save fry street!

I'm behind in posting this, but today's rage is catching me up on some leftover posts.

Fry Street, the little student commercial district, ghetto and wonderful and kooky as it is, has been sold to a Houston-based developer.

This is bad news, y'all (see, I can be a little local here, it's for a good cause!). Fry Street is home to The Tomato, Cool Beans, Mr Chopsticks and many other great little holes-in-the-wall, and to see that go and replaced by CVS and Borders is frightening. First off, replace a local, awesome little coffee shop (Uncommon Grounds) with Starbucks? Kill off a unique campus bookstore (Voertmans) with Borders? Threaten all the other businesses not being torn down with higher rents and less customers? Change the local character of Denton with your standard American consumer landscape?

Bullshit! You really want to build these things? Fine- I know I'm a sucker for Borders and Chipotle and I wouldn't mind going to them on the outskirts of town. But I won't see something unique sacrificed. I won't see the next generation of UNT students become more and more commericialized and put in neat consumer boxes, when what college students really need is home- memories, discussion, laughs, up-all-hours good times. How many life-changing experiences have you had in a Starbucks?

Save Fry Street!