.
The problem is, I’m not sure that the politicians are speaking to the real Main Street. I would like them to explain how the credit crunch hurts small business owners, and how the bailout in turn helps those business owners, because they are the real life-blood of this street. I’d like them to talk more about public transportation, the other life-blood of the street. Or, the rapidly rising costs of living/rent/utilities that affect everyone on the block. The problem is, our local and national political discourse and economic system has been geared toward destroying Main Streets, not supporting them. We’ve underfunded our public transportation while building miles and miles of roads out in the boonies and providing tax breaks for suburban housing developers to build houses that have no people in them. In the cities, we’ve been gutting perfectly functional, multi-unit, and in some cases, beautiful, old buildings and replacing them with high-priced condominiums that house a small handful of people. And most offensively, the new buildings don’t even look good! They’re ugly! So, Main Streets do still exist, they might be called 4th Avenue in Tucson or Page Avenue down in Harvey, Illinois, but it’s pretty much a holdout against years of people trying to kill it through bad policy at the national and state levels.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
FWIW, Main Street in Houston goes straight through the middle of downtown, and even has Matt’s favorite, a light-rail line.
I would be surprised if Main Street were not a similarly important street in at least some other major cities.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Main Street is just as fictional as Leave it to Beaver as far as I’m concerned. However, I live in Texas and you should take a tour of Main Streets all over the state and what you’d find is not a thriving collection of entrepreneurs saving the U.S. from foreign competition but a slew of antique and second-hand stores. There might be a barber shop too. So wherever ever this mystical place called Main Street is is a mystery to me. Maybe it’s over yonder next to Wal-Mart. Oh wait a minute, that’s Wally World to the red staters here who can’t wait for McSame and Caribou Barbie to ride into D.C. and fix all them thar revenuers. Gosh darn it.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Excellent! Now if you suburbanites will just STAY there when you retire, you will leave our villages as they are. The less you know about us, the better for our lifestyle.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I made this point to one of my roommates the other day, but like he said to me, Durham’s still centered to some degree around its Main Street. And Durham is no picturesque vacation spot for rich people. It’s actually the murder capital per capita of the state.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Somebody has to ask. What town’s Main Street is in the picture?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:19 pm
It’s indisputable that, from a demographic perspective, the “Main Street” metaphor is obsolete. Suburbs, and to a lesser extent major cities, are where the vast majority of Americans reside. Even so, the metaphors lack of a replacement seems telling.
Mall culture is traditionally associated with teenager. Big box stores are, for the most part, impersonal and uninspiring. Perhaps the many Americans who’ve left Main Street and ended up at their local mini/mega malls aren’t overly eager to identify with these new institutions. A shopping complex is a great place to buy lots of stuff, but the actual stores are typically disposable, and corporate, and not particularly representative of any sort of personal value system.
In last nights debate, Biden declared that he frequently spends time at his local Home Depot. I very much enjoy the image of Joe Biden hanging around the plumbing aisle giving people advice on how to redo their bathroom, but I’m also skeptical that most people actively identify with any particular local department store. Suppose, for example, you noticed that a Bed, Bath and Beyond cashier forgot to charge you for a set of knives. Would you go back in? I didn’t, but I certainly would have had I purchased them from a local business.
Even if the Big Box store is where Americas at, is it really where folks want to be?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
It’s funny…now shopping malls are called Main Street U.S.A….
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Ooooh! I’ve got it!
How ’bout: from Wall St. to the mall street?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Why not Walmart versus Wall Street?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
I wrote a very similar thing in my own blog this morning, only mine read more like Mamet (or at least rang with several of Carlin’s several words).
I am so tired of “American with an opinion worth listening to” being defined as, “someone from a small, isolated town, proud of his / her ignorance.” This, of course, also implies “white,” “straight,” “Christian or at worst Jewish,” and “parent.” (Not so say that all white straight Christian parents fit this “Main street” mold, but rather that the Main Street mold allows for white straight Christian parents and not much else.)
In New York, Broadway is as main as a street gets, and it covers everything from Chinatown to the Village through Times Square up to Midtown and then continues on through Columbia University, parts of Harlem, and into Washington Heights and Inwood. Now *there’s* a street that represents Americans.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Matt,
Using the term “Main Street” is sentimental and cloying in the same way that using the term “homeland” instead of “domestic” is. Instead of the creepy term “Homeland” we use to have the neutral bureaucratic term “Domestic.” Reminds me of a less weird time. How bout “The Consumer Economy?”
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Even if the Big Box store is where Americas at, is it really where folks want to be?
