If the shopping is convenient, why is online shopping putting malls, big box stores, and main streets out of business?
If you have to make a dedicated trip to go shopping and drive for 15 mins each way, I wouldn't call it convenient
Carbrains. Somehow driving ten kilometres to a mega shopping complex and then spending 15 minutes parking is more convenient than going down to street level from an apartment and into a street level shop 100m down the road.
That’s why the trucks are getting bigger, so you can go longer without shopping… oh wait no the trays aren’t actually growing in useable space. Must just be for hauling their ever bigger asses around.
Or their kids.
I knew someone who legitimately ran over their little kid this way because they couldn’t see them over their truck.
I’ve lived through some horrifying things. I can’t imagine that guilt.
So yeah. Fuck cars. And fuck trucks in particular. I’m never owning one.
> street level shop 100m down the road.
Even less for me. My apartment is just a few floors directly above the supermarket; I rarely do a big shop, and just pop in when I need to.
Food shops at train stations are the best model ever. Pick up what you need for dinner on the way home from work.
I remember one in Europe where they sold freshly *prepped* food: chopped onions, marinated chicken, pre-rinsed salad greens. GENIUS.
> Food shops at train stations are the best model ever.
Japan does this right. At their major hubs like Tokyo and Kyoto station, they have multistory malls that have everything you can want while you wait for your train.
It's pretty nice, although naturally there's still some waste. Recently though I've been freezing a lot of veg that would've otherwise gone to waste (as well as left over bones) and then using them to make stock when enough accumulates in my small freezer. That works for alliums, celery, carrots, certain root vegetables at least.
I may need to move to a more isolated area at some point over the next year, and I'll certainly miss it. I'll still most likely have a supermarket within walking distance, but it won't be nearly as nice as just popping in whenever I need something.
Bike ride from my house to a large Kaufland supermarket takes me about 4-5 minutes. There's also Lidl and another store in the opposite direction in about the same distance (4 minutes) and Tesco Express that is like 2-3 minutes away in another direction.
I don't understand how is this not more convenient than being forced to start a car to buy bread.
I can walk or cycle to at least 4 different grocery stores in my town in the Netherlands. No need to use the car, unless I am planning on buying a lot of stuff. Still no need to have an American oversized big truck, just use the trunk and the rear seats of a hot hatch.
We have drive throughs too, mostly for fast food. Most people drink their coffee at home or at work, or they get coffee at a train station.
I, too, get my coffee at the train station. In DC, MURCAH! Wish it was more common here in the states. Trains really are the best way to commute when possible.
And not just metro! It’s got great commuter rail as well. I can take the MARC train in the morning into the city, grab coffee at Union Station, then use the metro to get around the city.
I know 10 (7 major, 3 smaller/exotic) grocery stores within a kilometer from my house. And that's using the roads.
And also 3 American fast food "restaurants" with a drive through
Hell I can do this in the U.S., the issue is more a matter of so many being indoctrinated into a feeling of helplessness in accomplishing any task without being able to take 2-4 tons of steel with them.
Although admittedly I wouldn't do it in the suburbs because of minimal cycling infrastructure and the pathologically antisocial culture of car dependency/superiority.
I see most suburbs makes it very difficult for people to walk to the closest shop/restaurant, [example](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/1dyd0an/i_just_wanted_a_kebab/) that I saw yesterday on Reddit.
> If you have to make a dedicated trip to go shopping and drive for 15 mins each way, I wouldn't call it convenient
But don't you know? If you have access to food, doctors, kindergartens, culture, etc. in
* less than 15 Minutes you live in a Socialist-Communist-Marxist-Lenin-China-North Korea-Dictatorship
* anything more and you automatically live in the garden of Eden
^/s
I'm buying less now we have a small supermarket across the road. If I need an onion for dinner, I'll buy an onion at a higher price than the big supermarkets, but it won't go off in the cupboard
"What a chump, I can drive 30 minutes to the Costco, buy a mega-sack of onions and save 10% per onion."
Flashforward two weeks and 1/2 of one onion had been used and the rest are rotting in the pantry...
We have a fruit & vegetable kiosk on the street near our apartment. It takes literally 0 minutes time to reach on my way home because I walk right by it. So if I need a few things for dinner, or my kid wants a banana or whatever, easy! Like you said it's a little more expensive but the convenience is worth it to me. It's 1000x easier than visiting a huge US supermarket. And I'm from the US so I know.
And the US as a general rule doesn't colocate supermarkets with shopping centres and transit. Friend who grew up in Midwest USA was shocked when he came with his Skippy wife to Australia that malls had supermarkets, greengrocers, newsagents, Etc. We're not good here, but killing multiple proverbial birds with one stone is better than driving from car park to car park
What's for dinner tonight??
"Onion"
... like soup or...
"Just onion"
Oh...
(Sorry not roasting this just popped In my head from reading your comment lol)
This. Convenient for me is when I can just make a quick extra stop on my way home. Or even better: open door, go down the stairs, walk 10 meters and you're in a shop.
It's not convenient at all, or interesting. You know what the most interesting shopping experiences almost always are? Cities with walkable shopping centers, or smaller artisan markets like craft fairs and farmers markets. Shopping for everything at one store is SUPREMELY boring because the selections are lame and there's never anything interesting. It's always cooler to have multiple stores with various things because in general, the goods will be higher quality, you'll have a better selection in each of those things, and the employees will be more helpful because they actually know the field their store works in. Every time I've gone to Walmart and thought about buying clothes, I've found employees to be monstrously unhelpful, same with larger clothing stores. When I go to smaller clothing stores on the other hand, the employees are always a delight to talk to and they're very helpful. I don't have anything against the employees of the larger stores, the store is just so big and sells so many things that there is no way *anyone* could be completely versed in it well enough to help very much.
It takes me 3 minutes to walk to the main shopping street in Leiden, the Netherlands. I also live in a 15 min radius of all the bars, cafes and restaurants. I think thats better than having to drive your car or let your stuff get delivered all the time lol.
I'm buying less now we have a small supermarket across the road. If I need an onion for dinner, I'll buy an onion at a higher price than the big supermarkets, but it won't go off in the cupboard
i think online shopping, and online grocery is like an accidental big win for suburbia. one walmart van dropping off boxes to 20 homes on a route is so much more efficient than 20 people all driving to and from the store
in the same way transit is way more efficient. it's a small step logically but we just can't get past the stupid cars = freedom fallacy
kind of true though, im living in the netherlands atm but i get to tell people here theres like 85% of america ive never seen or interacted with. like they dont get how different it is from region to region or even within one city
I can take the back path, hop on the bus, take the commuter rail, take another bus to another train station less than a mile away and get on Amtrak and in live about 35 miles outside of the city.
