this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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That example being in France, there are plenty of coffee shops serving good quality coffee much cheaper than Startbucks.
In countries like that it's generally only the tourists from countries with no such traditions that end up in Starbucks since the locals just frequent the coffee shops which are generally much cheaper and generally have better coffee.
I live in a country that nowadays gets swamped with tourists - Portugal - especially in my hometown of Lisbon and lots of such large international brand shops pretty much only get frequented by tourists, plus there's a certain styling of establishment that's done to appeal to tourists - roughly, those establishments which look like the kind of thing you would find in the Departure Hall of a large Airport anywhere in the World, are aimed at tourists.
All that to say that in the context of a French Cartoon a Startbucks probably represents very well that kind of cookie-cutter same-style-everywhere-in-the-World establishment that's actually worse and more expensive than the local version and exists to cater to tourists.
Fair enough, I've never been to a French city.
However I was thinking in the context that mixed purpose buildings are cool. Would I prefer a locally owned shop? Hell yeah. But it's also cool to at least have SOMETHING available so close.
Nearest cafe and shop are both over a kilometer away from me. I wish there was a corner shop 200 meters away and a bar 100 meters away like at my old apartment. But the part of the city I live in is entirely residential.
That kind of mixed purpose building is pretty standard in Europe (I actually can't think of a country I lived in or visited here that doesn't do it for most appartment buildings,, expecially in areas with more foot traffic) so probably the author of the cartoon didn't even think about that side of things at all.
I suspect appartment buildings with shops on the ground floor qualifies as one of those "it's so common that nobody thinks about it" kind of things over here.
I'm in Europe, but at least in my country, it's not ubiquitous. Some parts of some cities have it.
Ah, interesting.
Which country is it, if you don't mind me asking?
Estonia
Ah, I'm not at all familiar with Eastern Europe (never got around to visit any of those countries, though Estonia specifically is on my list).
Could it be that there is less of a tradition of people walking around everywhere on the street due to the cold over there so there's no real point in having small shops everywhere or maybe something to do with the building culture from back in the Communist times (I'm thinking they weren't exactly keen on there being small businesses everywhere)?
Around here (Portugal) even with the local love for cars (not exactly the greatest characteristic of this country) people do tend to walk around in cities, especially city centers, and most housing are appartment buildings, so it's absolutelly normal for those buildings to be made with shop spaces on the ground floor.
I've seen the same not just in next door Spain and further out in France, but also in places I lived in such as The Netherlands, Germany and England.
Granted, I generally lived in or visited cities, where all the more central places (what the brits call "the high street") tend to be built like that, but for example peripheral neighbourhoods tend to have far fewer or no shops on the ground floor of buildings (and that's also the case in Portugal), though by central I don't mean specifically city centers, just areas in cities with more foot traffic (for example London has hundreds of maybe thousands of streets and stretches of street they would the call the "high street" which are really just the ones with more traffic and were in practice every single appartment building has shops on the ground floor, but London also has whole neighbourhoods with just one shop here or there)