 illustration by Penny Van Horn |
cannot find a place to eat a bagel. How can that be, you may wonder, with bagels having joined espresso and salsa
as the newly ubiquitous ethnic foods of our time. No longer a secular symbol of
diaspora Judaism, no longer a cosmopolitan delicacy associated with New
Yorkers, this food of my childhood is so popular now that there are bagel shops
all over beautiful downtown Austin, Texas, as well on its somewhat less
beautiful outskirts.
No longer do I have a problem locating the bagels, as I did when I first moved
down here. Now the problem is finding a place I can stand to patronize in which
to purchase them. A bagel store need not be fancy: a counter, wire baskets for
the bagels, and if they want to put in some tables and serve coffee, that’s
very nice. But unfortunately our era bears witness to not only the Bagel Fad,
but a Marketing and Design Explosion of ungodly proportions, an evil coupling
of the urge to sell with the urge to decorate which has left no aspect of
modern life unscarred. Today everything from an international crisis to a paper
cup must have an attractive logo. In restaurants, the theme has become more
important than the menu. In general, so much weight is put on the way things
look and how they are presented while no one seems to care what they
are.
Which is in this case, a bagel. But around the thing itself has been built an
empire of symbols, texts and surfaces that out-shriek the humble bagel to the
point of absurdity. In the outlet of a campus-oriented bagel chain I recently
visited, I was confronted by all of the following: A series of educational
panels describing the bagel-making process, such as one might see at a
Children’s Bagel Museum, with key vocabulary words printed in red. A repeating
border of type running around the top of the walls, spidery faux-handwriting
that proclaimed a mind-control message on the order of “We bake the bagels boil
the bagels you buy the bagels fresh each day.” Enlarged logos with cartoons
representing each of the flavored cream cheeses adorned the walls beneath this
creed, mounted and displayed like serious works of art. It did not stop there.
Everything related to coffee had a special coffee-logo, and the cups were
printed with a brief summary of the expedition to South America that had been
undertaken to procure the mystic beverage. Cups, T-shirts, and caps featuring
the cream cheese, coffee, and store logos were all available for purchase, as
were the actual bagels themselves, lumpish and inscrutable as archaeological
relics amid the bright shininess surrounding.
As bagel and coffee vendors move fast food out of the Seventies and
hamburgers and gourmet products into the Nineties, those who detest being so
baldly sold at go elsewhere. But unfortunately, even the “alternative” venues
suffer from ambience overload. You’ve got your distressed concrete counters,
your distressed aluminum tables, your distressed painted walls and distressed
counter staff. You’ve got your ochre, your olive, your charcoal, your muddy
red. Your patrons — the kind of people who request “no pink” and “no
dinosaurs” when giving gift suggestions on their baby shower invitations. It’s
not just a bagel — it’s an attitude.
So what would Miss Picky like? I would like something plain, if anyone
remembers what that is. Something functional, comfortable, even a little
haphazard, acquiring its personality from the staff and customers rather than
by the decree of niche marketeers and their art departments. I want to buy a
bagel, not visit a bagel theme park or accessorize my look with bagels. I want
designers to stop running the world, that’s all.
This article appears in January 31 • 1997 and January 31 • 1997 (Cover).