I've started to reply "well, ok. But is New Jersey to big to adopt bike culture? What about Rhode Island? Massachusetts?"
If you can break it down into small regions, then the overall size doesn't matter.
Don't you understand? If you want to use a bike, you're now committed to exclusively bike everywhere until you die, even when you live in Seattle and visit your aunt in Boston twice a year.
Lol. And NA cities are only "big" because they're spread out to accomodate cars.
It's so baffling when someone says that because we're not exactly over here trying to bike between NYC and Chicago or anything. The size fo the country is irrelevant
> Had to leave when they started explaining why food isn't a human right.
That philosophy is called "Inalienable rights aren't a thing. Guns are though. That's why I need an inalienable right to have all of them and a doomsday truck."
We've had it drilled into our minds from our formative years that only negative rights are a thing (until someone important enough decides they aren't).
No sane person in America with any knowledge of other countries is turning down living in the Netherlands if given the chance. If you gave me that option I’d quit my job literally right now and never come back.
The only Americans that think America is superior to Europe are the ones who have never had the luck and means to visit, which sadly is probably most.
Plenty of convenient shopping in the Netherlands too. Arguably a whole lot more convenient, in fact, because it’s closer to people’s homes instead of zoned away from them.
Didn't know what that was, searched for image and that thing looks exactly like my dad, at least for the body shape. Maybe gravel munching is hereditary.
When I was in the Netherlands shopping was way more convenient even being about as apples-to-apples as you can get (similar population as my hometown, I was staying a similar distance to the city center as I do in my hometown, etc.).
The biggest differences it that the city center in the Netherlands had more shopping options (the city center in my hometown has the illusion of options but most stores are cutesy specialty stores and not stores where you get normal daily needs filled) and that outside of the city center there were shops sprinkled everywhere and not just on major roads like in the US.
Exactly. If I stay in the downtown of any European city, there's likely a grocery store within a 5-minute walk. It's nice to have that so I don't have to eat out for every meal (or at least something for breakfast if I don't want to pay 20 euros/day for the hotel brekkie).
If I'm in an American city, unless it's one of the largest cities (e.g., NYC and Chicago), I would likely need to go out into the suburbs just to find even a Trader Joe's, let alone a Kroger or WalMart. And most likely, I would need to Uber there too.
Holy shit, the dick riding for America in this sub is crazy. They act like no one else is having AC. And also act like 99% of all countries world wide don’t have drive throughs. I couldn’t name one country without drive throughs…
What's kinda shocking about the US is how rare using the AC for heating is despite using the AC for cooling being standard. The US could have been a leader in heat pump based heating as well as cooling, like Japan or Korea is, but just didn't.
In Germany the heat pump is getting more and more installed and is on a good way actually. But what confuses me is: we have an AC at my office, but we have separated heaters at the walls (even tho our ACs can heat too). On the other hand, we also have paper walls at the office, so I’m not really surprised (outside walls are bricks, as well as the core, but the inside walls are just paper).
But I guess that also comes back to the gas and energy prices you named in your other comment. Here in Germany, gas is pretty cheap, while energy is pretty expensive (18 - 25ct / 0.19 - 0.27 USD per kWh).
I have just bought a recently-released _split_ mobile A/C, which is effective as a split, but doesn't require complex and expensive installation and can be removed in seconds, and I laughed how it has a sticker saying "it's a heat pump too!".
Apparently, the only way to sneak A/Cs into German houses is to say that they are akschually heat pumps too..
If there is a will…
But on a serious note, an AC is pretty cheap, roughly 200-400€. The installation is simple, but expensive. But what is the saying? „Wo kein Kläger, da kein Richter.“ ;)
But the cold!
I saw that sentiment somewhere and looked it up, the main reason seems to be... insulation.
And a lot of Americans live in fucking paper thin walled and wood framed homes which I think explains that issue well.
If anything poor insulation makes the energy efficiency advantage of heat pumps even more important.
Part of the reason is the availability of cheap gas, but even then like a third of California homes use electrical resistive heating. And having used to live there, most of those homes (including mine) have AC that only provides cooling. An upgrade that costs next to nothing could reduce heating bills for those homes by 3-5x, has near zero adoption.
Scandinavia also uses a lot of wood framing (stick framing, is AFAIK the right word), and we insulate our walls. Not as much thermal mass as thick old stone walls, but it can probably be even better insulated since the walls are mostly cavities that can be filled with insulation.
Yeah I lived in Sweden and it ruined me for American housing. In America wood new construction is almost universally garbage. Somehow my Swedish dorm house was better constructed than anything I’ve ever lived in here. Not a single draft ever.
Scandinavia has pretty strict building codes, and for public buildings like student dorms they are followed to the letter - at least the rules as they were when they were built. However maintenance can be so-so.
Check out this comment:
> most of the internet has an anti american bias, its cause you dont have to back up what you say with facts or risk getting punched in the nose.
> we’re consistently stopping genocides, providing the most food aid and setting the bar for human rights.
> nobody wants to mention those though. just look at that dumb fucking UN map of who voted for food to be a human right, like people dont see north korea and just laugh. or realize that just because per capita you donated the most doesn’t mean the 12 potato’s and a motorcycle mean shit.
I can't believe that someone genuinely thinks the US is stopping genocides and setting the bar for human rights, when they're often complicit in genocide and showing how basic human rights are at risk in the US. Not to say that Europe is perfect, we're not, but get your head out of your ass and stop thinking you're God's gift to the world.
"we’re consistently stopping genocides" made me think I was on a parody sub. Nope, not a hint of irony in that one. Just straight up drank the cool aid.
The rest of the world sees americans in a bad light because the rest of the world is usually fucked up by the americans for profit. Some people are so obtuse it hurts.
U.S. was literally built on genocide, and remains the world's #1 instigator of genocides and fascist coups d'etat throughout.
And 'food aid' is only a thing the U.S. does because it creates dependency to serve its imperial interests (and therefore the interests of its manufacturing and finance capital). If the U.S. cared about helping these countries with food security, they would give them tools for mechanizing their agriculture and scientific knowledge that many over-exploited countries can't fund themselves because of perpetual debt to imperialist institutions. Same very much goes for the UK and France, but mostly wrt their former colonies.
Even if they were right, how is drive thru a highlight? I mean, I enjoy it once every few years as a lazy treat but if it didn’t exist here I wouldn’t give the tiniest of shits.
drive thrus are bad in almost every way. these people are just naive af. i imagine from a city planning perspective, it's got to be one of the worst common land use patterns.
