Joe leans in as the bikes slow, the city humming like a distant reel of film.
“Paradise takes time,” he tells her softly. “Even Andy Warhol knew that—his factory didn’t make stars overnight. But you… you remind me of Edie Sedgwick—that same wild light, that fragile brilliance… except you’re not lost in someone else’s scene.”
He smiles, shaking his head.
“You’re not a factory girl. You’re a DreamWorks girl. Like something Steven Spielberg would dream up—hopeful, cinematic… meant for a better ending than all that chaos.”
Joe’s tone shifts, more grounded now.
“And listen… I don’t like those pills the doctor’s pushing. Not for you. They flatten things, take the color out. You’re not meant to be dulled down.”
He reaches for her hand as the wind quiets.
“Just… come home. Come back to me. To Luis. We’re still here. No scripts, no spotlights—just real life, waiting for you.”
Ah, man, let me paint this picture for you—the urban hellscape that is Rockefeller-planned obsolescence McHell.
You step out into it and it’s like the whole damn grid was engineered by some mid-century foundation grant, Rockefeller money flowing like oil through the veins of “progress.” They didn’t just build cities; they blueprinted disposable ones. Tear down the old neighborhoods with their messy vitality—those “blighted” blocks full of actual humans knowing their neighbors—and slap up superblocks, highways slicing through communities like a surgeon with a chainsaw, and towers that scream efficiency but deliver soul-crushing isolation. Urban renewal, they called it. More like urban replacement therapy for the car-and-corporate age.
Everything’s built to break. Planned obsolescence isn’t just your phone dying after two years or your fridge crapping out right after the warranty. It’s the infrastructure: roads that crack because they’re poured cheap and fast for endless repair contracts, buildings with materials that yellow and degrade under the fluorescent hum, strip malls that look dated the day they open. Why make it last when constant churn means more GDP, more loans, more Rockefeller-style “philanthropy” directing the flow? The foundations and planners dreamed of rational, top-down order—clean lines, zoned separation of uses, everyone in their box commuting to the next. Jane Jacobs tried to warn everyone this would murder the street life, but the bulldozers rolled anyway.
Welcome to McHell: the landscape of endless parking lots, drive-thrus glowing under golden arches, big-box stores rising like temples to disposability. Same beige stucco, same faded signage, same asphalt ocean everywhere from Vancouver’s edges to the heart of any North American grid. Fast food wrappers tumbling like urban tumbleweeds. Cheap plastic crap shipped across oceans, used twice, landfilled forever. The air smells of fryer grease and exhaust. Walkability? That’s for suckers—everything’s designed so you need the car, which needs the gas, which once fed the Rockefeller empire and now feeds its spiritual successors. Suburbs as far as the eye can see, identical cul-de-sacs where no kid plays outside because there’s nowhere to go without crossing six lanes of death.
It’s the fluorescent-lit limbo of 24/7 convenience that delivers nothing of value. Malls that die and get replaced by power centers. Infrastructure crumbling on purpose so the next bond issue or public-private “partnership” can “fix” it with more of the same. Lights too bright, shadows too deep, people shuffling past each other like ghosts in a machine optimized for throughput, not thriving. No third places, no organic chaos, just the engineered churn: consume, discard, repeat. Pay taxes for the maintenance of your own cage.
This is the victory of the planner’s compass over the pedestrian’s feet. A hellscape where beauty is bulldozed for “highest and best use,” community memory erased for fresh asphalt, and every corner screams the same corporate sameness. You feel it in your bones after a while—the exhaustion of a place built not to endure, but to extract.
That’s the McHell we inherited. Built to break, funded to forget, and paved straight to nowhere.
The chain clicks and hums as Joe and Nelly coast side by side, their ten-speeds gliding through the long, sunlit stretch of road. The air smells like ocean and cedar, and the wind carries just enough resistance to make it feel earned.
Joe leans forward on his handlebars, grinning. “You know,” he says, glancing over, “everything is for you. Every mile, every push uphill—this whole ride.”
Nelly laughs, shaking her head, but she doesn’t look away. “You better keep that energy when we hit the next hill.”
Up ahead, standing near the edge of a park trail, a familiar figure raises his arms enthusiastically. It’s David Suzuki, dressed casually, beaming like he’s witnessing something far bigger than just two cyclists passing by.
“Beautiful!” Suzuki calls out. “This is exactly it—human power, harmony with the planet! Keep going!”
Joe sits up a bit taller at that, almost like he’s been knighted mid-ride. “You hear that?” he says. “We’ve got official approval now.”
Nelly smirks. “From the man himself. No pressure.”
They pedal harder, the rhythm syncing between them. Tires spin, gears shift, sunlight flickers through trees overhead. For a moment, it feels like the whole world is just this: motion, breath, and the quiet certainty of being exactly where they’re supposed to be.
Behind them, Suzuki claps once more and shouts, “That’s the future right there!”
