That happened, so what I do is drive to the next left, where I pass under the elevated train track. (Sometimes I wonder it would take less time just to wait, but I am a man in motion, or a shark.) On my way, I see this business to my left, right next to the gas station at this intersection. It has signage for a restaurant. This is different signage from the last time I drove past it. In fact, this piece of real estate has gone through, and I am not kidding you, at least four different restaurant concepts. It served hoagies a, long, long time ago; it advertised, so I went there to use a coupon (it was an NFL Playoff weekend, I remember that), and the guy fucked up my change and so I vowed never to go back there again), it went halal, and it was Vietnamese before it became Mexican, which is its current identity.
I am 100% sure that the Mexican restaurant, and no offense to the owners of it, will fail, and this building will undergo yet another transformation. It will fail because I don't know of a worse place to have a restaurant in my hometown. We have a couple of main drags in our city, but the street this is on is not one of them. It's quiet and mainly residential when there isn't a park. It's really dark. There is no active business close by beside the gas station (even though there are active businesses up and down the street). Finally, I don't know how often cars drive down this road, and you need some foot traffic to at least let people know there is a spot here who want to feed you Mexican food.
That footprint should be a small park, or housing, or just a parking lot. Anything besides a money pit into which people chasing the American Dream throw their hard-earned savings. And yet people continue to buy the property and try to make it succeed on their terms. Well, OK -- good luck!
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