The Mix That Shall Not Be Named
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was walking around the downtown Tour Bus kiosks basked in abandon on the Loop on a no longer unusually warm sun-lit sidewalks of North Michigan Avenue. I The month has been quiet, the Uber drivers Monday in December. The warmth was heavy and coming from strange angles, like all agree. those squiggly shadows of heat exploding from the radiator, but slower and bigger, A stanchion outside the tiny Garrett Popcorn oozing over the city like nuclear slugs. flagship store on 625 N. Michigan Ave LED Christmas lights sagged on the trees manages a growing line so vivacious it’s in the salty boulevard. The lights—and practically sexually awakened. So this is their Vitamin-D-deficient glow, which is where everyone is. There’s a fifteen minute less of a glow and more of an antiseptic wait to reach the only small counter in the lack of darkness—made almost no impression 800 square foot storefront. People stream against a blue sky that was at once too in and people stream out. Those that pale and too bright. (The blue was more manage to resist the current, fully intending like a gray, the same deep gray our parents to continue onward down the sidewalk, do and other property owners have all been make a face in anticipation. Like Odysseus, determined to paint every living room in commanding his crew to tie him to the America with. The people want gray. Gray ship’s mast while passing an island of Sirens, is the new black, the magazines report.) the smeller assiduously positions her nos- With more warmth and less goose down, trils so as to optimise direct impact of the the streets felt empty. Coats hung open, red smell onto and into her face holes, all while PAGE 2 PAGE Hop-On Hop-Off Big Bus Best Chicago her brain triangulates the nose-sidewalk- THE EGGSISTENTIALIST smell position to avoid breaking stride, and comes in town from Kansas City, she will continues onward. betting on that plane home with a bag of Garrett’s popcorn. Which is why Garrett’s Garrett Popcorn is legendary corn. It’s went ahead and opened a store at O’hare the Cadillac of corn. When the President airport, just in case. brings the Queen of England a two gallon tin of holiday popcorn as some postmodern And the smell really is divine: fresh joke on democracy and the fate of the caramel and sugar and butter and gourmet universe disguised as an official gesture liquid (never powdered) cheese. There’s of diplomacy, he brings Garrett Popcorn. nothing else you could really eat two Oprah has endorsed the corn on television. gallons of in 25 days. And if there is one Barack Obama gave some to Joe Biden for thing that makes Garrett, and Chicago Christmas. Sherri Shepherd of The View itself, singular in the popcorn arena, it’s gave it away to guests at her wedding. the mix. As with most gourmet popcorn Halle Berry has told the Chicago Sun-Times tins, you have your cheesy corn and you verbatim, “I don’t care if it’s six in the have your caramel corn, and sometimes a morning...It gives me so much pleasure.” plain buttered corn, each separated into deep triangles by cardboard. The separation Garrett leads the industry in culturally seems somehow natural, aesthetically at relevant gourmet popcorn. The Garrett least. But Chicagoans think bigger than brand has, however, gone through that that. In the 1970’s (as the legend goes) ironic transformation that is the curse of customers who would stop by Garrett’s institutionalization within a city. As an storefront regularly started buying a bag of historic—nay, legendary!—Chicago treat, the caramel, a bag of the cheese, and asking its primary market is, of course, people not for a third empty bag with which to mix from Chicago: tourists, celebrities (who them together. The mix became a staple are like perennial tourists, their home on Garrett’s menu and, needless to say, state being On Television); but mostly is still their best-seller. What people first regular tourists, as in, other fat people started calling the Downtown mix is now from other towns. Tourists will come in ubiquitously known as the Chicago mix. from Midwestern suburbia, some town where every Starbucks has a drive-through Chicago is not only home to the mix, but lane and it’s not scary to be a Republican to the very commercialization of popcorn in public, and, having been told by other itself. Popcorn was part of the Aztec diet tourists that they have to go to Garrett (and decor scheme), making it at least if they’re going to Chicago (or risk not 7,000 years old. (‘Years Old’ is a metaphor having properly consumed the tour, thus for obvious reasons, e.g. popcorn is not voiding their