I call them sheep.
Many of the people in the image that anchors this article.
They see one person eating the $16 burrito, $16 avocado toast, $22 traditional breakfast or $24 bowl of rigatoni at this “cafe” and they must do likewise. No matter what lies at the heart of the experience. No matter the cost.
They’re going through the motions of eating and drinking out in America as the experience of eating and drinking out in America continues to rapidly degrade. And get more, if not prohibitively expensive.
Even when it’s good, it’s bad. Because it takes a ton of money — like some form of immediate or otherwise sustainable wealth — to make dining out a primary element of your lifestyle.
This isn’t hyperbole. You have to be rich or otherwise wealthy to eat and drink on the streets and in the storefronts and strip malls of America on a daily basis. The way so many people in so many other parts of the world do. The way so many people apparently manage to do in, say, pricey Los Angeles.
By the end of this article, we will have defined rich or otherwise wealthy in this most meaningful, day-to-day, on-the-ground context. And we will have blown our minds with how much it would cost to live like a cafe-sitting, tapas-eating, vermouth-drinking European. Using my penchant for the Spanish lifestyle.