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LIVING & TRAVEL

3/1-3/7: Is commercial-free travel a thing of the past?

"The road is now like television, violent and tawdry. The landscape it runs through is littered with cartoon buildings and commercial messages. We whiz by them at fifty-five miles an hour and forget them, because one convenience store looks like the next ...There is little sense of having arrived anywhere, because everyplace looks like no place in particular." - James Howard Kunstler - Do you agree? How can we escape commercial travel?

Josh48 - I think it's good to know where the next McDonalds is. Motel 6 has nice soap.

earthcrone - I guess I tend to whiz by at 65 mph, at which speed one building looks like another billboard. My eyes focus on the road and the other vehicles, while my mind is free to wander all over the place. I build dreams and houses, write stories in my head, think about what I could have said instead of what I did say... in other words, it's almost as restorative as dreaming. When I am off the interstate, traveling at maybe 35 mph, I'm usually looking for somewhere I've never been, so all the visual commercial clutter around me is translated into landmarks. As far as I can see, this is how it should be.

tony - I understand that travelling by plane has made going anywhere in the world seem quite trivial, but I don't agree that everyplace looks like no place in particular. I may be a romantic, but even the most Americanized destinations (i.e. Europe) have unique qualities if you open yourselves up to them. Many people complain, but I think that they want exotic differences. Exotic differences aren't the only kind. You just have to open your mind and get to know some of the people who live there. Then travel doesn't seem commercial, it seems like another way of life.

ajduffy - Until people start to think of aesthetics and quality of life as being more important than money, nothing is going to change -- plastic buildings will still go up because developers have promised jobs, jobs, jobs. While there is something comforting about knowing that a Big Mac is the same the world over, I'd rather feel I'd experienced somewhere new ...

Nial - I do not think that traveling by automobile is commercialized. I travel between Mich.and PA all the time and I think that there is a lot more farmland and scenic moutians than there are cities and billboards. Most of the places that I have been to do not look the same. Some of the small towns have many of the same features but they are still different. I enjoy these long drives. I also enjoy seeing and experiencing everywhere I go.

Walker - Travelling in planes has become something like going to the movies: as soon as we get on, commercials blare out at us. The airline advertises itself. It plays movie previews that are ads. They play hour-long info-mercials. An AT&T; phone stares at us as we fly. Cattle going to slaughter at least have a quieter time of it.