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Some defenders of New York culture might see the addition of a Red Lobster to the Great White Way as another example of the corporatization of Times Square; the Disneyfication; the nadir. That argument, though, raises the question of what is worse: the popcorn shrimp of today, or the sex trade of yesterday?

Besides, people need work – as evidenced by the thousands of job inquiries that the restaurant received in the months before it added that gaudy red bauble to the Times Square necklace. Red Lobster officials, whose eager-to-please smiles made them easy to pick out at yesterday’s grand opening, estimated that about 10,000 people had asked about jobs, and about 5,000 had gone through a rigorous interview process.