What It Takes To Get Rid Of A McDonald's

Here's a question I've asked dozens of passengers in my cab over the years, and I'll ask it to you now: have you ever -- in your life -- noticed a McDonald's that, once it was there, ceased to be there? Think about this for a minute... I'm talking about every town or city you've ever lived in, every town or city you've ever known, every highway you've ever driven on that had a rest stop, every mall you've ever shopped in: have you ever known of a McDonald's that went away?

I'll bet you can't name even one.

I say this because no one in my cab has ever been able to think of one.  Well, actually there was one passenger who could.  He said there was a mass shooting in a McDonald's in San Diego, California, in 1984 in which twenty-one people were killed, and in the aftermath the McDonald's Corporation decided to raze the building and donate the land to the city rather than reopen it.  However, a new McDonald's was eventually built just a few blocks away.  So it's debatable as to whether or not this counts.

Wondering why this was so, I learned through conversations with passengers and with a bit of research on the net that in the great majority of cases the McDonald's Corporation owns the land upon which the restaurants are constructed.  A realtor in my cab recently told me, in fact, that people are mistaken if they think McDonald's is in the hamburger business.  Actually, he said, they're in the real estate business.  The value of their real estate holdings, including the land itself and the buildings, is more than 28 billion dollars.

So imagine my surprise when I drove up 10th Avenue in Manhattan a few weeks ago and noticed that a fence had been constructed around a McDonald's at 34th Street and it was shuttered up.  This was especially interesting to me because this very same McDonald's was, in fact, demolished about twenty years ago and I remember thinking at the time that it was the only one I knew of that had ever gone away. Especially strange, I thought, because it was one of the very few restaurants in Manhattan that had its own parking lot.  You could actually park your car and go into the place to eat, unheard of in the real estate paradise known as Manhattan.  And now it was gone?

No!  What happened was that, Hydra-like, it came back!  A new, bigger, two-story McDonald's arose in its place and was super-sizing the fries, sodas, and shakes all over again.  What, I had to wonder, could it possibly take to kill off one of these joints?

The answer to that question requires a closer look at what's been happening in the section of Manhattan that is bounded from north to south by 34th Street and 30th Street and from east to west by 10th and 12th Avenues.  It has its own new name: "Hudson Yards".  "Hudson" because the Hudson River is right there next to 12th Avenue and "Yards" because the construction that's underway there extends over the West Side Rail Yard, where trains headed for Pennsylvania Station come, go, and hang out.  It's a massive real estate development which when completed is expected to consist of sixteen skyscrapers with more than 12 million square feet of office, residential, and retail space.  An extension of the Number 7 subway line -- a massive construction project in itself -- was recently completed and opened for business with a station on 34th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues, the first new subway station to open in New York City in twenty years.

It's a big deal.

So why did the McDonald's go out?  Well, it was due to the value of its land, of course.  We all know about "location, location, location" and this is a location wet dream.  It's about an acre of the most prime real estate imaginable, literally adjacent to the new subway station.  Who was the genius who years ago decided to acquire a plot big enough for a parking lot?  Incredible.

I had to wonder what the price could have been for the McDonald's Corporation to sell out.  Happily, I was able to extract this information from two recent passengers in my cab.  One was a real estate lawyer and the other an executive of the development company which bought the land. (It's amazing to me how, when I decide that I want certain information, somehow a passenger shows up in my cab who provides me with it.  It's been happening for years -- a phenomenon, really.)

Anyway, what do you think it was?  Before you read on, just sit back for a minute and think about it.  An acre of land in the middle of a huge, huge real estate development in a whole new section of Manhattan that has its own new subway line -- what do you think that's worth in today's dollars?

Okay, here's the answer (drum roll, please)...

One hundred and forty-four million dollars, including the air rights.

One hundred and forty-four million dollars.

So now we know.

That's what it takes to get rid of a McDonald's.

Sorry, Morgan Spurlock.

Spider Man

The guy got in at three a.m. wearing a Wo Hop t-shirt. This was interesting because who would have thought that Wo Hop, my favorite all-night Chinese joint on Mott Street, would ever be the kind of place to have a logo on an article of clothing? And what kind of person would boastfully display it on his chest, as if to say, "You want dumplings? My Wo Hop dumplings will scrub the floor with your stinkin' Golden Monkey dumplings. You got that, lucky boy?" 

So it had to be properly acknowledged. "A Wo Hop t-shirt! Wow, you don't see many of those!" I exclaimed even before he could tell me he wanted to go to Astoria.  "Yeah, man, Wo Hop rules," he replied with a happy-face smile and a certain half-here, half-there demeanor that told me immediately that he was a jolly drunk who was ready to expound. This would be a fun ride.