That sub started out as a place for people to ironically, facetiously parody American patriotism. But, like all such subs, once it reached a certain level of usership (probably 30-40k or so), it became what it initially set out to parody.
I wasn't in the USA but I was in Colombia and it was shocking for me that there is drive throughs for everything, even pharmacies. I knew only about Fast food drive throughs.
Pharmacies make sense for drive thru. This prevents sick people (who are possibly contagious) from infecting employees and fellow customers.
I'm not a fan of drive thrus but I'll give you pharmacies.
Yeah but don’t you know? America is so totally unique in how hot (and cold!) it is! And we have mountains and hills! And our country is too big, so passenger rail would be a waste of money (yes I’m ignoring the fact that it could be implemented based on density).
And if you’re on your bike, you have less freedom (ignore the fact that you can only drive on areas you have been designated to drive on). And you know what? Other countries have it worse than us! So why do you even care?
/s
I almost envy the ignorance of the people in that sub. It would make life much easier sometimes.
Sure, its not as black and white as sometimes gets claimed, but there are a lot of bullshit reasons used as arguments on why europe is actually the place that sucks, or is based on american influence/culture.
Feel the need to discuss some stuff with the redditors there, but im not sticking my nose in that nest of wasps
"Convenient shopping" Ah yes I definitely prefer the convenience of getting in the car, driving 30 minutes to the nearest store over walking 5 minutes to the nearest store and buy what I need
There are blocks (and AC, and drive-thrus, and convenient shopping in every sense) pretty much everywhere in Spain. Even in small cities, if it's large enough to be considered a city, you'll find all of these.
Honestly, their biggest issues were just bad heat & sound insulation, being bare concrete, and bad maintenance
If you just thickened up the walls a bit and covered up the outside (paint, tiles, facades, siding, murals, *anything*), then I feel like more people would be fine with them
They other key points missed in exchange for drive thrus is the comparison between the least healthy and most financially unequal country in the developed world against one of the top 5 happiest, healthiest and economically egalitarian societies, where everyone has acces to world class healthcare and can travel freely around a clean and safe country at low cost without a car.
Spacing housing apart *is* as Amerian as overbearing zoning laws because... well that's how that happened to begin with.
>!I figure she meant spac*ious* housing!<
The dude in there saying that America stop’s genocides while it’s actively participating in several is a great example of how effective American propaganda is.
The places with the highest housing crisis are usually the most desirable places to live. I mean the the rent price is high because there are enough people able and willing to pay so much instead living somewhere cheaper.
In my opinion the big houses are not so good advantage if you have to buy so many things to have a decent life quality and those things naturally take space. Home gym, home cinema, huge backyards, even huge living rooms are needed because there is lack of places nearby where you could go. No pubs near and even if you would like to go how are you going back home if you drive? No park nearby so you need to have a lot of space behind your house where only grass grows etc.
Poor children living in prisons because they can't drive, walk or use buses.
I agree with everything, but the housing crisis is more of an affordable housing shortage. There are a lot of unused houses and real estate but owners, often now mega corporations, prefer to rent them rather than sell, to squeeze many bucks off people.
So convenient it takes an hour to get from one store to another store 100m across the interstate if you don't want to take 2-4 tons of steel with you everywhere you go
Oh yes, because America is the only one with convenient shopping, housing and drive-thrus.
By space housing, do they mean single family? If so, these things fucking suck in the west. Stick frame garbage in comparison to masonry.
I literally never use drive thrus. They take absolutely forever. Every time.
I will always just walk in, order, and walk back out before the line hardly even moves.
Shopping with a car is never convenient. When finding parking space is a problem.
Last Saturday we went to the mall via taxi with no hassles. To meetup and celebrate our nephew’s 8th birthday. The other party arriving by car had to drop off the passengers to meet us who arrived early. While the driver struggles to find parking space at a multiple floor level garage. I think the driver spent at least an hour or more to find parking. Since the mall was packed that day.
Spacious housing > Give me a small, centrally located space. I don't need or want the expenses associated with living in a mansion.
Drive-thrus > Let me walk instead
Convenient shopping > I hate buying stuff
I just lost brain cells going to that sub.
There's one things Americans will never understand, we (Europeans) shit on the US all the time, but not as much as we shit on our own countries, and that's what separates us, we're e not afraid to recognize the flaws of where we live
On what planet is having a single Walmart 2 towns away from you considered a "convenient shopping" option? Because that's the reality for many Americans living outside of cities.
"Convenient shopping?"
As in, driving everywhere to buy the basic needs of life, because walking or riding a bike to the store would be tantamount to suicide?
When I lived in the UK, inevitably I'd have people tell me about their trip to the US, most frequently the theme parks around Orlando. So many people raved about how wide and open the streets are and how much nicer it is to drive in the US. It really left me perplexed how often this came up.
"Convenient?" When I was in Vienna I could walk to the local grocery, buy what I needed for the day, and be back home in 20 minutes! I struggle to get in and out of the huge US stores in that time, and that's ignoring the driving time!
I don't understand why spaced out housing would be a good thing, just ignoring the whole walkable argument I think neighbourhoods with houses far apart are sad, why do you need such a large house and garden? Do you have six children and grow your own food? I can cram in lots of both ornamentals and vegetable plants in my 100m2 allotment. Sure, there's not much space for trees but how many fruit trees do you really need unless you're a keen gardener or horticulturalist?
Personally I think row houses are the perfect middle ground. How many people in single family homes actually optimise their space?
I live in St. Louis which has some real character and is an actual place (the City, that is -- can't say as much about the County or St. Chucklefuck :P) but when I do road trips and see these quaint towns that are dying because they're not close enough to the interstate, but then all the towns on the interstate are just stroads with every chain restaurant and gas station possible. Why would we fight to save that? Many of these towns are anti-places that are just farms for low wage jobs and virtually nothing else.
It's quite the dichotomy we have
Some great comments in that thread.
>most of the internet has an anti american bias, its cause you dont have to back up what you say with facts or risk getting punched in the nose.
>we’re consistently stopping genocides, providing the most food aid and setting the bar for human rights.
>nobody wants to mention those though. just look at that dumb fucking UN map of who voted for food to be a human right, like people dont see north korea and just laugh. or realize that just because per capita you donated the most doesn’t mean the 12 potato’s and a motorcycle mean shit.
Yes, the convenient shopping that is a 10+ minute drive away as opposed to the ridiculously inconvenient 2 minute walk for shopping in a mixed use neighborhood lol
Yeah, I think the house thing is sort of true but it feels weird. I’m an American and when I hung out with a group of Italians at a hostel they said it was nice to have a house. We were walking around Milan, getting drinks from different places, and visiting historic ruins. It was the kind of thing I could never do in America because I basically had to rent a house where I lived.