experience in the records of alive, but since alleged origins are in many those keeping track online), will wait in ways relevant to the parameters of property line for sometimes actual full blown hours. ownership, we will introduce the concept I lived in Chicago for three years before I here, with the Aztecs, because why not.) ever heard of Garrett’s, and two more years Chicagoan Charles C. Cretors invented passed before I ever tried their corn. But and patented the first commercial popcorn you can bet your Amazon Prime mem- machine in 1893, and in 1896 a German bership that when my roommate’s mom immigrant created CrackerJacks, the first gets people in Chicago fired up. Twinkies, invented by a baker in Schiller Park outside Chicago, was arguably 2013’s most highly anticipated comeback.1 Have you ever had a Chicago Style hot dog? I have been victim to shocking fits of passion (once at a cemetery) for having said It’s just a hot dog. This year, after a brutal summer of competing radio advertisements, we Chicagoans came together in arms to repeal the most evil genius dumbass law ever writ: the Chicago Beverage Tax. in 1991, CandyLand, Inc., commercial snack food, now owned and MEANWHILE, a small family- managed by Frito-Lay (acquired by owned business based in St. Paul, Chicago-based PepsiCo in 1965) since 1997. Minnesota, currently owned and operated As a metropolis, Chicago has always by Brenda Lamb, registered the trademark been a metropolis of food. From corn to CHICAGO MIX® with the federal wheat to beef to candy to moonshine, government. (This was allegedly after industrial food processing is woven into having attended a popcorn convention the historical fabric of Chicago as a city in Chicago the year prior.) Candyland’s and an economy. The invention of the CHICAGO MIX® is slightly different John Deere steel plow in 1804 and the in recipe than the mix that Garrett and completion of several canals connecting G.H. Cretors sell from Chicago. The Chicago to the East, namely the Erie in CHICAGO MIX® consists of cheese 1825, logistically secured Chicago’s future corn, caramel corn, and a third corn of as the food capital of the Corn Belt. Sarah proprietary spices. But, ironically the mix Lee, Nabisco, Quaker Oats, Keebler, itself is irrelevant to trademark law and PepsiCo, Wrigley and Kraft, to name a few, thus irrelevant to the MIX as property. are all founded and headquartered in or It is the name alone—the words alone— around Chicago. Garrett Brands recently that matter, and specifically the word acquired Frango, a chocolate brand once CHICAGO. In 2014 Candyland, Inc. sued made and distributed in Chicago’s very Garrett for trademark infringement and own Marshall Field’s Department Stores in 2016 the case settled in Candyland’s downtown (acquired by Macy’s, Inc. in favor, making Candyland the official record 2005). Lance Chody, CEO and owner of owner of the CHICAGO MIX®. As Garrett Brands in the Sun-Times: “Frango legally settled, it is the word CHICAGO, is a perfect fit for our company’s portfolio, and Chicago-ness, that cannot be used by aligning well with our strategy to preserve anyone but Candyland, Inc. to refer to any and grow iconic brands that have historic kind of popcorn arrangement, whether that franchise value with a unique and storied PAGE 4 PAGE past.” For better or worse, snack food 1. It was a simpler time... THE EGGSISTENTIALIST be Chicago Style, Chicago Mix, Windy of Candyland, has said that she chose to City Mix, Chicago Blend, Chi-Town Mix, call her mix the CHICAGO mix (over, etc. Garrett now sells their mix as the say, the St. Paul Mix) because CHICAGO GARRETT MIX®, and G.H. Cretors, had more of a cosmopolitan ring to it. which you can find at any supermarket, According to precedent established by the packages their mix as simply THE MIX™. Supreme Court, the word CHICAGO, ‘because of ’ CandyLand’s use of it in its Obviously CandyLand does not own the trademark, has come to signal a certain mix itself, they do not own all caramel level of quality of product. It is ‘because corn and all cheese corn mixed together of ’ Brenda Lamb’s act of registration on this planet. And that’s all the mix and continual use of the mark that really is, we’re talking about a pretty basic CHICAGO, as a tabula rasa of a symbol, physical ontology here. Any idiot can never before officially claimed, has come to make the mix. As an American, it is your represent a certain kind of quality. God given right to eat flavored popcorn and for that corn to go into your mouth And, according to the legal mechanisms hole and into your gut in any order or of copyright and trademark law, this is fashion that you damn well please.