Will the Great American Doughnut Shops Still Be Around in 100 Years?
The American doughnut shop has always seemed too modest to vanish. It asks for little: a glass case, a coffee urn, a rack of pink boxes, a bell on the door, and someone in back awake before the rest of town has admitted the day is coming.
But 100 years is a long time. By then, coffee may arrive by drone, breakfast may come in protein mist, and some bright young consultant will have renamed the jelly doughnut a “fruit-forward pastry experience.”
Civilization has survived worse, but only barely.
The old doughnut shop is not really about doughnuts. It is about permission.
--Permission to stop before work.
--Permission to sit alone without being lonely.
--Permission for a father to buy a child something round, sweet, and ridiculous before school.
--Permission for police officers, roofers, nurses, cab drivers, newspaper carriers, insomniacs, and retired men with opinions to stand in the same line and be treated with equal seriousness.
Chains will survive. Luxury doughnuts will survive. There will always be someone selling a $9 confection with lavender dust and a backstory. What is less certain is the survival of the neighborhood doughnut shop, the place that opens in darkness, knows the regulars, and understands that a maple bar should not require a lecture.
A century from now, America may be richer, faster, cleaner, and more bureaucratic.
Still, don't bet against the doughnut. It has endured wars, depressions, diet crazes, cholesterol scares, and espresso culture. It remains cheap theater behind glass.
Will the great American doughnut shops still be around in 100 years?
Yes, if there are still children with sticky fingers, night workers heading home, old men reading headlines, and people who understand that hope sometimes comes warm, glazed, and placed gently in a pink box. And, with sophisticated diet control perfected in OTC pills there will be no guilt if you down an extra doughnut at breakfast.
--Permission granted.
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Illustrations by F. Stop Fitzgerald, PillartoPost.org art director in the spirit of noirist writer Philip Dick and the Blade Runner films that he inspired.
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