RV Anti-Culture: Wal Mart's Utopia

-by Macdonald Stainsby

When you are traveling in North America by your thumb, the vehicles that pass the most and give rides the least are RV's. You learn quickly to really dislike them-seeing them as little bubbles of middle class suburbia rolling around on wheels, looking for the next strip mall to park for awhile. That's my stated bias: I hate "Campers". I also hate Wal Mart- and for all the right reasons. I hate their crappy labor policies, I hate where they purchase their oh-so-cheap products, and I hate the navy blue overall wearing, squeaky and annoying "greeter" who only "greets" me when I dress like I'm poor and dare enter the store. I despise that Wal Mart hires an inordinate amount of "illegal" (i.e.: undocumented) workers to keep profits up and labor costs minimal. I loathe their scare tactics and blackmail of their employees, particularly when it comes to unionizing.

Recently, the first ever North American Wal Mart to unionize was shut down here in Quebec, rather than be allowed to run and therefore set a precedent of workers rights. It is oh, so telling that this company-the most profitable in the world-would rather shut down than allow themselves to be "infected" with the virus of worker's dignity.

They don't only close Wal Mart's to decimate living standards, but they open them to desecrate human historical achievement as well. Have a gander at Teotihuacán in Mexico. This treasure of human history is now being wrapped up and decimated by a local Wal Mart store, adjoining the sites of the Pyramids and abandoned towns. Nothing is sacred: Wal Mart will attempt to set up and open shop right next to the Sun and Moon pyramids and sell Caterpillar products that help enrich a company that bulldozes Palestinian homes and olive orchards. They will sell Nike, but of course, and Coca-Cola: only but two of the many products supplied (cheaply!) by Wal Mart, despite what they do in Colombia, Nepal or Indonesia. Kimberley-Clark tissue products will be available: the number one company that pulps old-growth trees and forests, such as the Boreal forests that are essential to the traditions and practices of Indians in the territories known as Saskatchewan and Manitoba. These and more.

Wal Mart is on the PR offensive these days. They have been given a major amount of bad press for closing their unionized outlet before even negotiating a contract. The bad press comes on the heels of so many other violations of basic ethics that they are starting to catch up and make that bouncing, smiling little yellow happy face not the only veneer that people see from Wal Mart. They have even retaliated and taken out an ad, talking of how their workers are the backbone of the company. But there is something that other people don't see too often, and I would like to try and describe it to you.

Think of a picturesque small city somewhere so gorgeous you have to visit. Then a few years ago, a Wal Mart came along and planted itself right smack in the middle of the downtown core-and adopted a policy that has been adopted by nearly all Wal Marts now. The parking lot is deliberately used to entice RV culture. I know, that's a pretty tricky sentence-"culture" and "recreational vehicles" are not normally associated. But do you remember that book "No logo", by Naomi Klein? Remember how some people thought it Orwellian nonsense to describe where corporate society "produced" culture for us to "consume", instead of the same ol' boring way of allowing culture to develop naturally?

Well, though visions of a Disneyworld world were more than disturbing enough, in the last few years Wal Mart has created what I would have to call the anti-culture. Today, as the "Baby boom generation" retires, many of these retired people with their little poodles move into RV's, and Cuddles sits on the dashboard. Then, they live out of their giant houses on wheels. Sociologists have observed the difference between tourism and travel for years. These people become permanent tourists: unable to even comprehend the places they drive through, these savants of Oh Henry bars and microwaves, satellite dishes and propane power spend their days driving badly on highway after highway, making an absolute mockery of the beauty of life on the road. So Wal Mart saw a target market to be fired upon.

It was made widely known by Wal Mart that they would never interrupt people trying to sleep away the night in their parking lots. This, once it caught on, led to massive sprawls of these parking lots: they would cover as much territory as they could legitimately purchase or lease. Then, as far as the eye could see, Campers, RV's, Trailers, all manner of big, clumsy housing on wheels sprouts up. But it gets better. Wal Mart not only leaves these spaces for their RV customers, they also deliver to your camper door. You can (if you are an RV lifer) go into a Wal Mart in Kentucky and tell them you expect to park at the Wal Mart in Yellowknife in a month-can you please deliver my order there? Each Wal Mart now has a couple of restaurants, most likely a McDonald's-- and Ricky's have made an effort to build franchises next to Wal Mart parking lots the continent over.

Soon, small towns with big Wal Mart's are overrun with RV lifers. The city of Whitehorse had to pass a bylaw preventing the use of more than half of the Wal Mart lot for RV's. The entire downtown is covered with pictures of RV's with a line through it. Crime has skyrocketed, the city is congested with grotesque vehicular monstrosities and locals are organizing to stand up to Wal Mart even further.

This whole new anti-culture has even been immortalized in a documentary called "This is Nowhere"1, which depicts RV tourists constant state of consumerism-as they mark on the map Wal Mart after Wal Mart, making for easy traveling and shopping, without all that nature and forest getting in the way.

Two years ago, while hitchhiking through Northern BC, I was given a job working at a lodge, again, in the middle of nowhere. I served many a meal to these RV lifers. I watched them pull out the maps and ask their spouses where the next Wal Mart was. I heard one couple decide to go to Yellowknife because of their Wal Mart. Only problem is that Yellowknife was at least 14 hours drive from where we were. But Wal Mart waits for no one, even "nowhere", apparently.

The proof that sociologists were right when they coined the difference between a traveler and a tourist was never better illustrated than by the fact I have been hitching for 12 years and have been given easily thousands of rides. There was only once I recall a large RV stopping to pick me up-and that was a couple from Madrid, who rented the RV and wanted to get directions to real places to go from hitchhikers. Generally, the RV is an apartment, a bubble, a place where reality doesn't penetrate. The RV is a protective coating, a way to avoid life rather than to embrace it; a way to take your nothing somewhere, and then declare "This is nowhere!" People on the side of the road, out to meet people, learn stories, experience the land-this is anathema to an RV. It isn't a target market worth much to a Wal Mart, either.

Of all the reasons to hate Wal Mart-and there are many-I would place RV anti-culture at the very top, if only for personal reasons. There is something so upsetting about this debasement of humanity. Let us just hope that the Wal Mart in Teotihuacán can be shut down-or at the very least, that it never has a parking lot. Meanwhile, the odd spectacle of the labor movement in Quebec supporting the denfense of opening a Wal Mart rather than close it deserves our support. However, let us take everything we hate about the corporate world, stuff it all into an RV and drive it to nowhere. And please, if you pass me on the way? Give me a lift.