What happened to San Francisco?
There it is, on the Bay, ever watchful for loopy left-wing, human rights-sensitive, pet-friendly, homeless-encouraging, veal-despising (poor little calves!) trends and initiatives.
What happened to San Francisco?
It was bad enough that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was first off the starting line with his proposed New York City ban on large cups of Sugary Soda from Hell. But then … but then … San Francisco wasn’t second to hit the Pepsi delivery guy over the head with a giant cup of cola!
No, second place went to Cambridge, where Mayor Henrietta Davis, giving full credit to Bloomberg, cracked open a bottle of outrage and proposed her own limits on the size of sugary poisons in city restaurants.
Bravo to Henrietta. To beat San Francisco, to break out in second place ahead of all manner of cool university towns, in the race to be cool and authoritarian and progressive in the war against Big Sugar is a marketing triumph that serves the Boston-Cambridge colossus well.
There is something to be said for the kind of subtle metro marketing that proclaims, “We are so cool.” It tends to be much cheaper than the traditional travel-and-tourism advertising. Simply breathing the air of the fashionably cool is rewarding, in and of itself.
Is the public health value of curbing the size of a glass of Coke the real reason the mayor of Cambridge jumped on the bandwagon? No, no, it was simply a way to rally the troops, to remind the Harvard crowd and assorted hangers-on that while dorky bio-medical researchers are fine to have around, you must exude progressive funkiness to compete against the other cool places.
In a smaller way, just down the road a piece in Northampton, that once-catastrophic mill town showed us the way. Seizing on the reputation (deserved or not) of hometown Smith College as a magnet for lesbians, Northampton became the college-town triumph for being cool and gay – Provincetown, with just a touch of academic decoration.
The marketing objective has already been achieved in Cambridge; nobody really cares whether Coke and Pepsi flow like the Mighty Mississip’. The City Council shuffled the soda-size regulation off to a committee, where it might or might not ever emerge as a real ordinance. The real goal was to proclaim to the world that Cambridge was, and still is, cool and progressive and eager to ponder something as lefty-authoritarian as the prohibition on large glasses of soda.
Style Over Substance
Can you imagine the “Don’t Tread on Me” boys and girls in New Hampshire mulling restrictions on the size of your Coke? No, New Hampshire had more fun proposing “Right to Work” legislation designed to make the lives of labor union organizers miserable. Did it pass? Of course not. But the fact that it was seriously considered was sufficient to cement the Granite State’s cranky, conservative reputation.
Even Mayor Bloomberg knew that his regulatory hand grenade was more symbol than substance; more designed to show off New York City’s “big government” muscles than to diminish any local waistlines. As he explained, you could always order two 16-ounce drinks, if a 32-ounce drink was forbidden.
While “small government” theology may attract enthusiastic throngs to conservative radio talk shows, the odd reality is that lefty, guitar-strumming government expansionism often attracts the bright and pretty and affluent to cities that exude such atmosphere.
The danger, of course, is that making the public square safe for nursing mothers; or restricting the size of a Pepsi glass; or promoting mediocre mass transit and bike paths at the expense of cars; eventually attracts so many cool, crazy people that the city becomes dysfunctional instead of hip. As Richard Florida, author of “Rise of the Creative Class” put it, “hipster urban cultures can be just as monolithic, homogenous and creativity-squelching as any other.”
WARNING TO BOSTON: All those fat, thirsty, unhealthy people in Cambridge may be frightened into crossing the Charles and guzzling huge, sugary drinks in Boston, despoiling Boston’s cool image and transforming the place into just another Worcester.
Shrink the portions. Save the city. Be very, very cool.
