There shouldn’t be an attack of the corporate clones, not here at UCLA. It’s not like I’m one of those militant hippie-types that plot to destroy fast food places around the world. But I do object to the Carl’s Jr. opening up at the Cooperage soon. It is not only that they have taken away several dining options, it is more about the fact that ASUCLA has replaced them with a nondescript fast food joint which will not add anything to the character of the campus.
I went to the Cooperage early this quarter to grab a quick lunch and walked right past the Taco Bell and the Jamba Juice to what I thought would be the old Cooperage. Not so. For those of you who remember, there used to be a deli-style sandwich place (Shorty’s Subs), a Greek food stall (Athena’s), a burger grill (The Great American Roadside Grill) and a soup and salad bar.
All that will be replaced by a Carl’s Jr. soon. What I don’t understand is that this was done in an effort to improve the area and make it more pleasing to the students. In November 2008, the Daily Bruin wrote an article about the renovations taking place at Ackerman and stated that ASUCLA was trying to make the Cooperage “a hub” of student activities. They wanted a sleek, shiny and quintessentially cosmopolitan spot for Bruins to simmer in the sauces of their college experiences. It was a great idea, but I am not sure that Carl’s Jr. was the way to go.
The options they removed were not only more diverse and interesting but were also comprised of smaller, more specialized businesses. The Cooperage was the only place on campus where you could get falafel or gyros. The sandwiches were made to order. And the burger crowd had its needs taken care of by the grill. Now the Cooperage will become the product of a giant corporate cookie-cutter and, in addition, leave us with only one restaurant where there used to be three. Even if you’re not that concerned with our food culture, give some thought to the lines. Instead of three separate queues, the Cooperage will now host one single angry snaking formation waiting for its CrissCut Fries.
Wondering what everyone else was thinking about this, I walked to the Cooperage to talk to some late lunchers. Teny Nazary, a second-year history student, isn’t excited about the upcoming change.
“I’m not cool with Carl’s Jr. I wish they would put in a Subway or something. There are burgers all over the place,” Nazary said.
Sitting across from her at a table in the Cooperage, Isabel Karamanukyan, a fourth-year physiological sciences student, disagreed.
“I’m so excited,” Karamanukyan said. “It’s been getting boring here with the same old places.”
I would definitely take the “same old places” over this new one. The new look of the place is fantastic. I love the video wall and it really is attracting more people to the location. However, the new restaurant choices need some help.
Like I said earlier, I don’t profess any particular animosity toward Carl’s Jr., but I do hate the fact that its existence will mean the replacement of uniqueness with uniformity. We are supposed to be this big, progressive campus forging ahead with our plans to change California and reform ourselves into better human beings. Ushering in the era of the Super Star with Cheese is just not the way to make UCLA more interesting or productive.
Other nations criticize America, saying that it has no culture and Americans don’t care about what we put in our bodies. José Bové of France is an example of such an extreme and somewhat erratic critic. A national hero in his homeland, the farmer led locals in destroying a branch of McDonald’s in France in 1999. He declared he was staging a protest against the uniformity and intrusiveness of globalization. He also called their meat “malbouffe,” which literally translates to “bad food.”
I am not calling for vigilante action against the Carl’s Jr., but Bové’s wild actions do make me wonder about something. The world we live in is rapidly globalizing. Big businesses and corporate giants are taking advantage of this to spread their products and services around the globe. While this signals a more communicative and open time for us, it is also stripping away the individuality that is attached to small towns, stores that are not part of a chain, and the local community. I am objecting in this small way to the culinary “globalization” of UCLA.
I don’t want to come back a few years after graduating to find a land of Pizza Hut, Burger King and McDonald’s ““ not because I hate these restaurants, but because there is nothing unique about finding them on our campus. The kettle corn guy outside the student store shouldn’t be a Baskin-Robbins.
Most of the businesses catering to our hunger on campus are what you would call “big business.” We already have restaurants such as Wetzels Pretzels, Panda Express and Sbarro, and we don’t need more mass-production food machines. I cannot undo the uniformity we already possess, but I can grumble and boo about the increasing levels of it. Especially on my own campus.
If you want to split a $6 burger, e-mail Joshi at rjoshi@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.