Time waits for no chain

T.G.I. Friday’s, the restaurant synonymous with forced familial fun and kitschy nonsense is going contemporary. The restaurant, which still dots the U.S. like antiques nailed to a wall, is ditching its explosion-in-a-flea-market decor for the subdued whites, beiges and marbles of middle-class refinement, hoping to appeal to a younger generation by looking like absolutely everything else a younger generation apparently likes.

The decluttering of Friday’s walls is an admission of sorts that the era of the wild n’ wacky family-friendly biz-cas restaurant is over. Friday’s, which for all intents and purposes created the genre, was one of its last holdouts. Nearly all of its American competitors went for white walls in the last decade, while Canadian chains went the same route years ago. Except for maybe Montana’s, which feels like a hunting lodge designed by a team of clowns, chain restaurants have become paragons of bland simplicity.

If turning a paler shade of anodyne is just the way of our world these days, T.G.I. Friday’s story is a particular lesson in what exactly time ravages. Because as safe as it is now, there was a time when Friday’s was – well, if not downright counter-cultural, at least a sign of how differently the youth of its day intended on living.

Friday’s invented the concept of a singles bar in the ’60s. Its wild decor was meant to create an atmosphere somewhere between a living room cocktail party and an Old Victorian style hotel bar. Freed by birth control, and now willing and able to prowl, the young and unattached would flock to it to mix and mingle. Friday’s was even a favourite hangout of rock stars and pro athletes, designed to be a meat market with finger foods.

What changed? Its patrons grew up. As they met people and settled down, they still wanted to go to their favourite spot – so the spot moulded itself to them. A wild and wooly casual-sex-springboard became a place to explain to your kids what all the signs on the walls meant. Fun became lite beer and meat with cheese on it. Kitsch became a break from the same old leftovers at home.

Now even that is too much. Now the walls need to be as clean and white as the phones everyone is staring at. And so a place that began as a party where you might get laid becomes just another food stop in a power centre, where you look at the menu only out of show, and you look at the wait staff only out of memory.

Time comes for us all. Even the crap on the walls.