Nit pick, do you have your date wrong? There's a 7-11 in Seattle that's been a Kwik-E Mart for several weeks now. It was prior to the July 4 holiday in the states.

I've had the unfortunate experience of going to see it. It's depressing [7-eleven in general, I mean] and not very well done in the eyes of a non-fan like me. However, the place was packed with fans excitedly coming to check it out.

There's a particular shade of orange that I'm especially fond of, because any London taxi that is for hire has a sign on its roof that lights up in that shade and therefore means "soon I'll be safe and warm and on my way home". I often wonder whether it's a coincidence that the same shade of orange is passably reminiscent of a campfire. Possibly the guys at Manganese Bronze (the company that makes London's black cabs) thought it through. Possibly they just got lucky.

So you think you have a problem with Homer Simpson.

Take a look at this Daily Mail photo – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=468796&in_page_id=1770 – and then tell me you still have a problem.

The good news is that this particular Homer Simpson will be gone in two weeks if it rains. Let's pray for rain.

Graham Hill

i personally love the idea. "the sev" (as i've heard it called) always seemed like it had to be fictional. so why not temporarily make it so? it's a place that has wieners rotating on skewers in a heated glass case for god's sake…how real could that be? the one in my neighbourhood is next door to a triple X video store and a pawn shop…great set dec work.

I had the exact same feeling about 7-Eleven in a very similar experience in Boston. My assistant booked the wrong hotel in Boston and I was in a bad part of town. 7-Eleven was my only safe haven for a three block walk around (I was surprised even in a city like Boston I could find a holed out downtown having mastered my gutted doiwntown travel behaviour in Cincinatti when i worked for P&G it had similar feel).

Long story short, I agree that 7-Eleven is a vacuous wasteland, a touchstone fo US urban culture and something I'm sure the Parisians and to a lesser extent the Brits , would turn their backs on.

Strangely though, I love the fact that no matter what the time, no matter what the place, there are important signs of life in 7-Eleven – the inner city community centre. Whoever works the graveyard shift in one of these neon retail temples should not only get hazard pay, health benefits (i.e. food that is not made available to customers) but also a key to the city for keeping a pulse of life on at night.