Since being a student at
Southwestern University and becoming a semi-permanent resident of Georgetown, Texas,
I have come to realize that the large majority of fast food restaurants around
the area serve quite a lot of chicken. Before, as a Californian native and
resident, I have never seen so much chicken available to us, human consumers;
yet, of course, this could just be because I have never come to recognize the
abundance of chicken in fast food establishments until now. However, I still
feel like hearty meals of chicken are much more greatly sought after out here
in Texas than my home of California. I mean, seriously, there are five fried
chicken fast food restaurants in the relatively small Georgetown area that sell
almost solely chicken meals to consumers: two Golden Fried Chicken restaurants,
a Bush’s Fried Chicken restaurant, a Wingstop, and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Let
alone the other 30-something fast food restaurants that also sell some amount chicken
in their menus within this area. Back in my hometown of Garden Grove, we only
had Kentucky Fried Chicken to supply for this obvious human desire for glorious
chicken meat, yet that one main distributor of chicken seemed to be enough for
our town. I believe that southern culture has become accustom to love the
eating all kinds of chicken, in which the city of Georgetown, and many other
southern cities, are attributed with. Therefore, the fast food restaurants of
the area hold true to this cultural characteristic and help provide for the
high demand that comes with this southern obsession for eating chickens. For within
our capitalistic society the following is true: the higher public demand for a
product, the greater availability of that product.
In this observation and belief is
where I was inspired to make this map of the majority of fast food restaurants who
server chicken in the city of Georgetown that I, and many other students of SU,
are bound to find or have found ourselves at frequently to feast. This map has
geocoded the addresses of these restaurants, labeling them throughout this map
of Georgetown with little chicken heads. As you can see from the legend: the
largest heads represent those fast food restaurants that sell almost solely
chicken (Golden Fried Chicken, KFC, etc.), the middle sized chicken head represents
those restaurants whose menus sell a majority of chicken entrées compared to
other options (McDonalds, Jack in the Box, etc.), and the smallest chicken head
show those restaurants that sell a minority of chicken entrées from their menus
(Dairy Queen, Schlotzky’s, etc.). I had received this fast food restaurant
information from the Yellow Pages website, and the menu information came from
the restaurant’s websites. This map gives a good representation of the
magnitude of chicken being sold and consumed constantly in the city of
Georgetown. My hopes for this map are to raise human awareness of this
over-consumption of these plump, flightless birds; and, with that, help people
to realize the variety of negative effects that this intensive demand and
over-consumption has on the chickens, human beings, and the entire world. I
love eating chicken just as much as the next person, however I have always been
one to be wary of glutinous indulgence; as such I try to follow an ethic of moderation
and I wholeheartedly recommend this lifestyle choice to everyone who views my
map.
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