Well, if you set foot outside of the 10 biggest cities in general or town centers you'll have plenty of options for spaced housing so I guess that point breaks down.
Granted, we only have McDonald drive-troughs here but then, Drive troughs are for cars which are absolutely mandatory in the US. Over here you can just send your kid on a 5min walk to go get stuff if you live in a place that would be big enough for drive-troughs. So not just adults can go pick up their take-out food, kids can too and it happens.
Convenient shopping? Assuming that means having the absolutely giant malls on the edges of a town with stores that have everything conceivable for the products they sell?. Granted, I sometimes wish we had something like that but aside from shopping trips that count as a day's out including going out for dinner with who ever you shopped with I've never felt shopping was inconvenient and for stuff like groceries, a quick household appliance, some snacks, or whatever else I could want on a regular day I'm never out for more than 30minutes up to about an hour if I can't decide on the spot and the old lady in front decided to pay hundred euro's exclusively in 10cent coints.
So for me, none of the "pro's" for the USA in this picture actually feel like con's to me.
That's 6 points for the Netherlands and 0 for the USA.
The good part of America is that you don't have the PVV in charge of which the infrastructure minister calls trains "a leftist hobby"
The bad part of America is that there's a significant chance that FvD-type shills will be in charge AND that people are still stuck in their cars even more and that there will be a life-size LARP-ing of the Handmaids Tale starting next year.
At this moment, I prefer myself some France or Spain.
Where I live, in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne (Australia), my nearest supermarket is a five minute walk. There's another a short bus ride away.
If I need a department store, I can walk ten minutes. Or I can catch a bus to a number of shopping malls, some small ones, or at least three huge malls.
The vast majority of my needs can easily be met without once needing to drive. Which is good, because I've never (I'm 56) had a licence...
People in that subreddit probably assume Europeans live in dirt shacks or some shit and have no idea what ACs are. They often list America's biggest "pros" which are often the reason the QoL isn't as good as the Netherlands.
if america thinks it has convient shopping, i had to bike one mile down a four lane highway (average urban road) to get to a cvs that doesn’t even sell bread but lucky there was a 7/11 across the street. how to cross said street you may ask? there’s a pedestrian crossing half a mile back the other way to the other side of the road. i get to the 7/11, park my bike at the only accessible bike racks (behind the dumpster on the opposite site of the parking lot) and then i walk about 100 meters to the store, find the bread i need, try to pay with my debit card but they don’t accept debit card at this 7/11 anymore because they got caught with a card skimmer and aren’t allowed to use a card reader anymore.
i almost got hit three separate times all by massive pick up trucks. all for ONE load of bread.
i spent a week in japan. if i needed something i could leave my hotel, walk down the road, and find a shop that sells anything i could possible need for PENNIES and then walk back with my reusable bags
If the shopping is convenient, why is online shopping putting malls, big box stores, and main streets out of business? If you have to make a dedicated trip to go shopping and drive for 15 mins each way, I wouldn't call it convenient
Carbrains. Somehow driving ten kilometres to a mega shopping complex and then spending 15 minutes parking is more convenient than going down to street level from an apartment and into a street level shop 100m down the road.
But you only need to buy your truckload of ultra-processed foodstuffs every two weeks in the USA!!
That’s why the trucks are getting bigger, so you can go longer without shopping… oh wait no the trays aren’t actually growing in useable space. Must just be for hauling their ever bigger asses around.
they are growing in the dimensions that kill pedestrians better
Or their kids. I knew someone who legitimately ran over their little kid this way because they couldn’t see them over their truck. I’ve lived through some horrifying things. I can’t imagine that guilt. So yeah. Fuck cars. And fuck trucks in particular. I’m never owning one.
Oh no, you don't put groceries in the bed. You might mess up the bed liner.
> street level shop 100m down the road. Even less for me. My apartment is just a few floors directly above the supermarket; I rarely do a big shop, and just pop in when I need to.
Got to save waste on fruit and vegetables if you can just buy what you want when you want it instead of buy two weeks supply
Food shops at train stations are the best model ever. Pick up what you need for dinner on the way home from work. I remember one in Europe where they sold freshly *prepped* food: chopped onions, marinated chicken, pre-rinsed salad greens. GENIUS.
> Food shops at train stations are the best model ever. Japan does this right. At their major hubs like Tokyo and Kyoto station, they have multistory malls that have everything you can want while you wait for your train.
It's pretty nice, although naturally there's still some waste. Recently though I've been freezing a lot of veg that would've otherwise gone to waste (as well as left over bones) and then using them to make stock when enough accumulates in my small freezer. That works for alliums, celery, carrots, certain root vegetables at least. I may need to move to a more isolated area at some point over the next year, and I'll certainly miss it. I'll still most likely have a supermarket within walking distance, but it won't be nearly as nice as just popping in whenever I need something.
Bike ride from my house to a large Kaufland supermarket takes me about 4-5 minutes. There's also Lidl and another store in the opposite direction in about the same distance (4 minutes) and Tesco Express that is like 2-3 minutes away in another direction. I don't understand how is this not more convenient than being forced to start a car to buy bread.
I can walk or cycle to at least 4 different grocery stores in my town in the Netherlands. No need to use the car, unless I am planning on buying a lot of stuff. Still no need to have an American oversized big truck, just use the trunk and the rear seats of a hot hatch. We have drive throughs too, mostly for fast food. Most people drink their coffee at home or at work, or they get coffee at a train station.
I, too, get my coffee at the train station. In DC, MURCAH! Wish it was more common here in the states. Trains really are the best way to commute when possible.
I read that DC actually has a very good metro
And not just metro! It’s got great commuter rail as well. I can take the MARC train in the morning into the city, grab coffee at Union Station, then use the metro to get around the city.
Good by U.S. standards.
Frankly, it’s good period tbh. It gets me everywhere I wanna go, and does so efficiently.
I know 10 (7 major, 3 smaller/exotic) grocery stores within a kilometer from my house. And that's using the roads. And also 3 American fast food "restaurants" with a drive through
Hell I can do this in the U.S., the issue is more a matter of so many being indoctrinated into a feeling of helplessness in accomplishing any task without being able to take 2-4 tons of steel with them. Although admittedly I wouldn't do it in the suburbs because of minimal cycling infrastructure and the pathologically antisocial culture of car dependency/superiority.
