Motorcycles and Chain Stores
I recently returned from a 10-day motorcycle ride out to Colorado with my dad and best friend. What a great treat to ride through six States, mostly on two-lane highways, seeing many small towns. Over 90% of the meals we ate and places we stayed on our trip were at local businesses (i.e., non-chain, non-franchise). You may be surprised to know that in many of these small towns, the one common denominator was a Subway Restaurant. Go figure! Ojai definitely has something special and I was happy to return home even though most of the trip was spectacularly beautiful.
Back here in Ojai, our citizen driven Initiative continues to collect signatures and the Ojai City Council will be voting Tuesday on their "Urgency Ordinance" that is due to expire (you may recall, this ordinance was a 45-day moratorium on formula businesses in the City of Ojai). The council can extend their ordinance for up to another 10 months. I support the extension of the Urgency Ordinance.
The citizen driven petition has signatures from over 10% of the registered voters in Ojai and we can submit the petition to the City at any time. However, we will continue to collect signatures in an effort to get over 15% of the registered voters, especially if the Urgency Ordinance is not extended by the City Council.
Why is this so important? This initiative relates directly to Ojai’s history of slow growth. What we are witnessing across the country is massive growth driven by cookie-cutter track home developments and chain-store filled strip malls. If we allow the formula business to enter our environment, it will slowly change the Ojai Valley landscape.
This is also directly related to the global environmental crisis. A recent Adbusters magazine blog post perfectly illustrates the current crisis in their post Denny's & The Farmers Diner: Agribusiness Gives Way to Local Food. Adbusters looks at the food source of Denny’s and of The Farmers Diner in Barre, Vermont. You can read all the details on their site (linked above), but here are some highlights:
Denny’s
Meat: From the commercial feedlots of the southwest USA.
Dairy Products: From the "confined dairy operations" of Central Valley, California, where cows are expected to pump out 100 pounds of milk a day.
Vegetables: From agri-business suppliers in the California Sunbelt.
French Fries: From the potato processing plants of the northwest USA.
The Farmers Diner
Vegetables: From Cedar Circle Farm, East Thetford, Vermont.
Dairy Products: From Rock Bottom Farm, Strafford, Vermont.
French Fries: From the farms of Peasely, Chappel, Guildhall and Williamstown, Vermont.
Meat: From Montana Yankee Ranch, Starksboro, Vermont.
Seems to me that local business are the logical choice for Ojai and for the environment. What do you think?
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Comments (2)
That Adbusters article is great. Thanks for sharing, and welcome home!
Comment #1 Posted by: Tyler | June 8, 2007 11:07 AM
Welcome back. Thanks for the info. Carrows strikes me as another Denny's. I can't eat anything there. Besides retaining Ojai's character, your initiative is important as a people empowerment movement.
Comment #2 Posted by: Dennis Leary | June 10, 2007 09:12 AM