Yes, of course it is. Malls and Big Box stores supplanted Main Street because they offer lower prices, more variety and greater convenience. Main Street died because it couldn’t compete. Although, as Matthew mentioned, Main Street survives in a very much more limited form in some wealthier and tourist-oriented towns. And in addition to large malls and retailers, suburbs usually have various small-scale strip malls with smaller stores and businesses that cater mainly to local residents.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Making fun of the idea that economic policy has been too centered on what is good for the financial markets, rather that the real economy, is damn poor policy thinking.
If the real economy prospers, than the finacial markets will be fine. But if you design policy (like the rethugicans) around Wall Street prospering, only trustifarians and investment bankers prosper. For a while, anyways.
I live in an NJ suburb, and it has a main street.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Point definitely taken–but I would think with your interest in transportation and walkability, you’d have something more positive to say about places centered on Main Street(s), rather than malls… even if it isn’t very common. There are some towns which have managed to retain this focus besides vacation towns, I’m pretty sure… and it is highly beneficial, as far as I’m aware–increasing walkability, community feeling, preserving historical buildings, encouraging non-generic businesses.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Pico Blvd, in LA–that’s Main St…..
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Actually the credit crunch might be actually good for my town’s Main Street, the pawn shops, title loan and second hand stores are all there.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Come to Long Island. We have many malls and many vital mainstreets. It’s like Disneyworld.
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Aspen, Colorado and Blue Hill, Maine are both focused on their Main Streets. But just about everyplace else you go, people are shopping and working either downtown, or else in a suburban mall or office park.
This is an absurd statement.
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Doggone it, you betcha Main Street will be a heckuva lot happier if Wall Street’s credit markets are unclogged, y’know; and I’m a maverick.
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
This is why I much prefer the British term “High Street”, which describes both small town and village main streets, and also neighborhood shopping streets in larger cities. Now if I could only get a prominent national blogger with an urban agenda to start using it….
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I Say it looks like King St in Old Town Alexandria
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I also found this a surprising post coming from Matt. Mixed-use suburbs can have “Main Streets”. Heck, lots of new malls are now basically replica “Main Streets” (the open air ones). So it seems to me “Main Street” is indeed making a comeback.
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:49 pm
let’s not forget that the reality in our nation right now is that main street has been empty for decades. literally and figuratively.
i visit cities like goshen, indiana and i see a beautiful downtown now vacant and two walmarts (one in the north and one in the south) sucking the business out of the core of the once vibrant town. repeat this about 100,000 times and you’ve got the reality of small town america in the 21st century.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I live on Maine Street. When my 7 year-old daughter heard Obama talking about the bailout, she said, “Hey, he’s talking to us!”
October 4th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I live just a few blocks from Main St. I go there all the time, ’cause that’s where the liquor stores are. There’s an historic home, one of the oldest in town – it burned a couple years ago and the owner, who sold used appliance out of it, hasn’t done a thing to fix it up. The old distribution warehouse (used to be Sears, I think) also remains an empty shell after several years. But hey, a few block down they’re building a massive condo project, all bright and shiny – looks like they’ve sold about 10% of the units, and it’s almost finished. So yeah, we need to rescue Main Street, and stat!
October 4th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
In spite of the ridiculousness of the term ‘Main Street’ being pounded into the lexicon lately, I feel there is something we should take note of with regard to the apparent antiquity of the term. Why don’t we live on or around Main Street anymore?
The proverbial elephant lurking in the corner of the room right now, the underlying impetus if not cause for the economic meltdown underway, the decline of this nation’s influence, and most of the geopolitical strife now playing out is the energy “crisis”. To call it a crisis is actually to understate the condition; the realities of geology and physics are coming to bear on our plan for running this civilization. Henceforth (and since roughly summer 2005), demand for fossil fuels will continue to outstrip supply. This will impact everything and is a permanent condition.
The United States is in a particularly bad position now to deal with the changes that will be required of it in the coming years.
In the days when most people did in fact live on or around Main Street, we were living more walkable lifestyles, there was efficiency in the predominantly local distribution of food and goods, and most importantly, our economic output per watt was much higher. Now that so many are living on Oakwood Terrace or Glenview Heights instead of Main Street, driving great distances to get our food and goods, which themselves have likely taken long voyages, we burn more energy for what we’re producing and profiting from than ever before.
Our plan will literally just fail unless we take a look at changing the way we live to return to the efficiency of the “Main Street” days. This does not mean giving up electricity and getting up to milk the cows at sunrise. What it does mean is changing our perspective about what a healthy and urbane village/town/city should be like, living in “real” neighborhoods again where employment, shopping, and basic needs can be walked to. What it does mean is growing and producing more goods for local consumption, not shipping a bag of carrots 3000 miles.
Best of all, these changes won’t “hurt” so much at all, will actually make us healthier in the end, and in and of themselves be an engine for new economic activity.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
The main-street metaphor still applies, as long as you correctly identify the street.