I see most suburbs makes it very difficult for people to walk to the closest shop/restaurant, [example](https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/1dyd0an/i_just_wanted_a_kebab/) that I saw yesterday on Reddit.
> If you have to make a dedicated trip to go shopping and drive for 15 mins each way, I wouldn't call it convenient But don't you know? If you have access to food, doctors, kindergartens, culture, etc. in * less than 15 Minutes you live in a Socialist-Communist-Marxist-Lenin-China-North Korea-Dictatorship * anything more and you automatically live in the garden of Eden ^/s
I'm buying less now we have a small supermarket across the road. If I need an onion for dinner, I'll buy an onion at a higher price than the big supermarkets, but it won't go off in the cupboard
"What a chump, I can drive 30 minutes to the Costco, buy a mega-sack of onions and save 10% per onion." Flashforward two weeks and 1/2 of one onion had been used and the rest are rotting in the pantry...
Meanwhile you spent as much on gas as on the onions
We have a fruit & vegetable kiosk on the street near our apartment. It takes literally 0 minutes time to reach on my way home because I walk right by it. So if I need a few things for dinner, or my kid wants a banana or whatever, easy! Like you said it's a little more expensive but the convenience is worth it to me. It's 1000x easier than visiting a huge US supermarket. And I'm from the US so I know.
And the US as a general rule doesn't colocate supermarkets with shopping centres and transit. Friend who grew up in Midwest USA was shocked when he came with his Skippy wife to Australia that malls had supermarkets, greengrocers, newsagents, Etc. We're not good here, but killing multiple proverbial birds with one stone is better than driving from car park to car park
What's for dinner tonight?? "Onion" ... like soup or... "Just onion" Oh... (Sorry not roasting this just popped In my head from reading your comment lol)
This. Convenient for me is when I can just make a quick extra stop on my way home. Or even better: open door, go down the stairs, walk 10 meters and you're in a shop.
I am sure they think online shopping doesn't exist the rest of the backwater world.
It's not convenient at all, or interesting. You know what the most interesting shopping experiences almost always are? Cities with walkable shopping centers, or smaller artisan markets like craft fairs and farmers markets. Shopping for everything at one store is SUPREMELY boring because the selections are lame and there's never anything interesting. It's always cooler to have multiple stores with various things because in general, the goods will be higher quality, you'll have a better selection in each of those things, and the employees will be more helpful because they actually know the field their store works in. Every time I've gone to Walmart and thought about buying clothes, I've found employees to be monstrously unhelpful, same with larger clothing stores. When I go to smaller clothing stores on the other hand, the employees are always a delight to talk to and they're very helpful. I don't have anything against the employees of the larger stores, the store is just so big and sells so many things that there is no way *anyone* could be completely versed in it well enough to help very much.
It takes me 3 minutes to walk to the main shopping street in Leiden, the Netherlands. I also live in a 15 min radius of all the bars, cafes and restaurants. I think thats better than having to drive your car or let your stuff get delivered all the time lol.
I'm buying less now we have a small supermarket across the road. If I need an onion for dinner, I'll buy an onion at a higher price than the big supermarkets, but it won't go off in the cupboard
This is a really good point. I wonder whether stores in easily walkable towns are losing as much business to online shopping as US malls are.
"Best thing about America is the shopping" *visits mall* "ugh I fn hate the mall 🙄"
i think online shopping, and online grocery is like an accidental big win for suburbia. one walmart van dropping off boxes to 20 homes on a route is so much more efficient than 20 people all driving to and from the store in the same way transit is way more efficient. it's a small step logically but we just can't get past the stupid cars = freedom fallacy
I REALLY hate that the 7/11 is a 5 minute walk away from me! They never get my money and it’s super inconvenient! /s
The best thing about America is you don't need to be in the same space as all the other Americans!
Those damn Americans, they ruined America!
There are many beautiful countries in the world. Unfortunately they all have people in them.
Luckily there are no humans in spac- wait
[SPACE!](https://youtu.be/g1Sq1Nr58hM?si=d-JCI3KuJpQL5sEU)
[SPAAAAAAAAACE!](https://youtu.be/xeKMS62GrTI?si=XxO1hfI7rCZkZjRT)
Technically it's Europeans, who ruined America.
More specifically Engl*sh people
Even more specifically, Christians.
The Spanish and Portuguese definitely deserve some of the smoke too.
True, so true.
kind of true though, im living in the netherlands atm but i get to tell people here theres like 85% of america ive never seen or interacted with. like they dont get how different it is from region to region or even within one city
I can take the back path, hop on the bus, take the commuter rail, take another bus to another train station less than a mile away and get on Amtrak and in live about 35 miles outside of the city.
That goes for most other countries as well though!
Quality of life vs drive thru's lmfao
It's funny because quality of life is supposed to encompass everything ?
It's funny because drive thrus are fucking nothing.
The comments on that sub are absoltely insane lmao
My favourite was the person who went off comparing the US to Russia because he thought that's what the other flag was
that a true murica moment.
The American eyeball cannot distinguish between vertical and horizontal stripage.
Both the Russian flag and the flag of the Netherlands are horizontal?
The number of flags with red, white and blue horizontal stripes is staggering: Serbia, Slovenia, Czechia, Luxembourg...
I started losing braincells. Had to leave when they started explaining why food isn't a human right.
Lmao. I checked the comments and left when they said the US is simply too big to adopt bike culture.
It's such a fucking dumb argument.
I've started to reply "well, ok. But is New Jersey to big to adopt bike culture? What about Rhode Island? Massachusetts?" If you can break it down into small regions, then the overall size doesn't matter.
Don't you understand? If you want to use a bike, you're now committed to exclusively bike everywhere until you die, even when you live in Seattle and visit your aunt in Boston twice a year.
Lol. And NA cities are only "big" because they're spread out to accomodate cars. It's so baffling when someone says that because we're not exactly over here trying to bike between NYC and Chicago or anything. The size fo the country is irrelevant
NYC to Chicago? If you're not biking from Miami to Anchorage you're a hypocrite!
I tried, but I got dysentery somewhere about Wyoming.
> Had to leave when they started explaining why food isn't a human right. That philosophy is called "Inalienable rights aren't a thing. Guns are though. That's why I need an inalienable right to have all of them and a doomsday truck."
We've had it drilled into our minds from our formative years that only negative rights are a thing (until someone important enough decides they aren't).
Is that the same comment thread where it says the US is constantly stopping genocides? lol.
Yup. Probably stopping war crimes too.
I thought that because the name of the sub was MURICA it would be ironic and self-effacing. How wrong I was!
