Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

pieces of flair

The Washington Post had an interesting feature yesterday about the evolving decor of T.G.I. Friday’s and Ruby Tuesday and the networks of people who supply the kitch that adorns the restaurants’ walls.

Since the dawn of the shopping-mall era, people have eaten at chain restaurants. And for almost as long, they have made fun of them. The nutty-kitschy, kooky-urban, farmy-charmy interior design became the aesthetic of the strip-center banal.

Perhaps sensing the cliche, two of the nation’s top chain restaurants — T.G.I. Friday’s and Ruby Tuesday — have been giving themselves quiet makeovers. (Out, for Friday’s: farm implements. In: Pee-wee Herman’s “Tequila” platform shoes. And you could be forgiven for not having noticed, even if you eat there all the time.)…

Susan Sontag nailed the idea of camp in the 1960s, labeling it as “failed seriousness,” but no one has yet put a finger on the failed joviality of the retail age — and its air of enforced cheer, sentimental prefab and the replication of nostalgia.

Nevertheless, it’s a profitable formula, but one that needs to be served to a new generation, whose retro tastes run more Atari than Great Depression.

And so T.G.I. Friday’s undertook in 2002 a corporate-mandated makeover, a $200 million process that continues to this day — location by location, exit ramp to exit ramp — until all 531 of its U.S. restaurants will get the “new” look: a slightly less-cluttered update with pop-culture touchstones that evoke the mid-1960s to mid-1990s. That means skateboards, bicycles, classic rock and new-wave album covers, surfboards, disco balls.

(“A Side of Decor” - 12/08/05)