STOP being so pretentious and cute by using what you think is “sophisticated” and high-class spelling. (It’s what we Southerners call “putting on airs.”) When I see establishments that use the above forms of spelling, I think the following:
Over-priced merchandise and/or food.
Snooty, smug salespeople and/or wait-staff.
In Central Florida are The Shoppes of Sanford and Pointe*Orlando (Don’t ask me why the * is in there; that’s how the skunk-felchers spell it.) Coming to the Disneyland area is the Anaheim Pointe (probably home to The Shoppes of Anaheim, for all I know). Besides being so hoity-toity and expensive and pretentious, it’ll jam up traffic so badly, it’ll take an hour just to drive three blocks on Katella.
Hey, if you have decent merchandise, I’ll shop (NOT “shoppe”) there, but it won’t be because of the way you spell your name.
Although Grille, Centre and Theatre are legit in some parts of the planet, gotta agree it’s pretentious/pseudo-class in “un-natural environments” (such as central Florida). And yes, it usually has the opposite effect on me - I avoid them, because it’s obviously TACKY, TACKY, TACKY.
For some reason that “shoppe” one really bugs me more than the others. It’s just so unnecessary.
In the UK, I’ve often heard these “olde worlde” establishments mockingly called “old-ie world-ie”.
Sort of highlights the pretentiousness.
The word “twee” also works.
And don’t even get me started on psedo-foreign names:
Le Restaurant
ACK!
Reminds me of a recent incident at a restaurant. Everything was “Ye Olde” this and “Ye olde” that.Before we got our food my friend heard a dog(!) barking in the back room. He said to the hostess, “Methinks I’ll call ye olde health inspector.”
In downtown St. Paul, there is a building called Lawson.Commons. The dot appears in the lighted signage on the roof of the building, as well as everywhere else there needs to be a sign. For a while, local wags were calling it “Lawson dot Commons.” How quaint.
I am also from Orlando. You forget that the O-rena is now the TD Waterhouse Centre. IIRC, it’s named after a Canadian company, so that could be their excuse. Either way, we write center here in America.
I agree with the Pointe*Orlando deal. To mock it, my friends called it Point-E-Star-Orlando.
I don’t know if this is standard but many people I know use theater to refer to the building and theatre to refer to the dicipline, a useful distinction to make.
Well, “grille” is an independent word, separate from “grill”. And theatre and centre have the excuse of being British, Canadian, Australian, and in fact everyone who speaks English except for the yanks.
But as for the rest…
“On this one block there are five places you can buy croissants. There’s one store called ‘Bonjour Croissant.’ It makes me want to go to Paris and open up a store called ‘Hello Toast.’”
-Fran Lebowitz
I’ll tell you what I hate: all these “old(e) world(e) style” shopping districts that were built in the early 80’s but designed to look like they date from the 1770’s. Everything’s Ye Olde Shoppe and the like.
As far as my (admittedly limited) experiences have taught me, this is accurate. “Theatre” also refers to the performances, and “theatre troupe” is perfectly acceptable to describe the cast/crew, but only as long as the show is being performed outdoors.
Yes, but we DO have to suffer their other pretention of Tall, Grande and [whatever they call the Large] instead of the straighforward Small, Medium, Large.
(Well, I guess that’s only if you actually GO there, which I try not to, if there’s a local alternative.)
There’s a place in my old hometown that sort of ticks me off whenever I drive by. It’s an independent video store, which is really cool, as I don’t think there are enough of those left anymore, but…
Evidently it was originally owned by someone named Kim, who cleverly called it Kim’s Korner Video. All right, that’s stupid enough, especially since it is out on a rural road, absolutely nowhere near a “korner”. Hell, it isn’t even on the “korner” of the little building it’s in. It’s wedged between a beauty shop and something else.
Well, as is the fate of independents in a Blockbuster world, Kim obviously couldn’t make it work, but was able to find someone to buy the business. Someone named Sue. Now I don’t know if Sue is just really stupid, or if she was trying to save on the cost of changing the sign, but now the locals can rent at Sue’s Korner Video. Come on, now. At this point, that is just poor spelling, not to mention simply inaccurate.
What Jab1? you don’t like the sound of “Seminole Towne Center” in crappy Sanford? Well twiddly dee, maybe the lil’ tourists will actually venture towards Sanford if they spell it that way. Yeah, right! Basically I think it is to get the Winter Park, and fellow Lake Mary-ians to that damn mall. took them 3 years too!