Right! I scrolled through too much of that comment section thinking it was a circlejerk sub :((( I mean, I guess in a way it kinda *is*
It could have sworn it was like ten years ago but this kind of sub tends to… change
There was a time it was a satire sub. Of course the problem with that is, people are stupid. So, so stupid.
One commenter said "I would take a car and drive thru’s any day over “bike culture”". Dear God help me
No sane person in America with any knowledge of other countries is turning down living in the Netherlands if given the chance. If you gave me that option I’d quit my job literally right now and never come back. The only Americans that think America is superior to Europe are the ones who have never had the luck and means to visit, which sadly is probably most.
I'm thorn between thinking that whoever made the meme was trolling or unironically believe that stuff.
Bike culture ones are especially well informed /s
Plenty of convenient shopping in the Netherlands too. Arguably a whole lot more convenient, in fact, because it’s closer to people’s homes instead of zoned away from them.
Takes me 5 minutes to get to the nearest supermarket by foot, and only 1 minute by bike. Even an IKEA and hardware stores are within a 15min bike ride
But what if you need to get 20 bags of gravel? You're not gonna be able to take that with you on a bike, are you? /s
I too enjoy munching on bags of gravel every meal. It helps me digest food easily so the proximity to an abandoned railway line is a nice bonus.
are you a goron
Didn't know what that was, searched for image and that thing looks exactly like my dad, at least for the body shape. Maybe gravel munching is hereditary.
15 minutes you say? Sounds like communism!
When I was in the Netherlands shopping was way more convenient even being about as apples-to-apples as you can get (similar population as my hometown, I was staying a similar distance to the city center as I do in my hometown, etc.). The biggest differences it that the city center in the Netherlands had more shopping options (the city center in my hometown has the illusion of options but most stores are cutesy specialty stores and not stores where you get normal daily needs filled) and that outside of the city center there were shops sprinkled everywhere and not just on major roads like in the US.
Exactly. If I stay in the downtown of any European city, there's likely a grocery store within a 5-minute walk. It's nice to have that so I don't have to eat out for every meal (or at least something for breakfast if I don't want to pay 20 euros/day for the hotel brekkie). If I'm in an American city, unless it's one of the largest cities (e.g., NYC and Chicago), I would likely need to go out into the suburbs just to find even a Trader Joe's, let alone a Kroger or WalMart. And most likely, I would need to Uber there too.
Holy shit, the dick riding for America in this sub is crazy. They act like no one else is having AC. And also act like 99% of all countries world wide don’t have drive throughs. I couldn’t name one country without drive throughs…
What's kinda shocking about the US is how rare using the AC for heating is despite using the AC for cooling being standard. The US could have been a leader in heat pump based heating as well as cooling, like Japan or Korea is, but just didn't.
In Germany the heat pump is getting more and more installed and is on a good way actually. But what confuses me is: we have an AC at my office, but we have separated heaters at the walls (even tho our ACs can heat too). On the other hand, we also have paper walls at the office, so I’m not really surprised (outside walls are bricks, as well as the core, but the inside walls are just paper). But I guess that also comes back to the gas and energy prices you named in your other comment. Here in Germany, gas is pretty cheap, while energy is pretty expensive (18 - 25ct / 0.19 - 0.27 USD per kWh).
I have just bought a recently-released _split_ mobile A/C, which is effective as a split, but doesn't require complex and expensive installation and can be removed in seconds, and I laughed how it has a sticker saying "it's a heat pump too!". Apparently, the only way to sneak A/Cs into German houses is to say that they are akschually heat pumps too..
If there is a will… But on a serious note, an AC is pretty cheap, roughly 200-400€. The installation is simple, but expensive. But what is the saying? „Wo kein Kläger, da kein Richter.“ ;)
Installation is only expensive because the current demand for heat pumps is so high.
But the cold! I saw that sentiment somewhere and looked it up, the main reason seems to be... insulation. And a lot of Americans live in fucking paper thin walled and wood framed homes which I think explains that issue well.
If anything poor insulation makes the energy efficiency advantage of heat pumps even more important. Part of the reason is the availability of cheap gas, but even then like a third of California homes use electrical resistive heating. And having used to live there, most of those homes (including mine) have AC that only provides cooling. An upgrade that costs next to nothing could reduce heating bills for those homes by 3-5x, has near zero adoption.
Scandinavia also uses a lot of wood framing (stick framing, is AFAIK the right word), and we insulate our walls. Not as much thermal mass as thick old stone walls, but it can probably be even better insulated since the walls are mostly cavities that can be filled with insulation.
Yeah I lived in Sweden and it ruined me for American housing. In America wood new construction is almost universally garbage. Somehow my Swedish dorm house was better constructed than anything I’ve ever lived in here. Not a single draft ever.
Scandinavia has pretty strict building codes, and for public buildings like student dorms they are followed to the letter - at least the rules as they were when they were built. However maintenance can be so-so.
Yeah my dorm was new and I do remember people complaining about the older dorms like Flogsta in Uppsala
This reminds me of Japanese architecture. Some wodden houses and furniture are connected only trough junctions. Zero screws.
We use screws and nails alright :) However building something that can be assembled as a 3D puzzle with just the help of some glue is very satisfying!
Check out this comment: > most of the internet has an anti american bias, its cause you dont have to back up what you say with facts or risk getting punched in the nose. > we’re consistently stopping genocides, providing the most food aid and setting the bar for human rights. > nobody wants to mention those though. just look at that dumb fucking UN map of who voted for food to be a human right, like people dont see north korea and just laugh. or realize that just because per capita you donated the most doesn’t mean the 12 potato’s and a motorcycle mean shit. I can't believe that someone genuinely thinks the US is stopping genocides and setting the bar for human rights, when they're often complicit in genocide and showing how basic human rights are at risk in the US. Not to say that Europe is perfect, we're not, but get your head out of your ass and stop thinking you're God's gift to the world.
That's nationalist brainwashing at work there. No wonder why the US is sleepwalking into the fascist Project 2025.
r/Defeat_Project_2025
"we’re consistently stopping genocides" made me think I was on a parody sub. Nope, not a hint of irony in that one. Just straight up drank the cool aid.
The rest of the world sees americans in a bad light because the rest of the world is usually fucked up by the americans for profit. Some people are so obtuse it hurts.
U.S. was literally built on genocide, and remains the world's #1 instigator of genocides and fascist coups d'etat throughout. And 'food aid' is only a thing the U.S. does because it creates dependency to serve its imperial interests (and therefore the interests of its manufacturing and finance capital). If the U.S. cared about helping these countries with food security, they would give them tools for mechanizing their agriculture and scientific knowledge that many over-exploited countries can't fund themselves because of perpetual debt to imperialist institutions. Same very much goes for the UK and France, but mostly wrt their former colonies.
