Consumerist Manifesto

Starting today, I'm giving up chain stores for a year. Retail. Food. Entertainment. If it's a chain, it's going to have to live without my business until September 1st, 2009. I've set some criteria for myself:

1. If a store has more than three locations, I'm calling it a chain. This number is arbitrary.
2. Franchises count. A Burger King that is locally owned and operated is still a Burger King. The food, the store design, and the customer experience are essentially the same at every location.
3. Ownership doesn't count. Example: Restaurateur Tom Pham owns several restaurants in the Twin Cities, but each is unique. They have different names, different menus, and different decor. So if I want to stumble over to Azia for some cranberry puffs and a refreshing glass of liquor, I totally can.
4. Sponsorship doesn't matter. I can attend events sponsored by anyone and everyone, just as long as the event doesn't take place inside a chain store.
5. Internet shopping is a cop-out. This experiment is about the diversity of our experiences. There are few things more ordinary than eating and shopping, and we make them still more ordinary by frequenting chain stores, which are engineered to deliver the same experience every time, to every customer, at every location. Shopping at chains is boring, but at least it offers the chance of running into an acquaintance, being rammed by the cart of a fellow shopper, or hitting it big when you slip on an unmarked wet floor and sue K-Mart for ten million dollars. The most exciting side effects of internet shopping are eye fatigue and credit card debt.

I may establish more criteria as the experiment continues and issues that I didn't have the foresight to predict arise. For now, these should cover it. This project also has some natural parameters:

1. Money: I'm not rolling in it. While I'm willing to cough up a little extra to shop small and local, there is a limit to what I can spend. Part of the fun of this project is in seeing how feasible it is for an average person to avoid shopping at chain stores.
2. Distance: I don't own a car. If a store isn't bikeable or bus-able, it isn't doable.
3. Time: I'll try to make enough of it to carry out this project. I may not always succeed. I hope the whens, whys, and hows of my inevitable failures will be instructive.