Foodtopia – Albuquerque, New Mexico
When a restaurant with the curious name “Foodtopia” surfaced in 2022, long-suffering readers of Gil’s Thrilling… probably realized an etymology lesson would soon be in order. If the suffix “topia” intrigued you as much as it did your grandiloquent blogger, hang on. First, a review of what we all know. Utopia is “a seemingly perfect society, one without flaws, where everyone is content and conflict and strife are unknown.” One example of a Utopian society is the movie Zootopia in which animals live in harmony and lions sing kumbaya with antelope. More common than movies about Utopian societies are movies and literature about dystopia, “societies that are either extremely chaotic or extremely authoritative, a hellish place where most people suffer.” No, it’s not your place of employment, but rather something like Planet of the Apes or George Orwell’s 1984. The common element in these two opposite societal types is the suffix “topia,” a Greek word meaning “a place with specified characteristics.” An imaginary society with both good (Utopian) and bad (Dystopian) features might be called a “mixtopia.” Some posit an imaginary place where everything (especially the government) is as bad as it can be. Fittingly, the term for this…