"I love that place," I continued. "For one thing, its location. You drive down Mott and there's that dog-leg to the left and late at night the street is as slippery as ice from a garbage truck spillover and it looks kind of creepy like a scene from a Bogart movie at four in the morning, and it's so dark and deserted, but look, wow, Wo Hop is open."

The guy was right on it. "Yeah," he joined in, "you do down those stairs and there'll be, like, five Asian guys sitting there looking at you like what the hell are you doin' here?"

"The Chinese mafia." 

"No doubt! No doubt, and they keep lookin' at you like you're a cop and before you can sit down the tea kettle arrives and in like thirty seconds you've got your wonton and a minute later there are the egg rolls and the duck sauce." 

"And the mustard sauce." 

"Yeah, and the mustard, man, and then a minute after that the dumplings show up and you're in piggy heaven, man!" 

"You like 'em fried or steamed?" 

"What?" 

"The dumplings - fried or steamed?" 

 "Oh, yeah, fried, definitely, mucho on the soy." 

"Mmm, so good!" 

Pavlov-like, I could feel my saliva glands kicking in. Damn, those dumplings are good and, as I steered the cab onto the Upper Level of the 59th Street Bridge, I started thinking maybe I should shoot down to Chinatown after I dropped the guy off. There are times when it's best to just give in to the dumpling urge. Mucho on the soy. 

"Hey," I said to my passenger as a thought came to me, "have you ever ordered anything particularly freaky at Wo Hop? Don't they have some really weird stuff on the menu?" 

"You mean like octopus or something?" 

"Yeah." 

 He thought about it for a moment and smiled. "Oh, yeah, snails." 

 

"Snails?" 

"Yeah, snails in black bean sauce." 

 I laughed. "Oh my God," I said, "you ate a snail?" 

"Shit, yeah, I ate a bunch of them," he replied, still smiling. 

"Ewww, I don't think I could eat that," I said. "Isn't a snail an insect?" 

"No, no, a snail's like a mollusk or something. It's got a shell, like a clam. You eat clams, don't you?" 

"Uh, yeah." 

The guy had a point. 

"How was it?" 

"Oh, it was delicious, man. You stir it up with the rice. Really good, actually." 

I had to admit that, since it wasn't an insect, I could see myself trying it someday. I draw a hard line in the sand when it comes to eating insects, though. I wouldn't get very far on The Fear Factor. 

"What was the weirdest thing you ever ate?" I inquired. It was a logical question to ask at this point in the conversation. A goofy smile came over his face. 

"I ate a tarantula once," he said. 

I was stunned for a moment as my mind's computer tried to process this information. Did he just say "tarantula"? Yes, he did. Isn't "tarantula" a huge, hairy spider? Yes, it is. There isn't some chocolate bar or energy drink called "Tarantula", is there? No, there is not. So what he's saying is that he ate - that is, he put into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed - a huge, hairy spider? Uh, yes, that's what he's saying. I looked at him again in the mirror. The goofy smile was still there. 

"You ate a tarantula!!!???" I all but screamed. "Are you serious?" 

"Uh huh," he confirmed, with a just perceptible trace of pride in his voice.

"Oh my God! How did that happen?" "I was in Thailand and these guys I was with, we went into this restaurant and it became like a dare thing. So one guy says, 'I'll eat it if you will', then another guy says, 'I'll eat it if you will', and it was like I wanted to show them that I was as crazy as they were." 

"So you ate it." 

"Yeah." 

"Did they cook it?" 

"Yeah, they fried it in some sauce." 

"Isn't a tarantula poisonous? What about the fangs?" 

"Yeah, they took that shit out before they cooked it." 

"You hope!" 

"Right!" he said with a dumbass-me laugh. "So how did it taste? Don't tell me it tasted like chicken."

"Actually, it did taste like chicken." 

"That's funny," I replied, Groucho Marx style, "cause I once ate a chicken that tasted just like a tarantula." 

The joke went whizzing by his head and on into outer space without being noticed. After couple more minutes of tarantula talk, we arrived at his apartment house on 30th Avenue. He paid me the $12.30 fare and threw in a $2.70 tip - not bad for an insect-eater - and stepped out of the cab.

"I once ate a centipede, too," he called back as he started to walk off toward his building. 

"Was that in Thailand as well?" 

"No, that was in Mexico." 

So the guy had the distinction of having eaten disgusting, multi-legged creatures on two different continents. 

