I feel your pain. I’m not a teacher but yeah I’d heard about this. I bet the moaning kids also think they could do a better job than their teacher…
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I hate to out myself as a potential tech/world illiterate person, but the same has happened to me three times. I work late and frequently don’t have the energy to cook, so ordering delivery is a little too seductive for me many days.
The first mishap was a door dash storefront called Bird Dawgs, which had mostly chicken sandwiches, and arrived in a Buffalo Wild Wings bag, which was embarrassing, even to myself and my roommates. The second was from a places called Wow Bao that ended up coming from a Fridays kitchen. The third and most recent was AGAIN Buffalo Wild Wings posing as Wild Burger, much more upsetting the second time.
I have been somewhat aware of the concept of a commissary kitchen for a while, where a restaurant or food store would have baked goods made before being brought there, but ghost kitchens are new to me. I had a vague conspiracy with myself about Wow Bao and several other Asian cuisine “stores” that all shared the same address, which I never bothered to even examine (as a restaurant that I drove past weekly). Maybe it’s my own desire for small mysteries in my life, but I was enthralled by the idea of 10 bad-ass line cooks in an unmarked kitchen behind a strip mall just busting out 5 different menus of food constantly. Unfortunately the real answer was much more boring.
Also
This dude rules
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another lovely episode as always
glad i got the chance to listen to it this morning
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Ha I’ve seen Wow Bao on my apps a few times and always been intrigued so thanks for the heads up. The same address thing pops up for me a lot because there’s one of those places in my neighborhood whose name is technically like Food Market or something, but they have like 12 different things on uber eats. They always pop up because they have a BOGO deal but it’s always for the same thing. You’ll look at a Chinese or Greek restaurant with a BOGO ad and for both of them the deal is for a philly cheesesteak. Very strange.
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Ghost kitchens are ultra meta on brazillian’s food delivering app. They put up like 3 different stores on the app, with different prices and it’s the same food made in the same place. Sometimes it’s just a shed with lots of people cooking with little sanitation.
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I was gonna call out that GRIDE tag! He’s everywhere!
But it turns out he just passed away apparently. This is his memorial piece in Tacoma.
I don’t want to out myself as a narc by being somewhat against graffiti, but I guess it has its place and time. I like the artistic block letter style, places like highways and trains, all good! I don’t think the single color “tag” in your photo is doing any favors to Pho Shizzle or their neighborhood, though.
It is kind of cool to have a somewhat mythical figure like GRIDE where you see his name in unexpected places, and think , he was here!
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My favorite ghost kitchen is Pasqually’s Pizza, which is just Chuck E. Cheese pizza, named after their animatronic bird (this video is a little YouTubey, but it’s pretty in-depth on the subject)
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i do love stuff like this and the hidden human world behind it. the really big tags impress me simply on a logistical level, but honestly i think the shitty little one-colour ‘i was here I exist’ tags are just as neat as long as they aren’t like racist or something. I think they exist as kind of a low-key resistance to capitalist appropriation of aesthetics, and as a person in a city they remind me that the people on the street make these places what they are. as someone with a lot of anxiety around being Seen i dabble a little bit as an exercise in expressing myself in a way i can’t conceal or rescind and it’s actually really liberating/affirming/whatever
pretty sure I’ve seen a gride or two around here, rip dude
down the street from me at the corner of dupont and Cream Top there’s a building with the words ‘PLEASE DO NOT TAG: MURAL INCOMING’ and I’m like, c’mon buddy, that’s like writing ‘Do Not Kick’ on a rubber ball
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I used to live by a restaurant called Pho King and it was real hard inviting coworkers to go eat there. Wish I still had pics.
don’t worry! there’s a bunch of them (presumably unaffiliated).
It’s one of those things that’s clever the first time you hear it until it basically becomes the only name anyone can think of for their business.
that said, I think this phenomenon has been very instrumental in teaching americans how to pronounce pho!
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something subconscious overwrote my memory and defined Pasqually as the animatronic bird but by god I will never make that mistake again after this
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It’s remarkable that none of those are even the one that was near me, you know it’s a GTA style pun if it’s THAT bottom of the barrel.
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I want you to know that I went back and forth between this guy’s “kaboom!” and “sploosh…” quite a bit for my editor’s wahoo.
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