Not Taking It To The Street

This is a very nice little town I live in.  There's an independent bookstore, an independent cinema,  an independent coffee shop,  an excellent school system, and 37 Japanese restaurants.  

Sure, a highway runs right through it, runs right in front of my house in fact, but there are ways to get places without driving on it.  Even if you sometimes need to go grocery shopping right over the border of the next town, because you really, really do need the super-colossal packages of paper towels, or the detergent that doesn't smell like a space alien's idea of a spring morning,  or the diet orange soda that is always out of stock at the store you can walk to.

The next town's not a bad little town either, except that when you drive over there, even if you don't use the highway, the first thing you encounter is what I'm coming to think of as The Blight Zone.  Not the blight of burnt-out storefronts or abandoned steel mills, but The Blight Zone of The Strip Malls of  Upscale Hell. (Okay, I'll be fair, they are not all strip malls, some of them are enclosed.)

Because they are The Malls of Upscale Hell, the parking lots are crammed with The Vehicles of Upscale Hell, or Lady Trucks, which take up one and a half parking spaces or cruise about like bloated black and silver sharks looking for two parking spaces together so they can grab one and a half of them. 

Recently, the situation at The Zone has gotten worse, a lot worse, because right past the first strip mall is a new strip mall whose parking lot is contiguous with the first one.  There used to be an old strip mall there, but it wasn't quite upscale enough, and most of it was torn down last year to make way for an extremely glamorous and upscale new strip mall.  For the last six months or so there have been tantalizing, but tastefully small, billboards, asking  "Are you ready for The Street?" 

Oh, let me grind my brains on that one for a second. Why no, I have not, am not, and don't think I'll ever be ready for "The Street,"  and not just because the misnomer offends the language police in my head.  Hey, big-time real estate developer, it's more of a driveway adjacent to a highway than a street, and there aren't any sidewalks or storefronts or, you know, streetiness. What's that you say? It's The Street At Chestnut Hill? Nope, it's the strip mall at Hammond Pond, but have it your way.

At long last, The Street At Chestnut Hill is open and the joints are jumping, even if the parking lots are gridlocked.  There isn't much to appeal to an old demographic hag like me.   Since lululemon's episode of the transparent yoga pants, I don't think The Lululemon Store will enjoy my custom, not that it ever has; if I am going to spend 90 bucks on a pair of pants, I'd like them to conceal my underwear, thank you.  I don't have the desire, let alone the  costume or the stamina, to Spin My Guts Out (tm) at The L A Sports Club with all the lululemon-clad, Lady Truck-driving ladies, or contort myself in some sweaty fusion class like Zumb(yog)a or Cage-Fighting/Pilates Boot Camp.  Not even if the gals are not really the beyotches they act like in the parking lot and are nice enough to  invite me to stand in line with them for two hours outside The Shake Shack, which is conveniently located right next door, so I can scarf down a Shake Shack snack. Some Waffles&Bacon faux-retro hipster frozen custard perhaps or a Flat Dog?  {LINK}  

But the Lady Truck ladies really will have to spin their brains out not just once but  at least twice a day if they are going to be frequenting The Shake Shack, or just plain Shake Shack as it refers to itself.  

I began to shake, and it wasn't with anticipation, after I went to the company's website to check out the menu for pricing and downloaded the pdf of what I believe they must be required to entitle nutritional information. { LINK.} Just imagine the delectable meal (and I am sure it is, alas, delectable) you might order.  

• Double Smokestack:  850 calories, 54 gms fat, 2575 mg of sodium.  Go healthy-wild and add a piece of lettuce, it's only one calorie. 
• Cheese Fries:  685 calories, 41 gms fat, 1095 mg sodium.  
• After all that  "nutrition" you might want to choose the Vanilla Shake:  640 calories, 34 gms fat, 420 mg sodium instead of the Chocolate. 

Or maybe because you are wearing yoga pants you will close your eyes and chant "one meal won't kill me and I'll just have Greek yogurt and baby carrots and bottled water the rest of the week" before treating yourself to a  "Concrete."  Appetizing name, no, for frozen custard, with mix-ins (cookies, candy, bacon bits, rock salt) whipped in.  The unadorned chocolate "Concreation"  has only 640 calories, 40 gms of fat, and 360 gms of sodium. Mix-ins will cost you extra in every way imaginable.  

I think this concoction must be something like a Friendly's "Blizzard," but why call it a "Concrete?"  Does your stomach feel like a truck ran over it after you eat one?  Does your butt start to resemble a New Jersey knee highway divider after three or four? The story's probably on some chipper little sidebar on the website, but I was shaking too hard to poke around there very long.

I couldn't find prices on the on-line menu, but I am sure they are commensurate with the nutritional load, the stainless steel signage, and the prominent and upscale location.  I saw no mention of a frequent-eater reward program, but perhaps that is in the works.  "Eat here ten times and receive a coupon for a cardiac catheterization?"

I do find the presence of Shake Shack to be consoling in an odd way.  It's nice to know that upscale people can chow down on the same revolting and calorific junk as anyone, even if the ingredients come from upscale beef slaughtered in an upscale abattoir instead of a pink-slime burger patty factory.  I am also delighted that there are so many Lady Truck ladies out and about who won't have to worry about acquiring vehicles large enough to haul their future lardball selves and their globular offspring to and from the Shack.  Most of all, I am impressed by how thoughtful and community-oriented Shake Shack is:  not only do they want to reduce their corporate footprint (if not their customers' collective ass print) on the earth, but they have located their first outlet in the area only a short ambulance ride from a major medical center.

No.  There'll be no Waffles&Bacon frozen custard for me, especially since my doctor's office is located right across the street and I wouldn't want to be spotted in line.  But maybe I could sneak in there after dark for one of the lower cal treats I spotted on the menu.  In addition to that lettuce leaf, they offer a glug of Brooklyn Brewery Shackmeister Ale for 190 cal or a nice glass of Frog's Leap Merlot for 130, both with zero fat and zero sodium.  Why, instead one Concreation with a few mix-ins, I could have, let's see, six glasses of Merlot.  Now, that's the kind of nutritional information that I truly welcome.