I live a block away from a Main Street, which, once outside the downtown banking district, consists of boutique retailers, restaurants and row houses. The true main streets of most metro areas are former highways spoking out through suburbs — mile after mile of shopping centers, office parks, car dealerships, furniture stores, chain restaurants, Wal-Marts and Targets. A sustained credit crunch will hit these commercial corridors harder, and probably sooner, than it will affect smaller urban retail operations.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
“…for Wall Street and for Meijer Drive.”
Hm, could use some work.
October 4th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I want to point out that Main Street is not a pure fiction.
I live in Concord, NH, which actually does have a Main Street as the center of town. It includes the State House, lots of locally-owned stores and restaurants (with pretty good tenancy rates), apartments, law offices, a movie theater (which replaced an abandoned Sears building), and lots of foot traffic.
Now I realize that Concord, NH isn’t really a normal place, and more people nationwide live in towns like Bedford, NH (the local big-box/oversized house/good highway access community) but Concord’s not a fictional place either. The city makes Main Street preservation a priority and so it continues to function. It’s one of the reason I chose to live here. Even so, a lot of business is taken by big-box stores and the mall on Loudon Road (which ultimately leads to the NH International Speedway, our little slice of NASCAR culture and the marker that NH is more like NC than MA).
Most other NH cities are constructed in the same way, although the main street might have a different name – Hanover, Durham, Portsmouth, Keene, Nashua, Manchester, etc. A lot of swing state voters still live in this sort of small city and know what politicians are talking about when they refer to Main Street.
October 4th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
What a ridiculous post. You want to replace “Main Street” with “Inhabitants of the Vast Asphaltic Chain Store Wasteland” or something, for the sake of accuracy?
Your whole vision for walkable urbanism with good mass transit needs a name. And you know what the best name for it is? You know what two words conjure up good development better than any other two words in the English language? “MAIN STREET”!
(Oh, and there are diners all over the place where I live.)
October 5th, 2008 at 1:24 am
But how could millionaire Beltway pundits confirm the basic wisdom of American values if they couldn’t fly out to small towns in rural states to interview elderly white people in coffee shops in the middle of the afternoon?
That’s what made that Fox video in Pennsylvania so great. How many times have you seen a scene like that set up as what “regular Americans” really think? Then it blew up in their faces.
(Note “regular Americans” is a registered trademark of Chris Matthews; unauthorized use is not permitted)
October 5th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Love ya man, but this seems like a case of you pretending you don’t know what they mean by these metaphors. They’re marking the difference between the lives and concerns of the Fat Cats of High Finance and the rest of us — and I’ll bet you know it.
And while most people now live in urban and suburban areas, Main Street is far from gone. Come to Wisconsin. You’ll find plenty of main streets (perhaps with other names) that look and act the way you say they don’t.
October 6th, 2008 at 4:37 am
This is an excellent point, especially if you believe that clear language is “as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.”
Anecdotally: my father left his small Southern town to find his career some 40 years ago, and as a kid I poured over old photos of the town’s Main Street culture, relishing images of the soda jerks, barbershops, car dealers, guys just doing nothing, and the sense of community it conveyed. But then in the ‘80s when we went back for family visits I was disappointed to find Main Street locked and shuttered, vacant and closed. And of course, by the ‘90s, a cluster of big-box stores centered around the inevitable Wal-Mart had replaced it, and local kids kicked back their bourbon and cokes at the Applebee’s in the same complex.
Years later, living in southern Europe I had to explain to my fiancée why Americans couldn’t enjoy a nice walk around the town square as an easy, cheap, and free social activity, and Main Street, or rather its non-existence, came up again. And here it is in the campaign, used ad nauseam.
Maybe I’m just preferring hansom cabs to aeroplanes, but why not address the situation as it really is? Unfortunately I’m at a loss to come with anything as economical as “Main Street.” I’m not too sure if the British “High Street” works since their High Streets have become clogged with chain stores and are all depressingly similar to one another. The architecture is there; the spirit is not.
It seems to be a choice of what kind of economy you want to pursue, and the high-growth, low-unemployment, free-trade Anglo-American model is simply not all that friendly to small artisan-based businesses, although there are (or at least, were), plenty of other highlights.
December 5th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
The entry titled
March 1st, 2009 at 6:34 pm
cialis
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 am
levitraGreat site. Good info
March 12th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
March 14th, 2009 at 5:21 am
Incredible site!
xanax
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:16 am
tramadol
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 am
buy viagra online
Incredible site!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:19 am
It is the coolest site,keep so!
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:13 am
I want to say – thank you for this!
cheap brand pfizer viagra