A young mother pulls her four year-old son away from the hot dogs and other items rolling slowly under the plexiglass chastising, “Not for breakfast!” A middle-aged man in a uniform for the building in which he works ponders donuts in a case signed to look similar to Krispy Kreme. A school-girl reaches into her purse as she pulls together change to buy a bottle of juice. The Slurpee machine, less popular now that the temperature outside approaches that of the icy beverage, churns slowly, a sign hanging from the Crystal Light nozzle, “Not in service”. It is 7-Eleven, and the hipsters have left the building.
Upon first opening, 7-Eleven appealed to the ironic set; it's mere presence in the city incurring a curiosity. As the summer months grew hotter and hotter, the lure of the Slurpee kept a steady stream of the young and fashionable coming by for cheap chill. But as time passed another location opened uptown, and more promised to open soon. The revelation that the prices were as high as, if not higher than, the newstand just outside for such staples as Diet Coke and American Spirits lessened the appeal to enter. The food options, once a perverse thrill, were now just a reminder of why we New Yorkers are so much more fit than our red-state relatives with their processed-food diet staples.
7-Eleven has passed through the initial oeuvre of its opening and now as it sets out to dot our landscape with the frequency of a Subway or an OTB, it slips slowly into banality. Perhaps we'll slip in next summer for a Slurpee, to encounter fixtures, once shiny and new, with the inevitable entrenched grime of city-life. Only time will tell.