Even if they were right, how is drive thru a highlight? I mean, I enjoy it once every few years as a lazy treat but if it didn’t exist here I wouldn’t give the tiniest of shits.
drive thrus are bad in almost every way. these people are just naive af. i imagine from a city planning perspective, it's got to be one of the worst common land use patterns.
I guess drive throughs are great if you have to go everywhere in a car.
That sub started out as a place for people to ironically, facetiously parody American patriotism. But, like all such subs, once it reached a certain level of usership (probably 30-40k or so), it became what it initially set out to parody.
Sad ☹️
“people will look back at this period of time and they will wish to be American” - a random guy on that subreddit like 🤡
I wasn't in the USA but I was in Colombia and it was shocking for me that there is drive throughs for everything, even pharmacies. I knew only about Fast food drive throughs.
Pharmacies make sense for drive thru. This prevents sick people (who are possibly contagious) from infecting employees and fellow customers. I'm not a fan of drive thrus but I'll give you pharmacies.
In Germany you don't need to walk inside either, you can often buy from a window. Walk through xD
Exactly what I was thinking!
Same in Switzerland 🇨🇭
Yeah but don’t you know? America is so totally unique in how hot (and cold!) it is! And we have mountains and hills! And our country is too big, so passenger rail would be a waste of money (yes I’m ignoring the fact that it could be implemented based on density). And if you’re on your bike, you have less freedom (ignore the fact that you can only drive on areas you have been designated to drive on). And you know what? Other countries have it worse than us! So why do you even care? /s
North Korea probably
another win for DPRK
The Juche lives forever ans drive thru will NOT BE TOLERATED
Quality of life vs. drive thrus... How are we supposed to make an impossible choice?!
You know right?! The McDrive is clearly superior to human-friendly infrastructure.
Literally I wish every store had a drive thru. Then we would never have to get out of our cars. Now that's quality of life /s
I almost envy the ignorance of the people in that sub. It would make life much easier sometimes. Sure, its not as black and white as sometimes gets claimed, but there are a lot of bullshit reasons used as arguments on why europe is actually the place that sucks, or is based on american influence/culture. Feel the need to discuss some stuff with the redditors there, but im not sticking my nose in that nest of wasps
I just discovered it yesterday, and yeah, I'm gonna forget it. It's a weird sub.
I thought it was a satire sub hating on America, is it not?
That's what I thought too, but it seems they're dead serious.
"Quality of life" End of debate. That's it. There's no coming back from that. You cannot argue that anything else makes up for this.
I'm very certain this meme was not made by people who understand what QoL actually is.
but what about drive-throughs
"Convenient shopping" Ah yes I definitely prefer the convenience of getting in the car, driving 30 minutes to the nearest store over walking 5 minutes to the nearest store and buy what I need
How is shopping more convenient in the USA than in the Netherlands? It really isn't.
You know what is convenient shopping? Having a shorter walk from my house to a store than Americans have from their car to the store.
Spaced housing 👎 Eastern European block 👍
I agree. There are also blocks in Barcelona, Spain.
There are blocks (and AC, and drive-thrus, and convenient shopping in every sense) pretty much everywhere in Spain. Even in small cities, if it's large enough to be considered a city, you'll find all of these.
Eastern European blocks/streets could do well with some superblock action. Some already have that, but it can be taken much further easily.
Honestly, their biggest issues were just bad heat & sound insulation, being bare concrete, and bad maintenance If you just thickened up the walls a bit and covered up the outside (paint, tiles, facades, siding, murals, *anything*), then I feel like more people would be fine with them
Yeah they are Very efficient way to house people. We just need some garden/park area they can easily access.
They other key points missed in exchange for drive thrus is the comparison between the least healthy and most financially unequal country in the developed world against one of the top 5 happiest, healthiest and economically egalitarian societies, where everyone has acces to world class healthcare and can travel freely around a clean and safe country at low cost without a car.
Spacing housing apart *is* as Amerian as overbearing zoning laws because... well that's how that happened to begin with. >!I figure she meant spac*ious* housing!<
https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Settlement-patterns it's way worse
Truly cursed sub. I thought the name was facetious.
The dude in there saying that America stop’s genocides while it’s actively participating in several is a great example of how effective American propaganda is.
wtf does "spacing housing" even mean?
it means having a yard that you never use but which will require a shitload of water and loud gas-powered equipment to maintain to the HOA's standards
I’m assuming having homes on large lots, 1/2 acre or larger.
The places with the highest housing crisis are usually the most desirable places to live. I mean the the rent price is high because there are enough people able and willing to pay so much instead living somewhere cheaper. In my opinion the big houses are not so good advantage if you have to buy so many things to have a decent life quality and those things naturally take space. Home gym, home cinema, huge backyards, even huge living rooms are needed because there is lack of places nearby where you could go. No pubs near and even if you would like to go how are you going back home if you drive? No park nearby so you need to have a lot of space behind your house where only grass grows etc. Poor children living in prisons because they can't drive, walk or use buses.
I agree with everything, but the housing crisis is more of an affordable housing shortage. There are a lot of unused houses and real estate but owners, often now mega corporations, prefer to rent them rather than sell, to squeeze many bucks off people.
As a certified francophobe, the answer is nevertheless France. France is better to live in.
Convenient shopping in the states? I haven't been in physical shops here in NL a long time ago due to the deliveries to the homes including groceries.
So convenient it takes an hour to get from one store to another store 100m across the interstate if you don't want to take 2-4 tons of steel with you everywhere you go
There's some significant cope in those comments lmao.
Significant is quite the understatement, they're full on
Oh yes, because America is the only one with convenient shopping, housing and drive-thrus. By space housing, do they mean single family? If so, these things fucking suck in the west. Stick frame garbage in comparison to masonry.
I literally never use drive thrus. They take absolutely forever. Every time. I will always just walk in, order, and walk back out before the line hardly even moves.
They have literally all these things in the Netherlands.
if "quality of life" is one of your opponents pluses, you've lost.
Shopping with a car is never convenient. When finding parking space is a problem. Last Saturday we went to the mall via taxi with no hassles. To meetup and celebrate our nephew’s 8th birthday. The other party arriving by car had to drop off the passengers to meet us who arrived early. While the driver struggles to find parking space at a multiple floor level garage. I think the driver spent at least an hour or more to find parking. Since the mall was packed that day.
"convenient shopping" lol no
Shopping is inconvenient in the US, mostly, cuz you gotta drive there.
