This morning's front page story about more Burger Mania is in so many ways a transportation story, maybe even the main story.
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| Front page today |
The story rightly stresses the corporate focus on a broad kind of localism, a little at odds with the fundamentals of commodity fast food. That is more than merely "alluring," and should more forthrightly be praised.
The Burgerville faithful still eulogize its shakes, rosemary fries and halibut fish and chips. The restaurant continues to capitalize on local flavors and produce, such as shakes made from Willamette Valley berries and onion rings made with Walla Walla sweet onions.
Some of its menu items are available only in season, adding to its allure.
Localism itself is in no small part about minimizing transportation in supply.
Our autoism is a subtext that is really the main story.
The Salem Burgerville was a casualty of the I-5 widening project — from four lanes to six — in the early 1990s.
Officials armed with the state’s right-of-way mandate swept through the Market interchange area and swallowed about 40 commercial properties.
And any time we can talk about drives to Albany or Monmouth as "short" and "options" for commodity fast food, that's evidence our transportation is too cheap, our autoism too careless and easy.
Salem-area residents have two Burgerville options within a short driving distance, Albany and Monmouth.
Within the constraints of commodity fast food Burgerville is on the vanguard. They've got got a grass-fed, pastured beef program, and are talking "regenerative farming." Some of that is doubtless hype and greenwash, but it's also not nothing. Five restaurants are also union shops with Wobblies.
Burgerville is an interesting corporate project. But it also participates in our wild autoism. The culture that considers "short driving" to Albany or Monmouth for fast food is the very same that led ODOT to widen I-5 and end the first restaurant location. It's self-consuming.
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