A really bad idea, I think. I hope.
Okay, so I was walking around downtown in this silly little beach town, and what should I find but a new attempt to sell shit to yuppies: Cereality Bar and Cafe. Yes, that's right folks, it's a cereal bar. This seems like a real dog of an idea to me. Who wants to go out and spend more money on the one thing that's super-easy to have on hand at home? If people start going out for their morning cereal fix ... I don't know, I probably would ask someone to shoot me in the head. Luckily for my head's medium-term survival prospects, I think this is an extremely unlikely development. If I had lots of extra money, I would find out if they were publicly held, short-sell some stock, and maybe even place a side bet on the bankruptcy date. (No lie. I made a fair amount of capital gains when PG&E and Southern Cal. Edison went bankrupt. I said to myself: it doesn't take a very advanced level of dialectical understanding to see that these motherfuckers are going to get bailed out. I invested $1500 or so and sold the stock a year later for around $3000.)
Okay, perusing their website, I see that the other locations are either 1) on a college campus or 2) combined with a Cold Stone Creamery. Perhaps this is not such a bad business model. I might spend four bucks for cereal on campus, because what I can buy on campus is so often unhealthy and expensive. And combining it with a Cold Stone might save ... overhead, or whatever, combining space, storage, similar ingredients, etc. The stand-alone downtown model I just don't see.
In other downtown news, the Salvation Army had two very nice tops for Italian stovetop espresso makers, but no bottoms. What good is a top without a bottom, I ask you? Am I supposed to heat the water up using my prodigious supply of hot air and force it through the mesh with the power of positive thinking? This is something I would like to own, though quite frankly I was just looking for a simple saucepan or two and a teakettle. I burnt my saucepan a couple of months ago after leaving water boiling for like three hours (luckily failing to burn down the house), and since then the only way I can really boil water is in the microwave. The Salvation Armies of my youth, or frankly of my mid-twenties, always had a few decent teakettles on hand, but this one seemed very picked-over. They really take the concept of "bric-a-brac" to its logical extreme.
I did, however, manage to find a pair of good-fitting jeans, thereby doubling my supply of good-fitting jeans. My top-secret plan to look better than someone who just walked out of the bargain bin at the big and tall men's store is underway....
Okay, perusing their website, I see that the other locations are either 1) on a college campus or 2) combined with a Cold Stone Creamery. Perhaps this is not such a bad business model. I might spend four bucks for cereal on campus, because what I can buy on campus is so often unhealthy and expensive. And combining it with a Cold Stone might save ... overhead, or whatever, combining space, storage, similar ingredients, etc. The stand-alone downtown model I just don't see.
In other downtown news, the Salvation Army had two very nice tops for Italian stovetop espresso makers, but no bottoms. What good is a top without a bottom, I ask you? Am I supposed to heat the water up using my prodigious supply of hot air and force it through the mesh with the power of positive thinking? This is something I would like to own, though quite frankly I was just looking for a simple saucepan or two and a teakettle. I burnt my saucepan a couple of months ago after leaving water boiling for like three hours (luckily failing to burn down the house), and since then the only way I can really boil water is in the microwave. The Salvation Armies of my youth, or frankly of my mid-twenties, always had a few decent teakettles on hand, but this one seemed very picked-over. They really take the concept of "bric-a-brac" to its logical extreme.
I did, however, manage to find a pair of good-fitting jeans, thereby doubling my supply of good-fitting jeans. My top-secret plan to look better than someone who just walked out of the bargain bin at the big and tall men's store is underway....