Regarding the McDonalds vs. Bookstores claim, the article itself states there are 15,000 adult bookstores. For their greater than 3-1 claim to be true there would need to be fewer than 5,000 McDonalds. Thats only 100 McDonalds per state. Outside of several states such as Alaska, Rhode Island, Wyoming, and maybe 2 others I suspect that it is safe to bet that all the others have well in excess of 100 McDonalds. I would venture to say that it is likely that the 5,000 number can be reached east of the Mississippi!
There are 30,000 McDs worldwide, can't find how many are domestic, I know when I was a flipper 15 years ago there were 10,000 domestic and 5,000 in the rest of the world. Their growth target is 100 stores a year.
According to this Reuters article, at the end of September, 2002, McDonald's had 30,783 restaurants in 121 countries. If only half of those are in the United States, that is over 15,000. Still looking for a specific US number.
McDonalds has around 30,000 restaurants as of 2004. I don't think there are 90,000 total book stores in the US. I don't think that there that many people who can read or even just look at the pictures.
Found it!