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What Is The 'Breezewood, Pennsylvania' Image? The Americana Meme Explained
In south-central Pennsylvania, there is a town where I-70 converges with the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and traffic slows to a crawl, leaving travelers lots of time to look at the many fine establishments that cropped up around this infamous chokepoint. The place is Breezewood, Pennsylvania, which has long been memed as the most middle-American town in the country.
What Is The "Breezewood, Pennsylvania" Meme?
In 2008, photographer Edward Burtynsky photographed Exit 161 on I-70 in the town of Breezewood, Pennsylvania. Breezewood is known as a "notorious chokepoint" due to it being the only way one can get from I-70 and onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which is a common route for anyone driving west from, say Washington or Baltimore.
The picture showcases how seemingly every chain establishment in the country grabbed some real estate around the exit, as the image contains signs for McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Perkins, Exxon and Sunoco, to name a few. As such, it has a distinctly "Americana" feel, as any motorist in the country has likely come across similar masses of chain establishments while trekking around the country. The earliest known repost of the image on social media has the title "Welcome to America."
Why Is Breezewood So Dense With Fast Food And Gas Stations?
Usually, when two major highways merge, a simple ramp will allow drivers to merge with minimal slowdown. However, Breezewood is a unique, bizarre case. In 2017, the New York Times investigated the curious case of Breezewood. There, it found that "over-governance and bureaucracy" were the cause of the peculiar arrangement of Breezewood.
The Federal Highway Administration also explained how Breezewood came to be in a nitty-gritty detail of traffic history. In essence, in the mid-20th century, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission was unwilling to use its own funds to build an interchange between I-70 and the Turnpike, fearing revenue decreases when the parallel I-80 was completed.
Thus, motorists making the trip west are more or less forced to crawl through a small town in the middle of nowhere, and it doesn't look like they will be saved from Breezewood any time soon. Local businesses have lobbied to keep the roads just as they are, and any proposal to add a Breezewood-skipping route would need to be approved by the county, which it is not interested in providing.
How Has The Breezewood Image Been Memed?
The picture initially gained infamy as a sort of "Place, America" image, as users on social media hubs discussed how eerily similar it felt to multiple places across the land.
Once the image had saturated social media with enough viral posts, the parodies started, often incorporating it into absurd memes. These will often involve commentary on American capitalism or memers will go the pop culture route, photoshopping popular characters into Breezewood.
A similar image of a Taco Bell in South Dakota developed similarly, as users dubbed it the JRPG Taco Bell and made memes about it with video game characters.
For the full history of Breezewood, Pennsylvania memes, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.