Cities, New York City in particular, would like to believe that they are the vanguard of everything—innovators of technology, trailblazers of culture and art, the trendiest of trendsetters.
But progress is a two-way street. Sometimes the world of suburbia creeps in over bridges and through tunnels and wraps around metropolitan avenues like white, homogenized vines. And perhaps no institution embodies the suburbs more than 7-Eleven, the quintessential convenience store that even God uses when he needs to pick up some milk and a few scratch-offs on the way home.
7-Eleven has been hiding in the shadows of Manhattan for a very long time, but only recently have the men behind the Slurpee curtain started making a big push into the city center. Using all of the corporate superpowers at its disposal, 7-Eleven hopes to replace the corner bodega, a New York institution as time-honored as homeless people with dogs.
This gentrification nightmare is an insult to everything the Big Apple stands for. Shopping at 7-Eleven is as un-New York as rooting for the Red Sox, and city-dwellers should be getting their pitchforks and gearing up to throw these conformist jerky-pushers into the East River.
Except we’re not. We’re too busy buying Big Gulps and buffalo chicken taquitos. Apparently, a little suburbia is turning out to be good for New York. In fact, it’s turning out to be awesome. Here are seven reasons why.
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