He disappeared into his place and was gone and I turned the cab back toward Midtown, the urge to go to Chinatown having somehow suddenly left me. The thought came to me back on the 59th Street Bridge that had this guy told me all this and had not been just a passenger in my cab but instead was, say, a friend or a coworker, I would always think of him, before I would think of anything else he might have done in his life, as the guy who had eaten a tarantula. Let's say he had once done something great, like spending two years of his life in the Peace Corps. I would think of him as the Peace Corps volunteer who had once eaten a tarantula. Or if he had once rushed into a burning building to save someone's life, he would be the guy who had rushed into a burning building who had once eaten a tarantula. 

Sometimes it's just better not to know.

 

********

But then again sometimes it is better to know. Like knowing that when you click here you'll suddenly find yourself at Pictures From A Taxi. And no one will try to talk you into eating a bug.

Three Stars

So, did you recognize the movie star? It is... drum roll, please... Susan Sarandon. It may have been difficult to recognize her without her red hair anywhere in sight. Only about half of the dozen or so passengers in my cab whom I showed the pictures to got it right. One passenger, a dancer from Flashdancers, the strip club, didn't recognize her but did immediately comment on her cleavage, which I myself hadn't noticed up until that point. We are all experts in our own fields of endeavor. Speaking of which, here is the newest addition to the streets of New York. The Toyota Prius taxicab.

This is, of course, the hybrid electric and gasoline car which is great on fuel and low on pollution. I asked the driver how much he spends on gas per shift (about 140 miles are driven in a shift, the ultimate in stop and go driving). He said from 8 to 10 dollars. I'm spending between $40 and $50 in the Ford Crown Vic I lease from my garage. Wave of the future? I sure hope so. But how will it stand up to the brutality of driving on New York streets? That remains to be seen. It's a small car.

Now, down to business. The focus of this blog is the "fare of the night" or the "thing on the street", meaning the most interesting people I encounter in my taxi or something I see on the street that's worthy of mention. And here's one I wanted to write about. On Aug. 2nd at 1:30 AM I picked up a happy, young lady in Greenwich Village and drove her out to Astoria. She had been talking excitedly on her cell phone for awhile and when she finished that conversation I asked her what was going on. She told me she is the manager of a restaurant in the Village and they had just received a favorable review in the NY Times. Three stars, as a matter of fact.

Unless you are already familiar with the culture of fine dining in New York City, this may not seem like such a big deal. But I assure you, it is. This is how it goes: someone at some point in his (or her) life realizes that he loves to cook. He may very well have attended and graduated from a culinary school (no small accomplishment). He works for years as a chef in an excellent restaurant. Finally, with investors lined up and with many friends to help him, he takes a mighty plunge and decides to open his own place. Enormous planning and effort are put into this project.

At last the restaurant becomes a reality. But will it be a success or just another one of the many flops? This often depends on a single, fickle, and perhaps fair or grossly unfair variable: the review of the food critic of the New York Times. If the reviewer likes your restaurant, your chances of success have multiplied dramatically. If not, your entire endeavor is most likely headed where the potato peels, egg shells, and fish bones wind up... That's the power of the food critic of the NY Times. So there is real drama here.

My passenger, whose name is Sara (and whose birthday it is) filled me in on the behind the scenes details of the story. She works at the Blue Hill restaurant on Washington Place between 6th Avenue and Washington Square

Park. It's a cozy, little place in the below-ground-level of a townhouse which has been in business for six years. The special feature of Blue Hill is that they prepare only food that has been grown within 150 miles of New York City. Blue Hill had received a two-star review ("very good") from the NY Times when it first opened and, Sara told me, if a restaurant is still in business after six years, it is the policy of the Times to review it again. They'd been informed that a food critic would be dining there that week, but they didn't know what day and they didn't know who it would be. So there was an air of mystery, suspense, and excitement in the restaurant all week. Was the portly gentleman at table twelve actually the mighty reviewer from the Times? Or could it be the woman in the pink suit at table seven?

The moment of truth had arrived earlier that evening. They received word that the review of Blue Hill would be published in the August 2nd edition, and they had received 3 stars ("excellent") from food czar Frank Bruni. The ecstasy of the staff had to be contained as the last diner stayed in the restaurant for an excruciating 45 minutes after the check had arrived. Finally the patron departed and they all celebrated their significant win.

Another example of increasing my own reality by communicating with a passenger. I wouldn't have known anything about all this if I hadn't simply asked her what was going on. If you'd like to see the review for yourself, by the way, google "Blue Hill restaurant, New York City".