Spacious housing > Give me a small, centrally located space. I don't need or want the expenses associated with living in a mansion. Drive-thrus > Let me walk instead Convenient shopping > I hate buying stuff
Americans would totally let you drive in the mall if they could. Who knew that Wall-E would actually predict the future.
How the fk an ocean of parking everywhere is "convenient shopping"????
I just lost brain cells going to that sub. There's one things Americans will never understand, we (Europeans) shit on the US all the time, but not as much as we shit on our own countries, and that's what separates us, we're e not afraid to recognize the flaws of where we live
drive thru’s and shitty tract housing are all the things americans sacrificed actual quality of life for so that we could live in our cars.
On what planet is having a single Walmart 2 towns away from you considered a "convenient shopping" option? Because that's the reality for many Americans living outside of cities.
"Convenient shopping?" As in, driving everywhere to buy the basic needs of life, because walking or riding a bike to the store would be tantamount to suicide?
The absolute WORST things about living in the US are used as the “pros.” 🙄
Spaced housing? Have you seen all the idiots crammed into the cookie cutter suburbs?
SWOT meme?
When I lived in the UK, inevitably I'd have people tell me about their trip to the US, most frequently the theme parks around Orlando. So many people raved about how wide and open the streets are and how much nicer it is to drive in the US. It really left me perplexed how often this came up.
Drive throughs - enabling the pooslug.
"Convenient?" When I was in Vienna I could walk to the local grocery, buy what I needed for the day, and be back home in 20 minutes! I struggle to get in and out of the huge US stores in that time, and that's ignoring the driving time!
No it’s epic military edits
Plot twist Spain won bc they have sun year around
I don't understand why spaced out housing would be a good thing, just ignoring the whole walkable argument I think neighbourhoods with houses far apart are sad, why do you need such a large house and garden? Do you have six children and grow your own food? I can cram in lots of both ornamentals and vegetable plants in my 100m2 allotment. Sure, there's not much space for trees but how many fruit trees do you really need unless you're a keen gardener or horticulturalist? Personally I think row houses are the perfect middle ground. How many people in single family homes actually optimise their space?
I live in St. Louis which has some real character and is an actual place (the City, that is -- can't say as much about the County or St. Chucklefuck :P) but when I do road trips and see these quaint towns that are dying because they're not close enough to the interstate, but then all the towns on the interstate are just stroads with every chain restaurant and gas station possible. Why would we fight to save that? Many of these towns are anti-places that are just farms for low wage jobs and virtually nothing else. It's quite the dichotomy we have
Some great comments in that thread. >most of the internet has an anti american bias, its cause you dont have to back up what you say with facts or risk getting punched in the nose. >we’re consistently stopping genocides, providing the most food aid and setting the bar for human rights. >nobody wants to mention those though. just look at that dumb fucking UN map of who voted for food to be a human right, like people dont see north korea and just laugh. or realize that just because per capita you donated the most doesn’t mean the 12 potato’s and a motorcycle mean shit.
Yes, the convenient shopping that is a 10+ minute drive away as opposed to the ridiculously inconvenient 2 minute walk for shopping in a mixed use neighborhood lol
One of the top comments credits the US with consistently stopping genocides
Yeah, I think the house thing is sort of true but it feels weird. I’m an American and when I hung out with a group of Italians at a hostel they said it was nice to have a house. We were walking around Milan, getting drinks from different places, and visiting historic ruins. It was the kind of thing I could never do in America because I basically had to rent a house where I lived.
implying shops at walking/biking distance aren't immensely convenient
Yea, I don’t like people. That’s why my forefathers trekked across the ocean, to get away from people.
Well, if you set foot outside of the 10 biggest cities in general or town centers you'll have plenty of options for spaced housing so I guess that point breaks down. Granted, we only have McDonald drive-troughs here but then, Drive troughs are for cars which are absolutely mandatory in the US. Over here you can just send your kid on a 5min walk to go get stuff if you live in a place that would be big enough for drive-troughs. So not just adults can go pick up their take-out food, kids can too and it happens. Convenient shopping? Assuming that means having the absolutely giant malls on the edges of a town with stores that have everything conceivable for the products they sell?. Granted, I sometimes wish we had something like that but aside from shopping trips that count as a day's out including going out for dinner with who ever you shopped with I've never felt shopping was inconvenient and for stuff like groceries, a quick household appliance, some snacks, or whatever else I could want on a regular day I'm never out for more than 30minutes up to about an hour if I can't decide on the spot and the old lady in front decided to pay hundred euro's exclusively in 10cent coints. So for me, none of the "pro's" for the USA in this picture actually feel like con's to me. That's 6 points for the Netherlands and 0 for the USA.
No mention of BBQ? wtf is wrong with people
The good part of America is that you don't have the PVV in charge of which the infrastructure minister calls trains "a leftist hobby" The bad part of America is that there's a significant chance that FvD-type shills will be in charge AND that people are still stuck in their cars even more and that there will be a life-size LARP-ing of the Handmaids Tale starting next year. At this moment, I prefer myself some France or Spain.
what can beat drive thru beer store???
Where I live, in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne (Australia), my nearest supermarket is a five minute walk. There's another a short bus ride away. If I need a department store, I can walk ten minutes. Or I can catch a bus to a number of shopping malls, some small ones, or at least three huge malls. The vast majority of my needs can easily be met without once needing to drive. Which is good, because I've never (I'm 56) had a licence...
the drive-thru thing is so real. The biggest culture shock coming from Canada to visit the US was the fact there was a drive-thru for EVERYTHING
Everyone in that comment section needs to touch grass...
People in that subreddit probably assume Europeans live in dirt shacks or some shit and have no idea what ACs are. They often list America's biggest "pros" which are often the reason the QoL isn't as good as the Netherlands.
Don’t forget the one-two punch of mass shootings and fuck-you healthcare.
if america thinks it has convient shopping, i had to bike one mile down a four lane highway (average urban road) to get to a cvs that doesn’t even sell bread but lucky there was a 7/11 across the street. how to cross said street you may ask? there’s a pedestrian crossing half a mile back the other way to the other side of the road. i get to the 7/11, park my bike at the only accessible bike racks (behind the dumpster on the opposite site of the parking lot) and then i walk about 100 meters to the store, find the bread i need, try to pay with my debit card but they don’t accept debit card at this 7/11 anymore because they got caught with a card skimmer and aren’t allowed to use a card reader anymore. i almost got hit three separate times all by massive pick up trucks. all for ONE load of bread. i spent a week in japan. if i needed something i could leave my hotel, walk down the road, and find a shop that sells anything i could possible need for PENNIES and then walk back with my reusable bags