From the confluence of stores out there sometimes emerges a champion. One who beats out all the competition and spawns a replica of itself in the fertile womb of sidewalk commerce. Some of these go on to conquer entire continents, like great dinosaurs of retail evolution. Sometimes they sputter and fail, like dodos, trilobytes or wookies.
But there are many, especially in this city, that make it yet really shouldn't have.
This week, I present to you: A Short List of Chain Stores that Shouldn't be Chain Stores.
Teriyaki Boy
It has been said that a chef can put his entire essence into a single slice of sashimi. If so, then every bite of Teriyaki Boy is a big mouthful of underpaid 19-year-old tech school dropout with a knife.
I may be old fashioned, but I think sushi is the one thing that shouldn't be made fast. When we're dealing with the jiggly bits of recently dead sea creatures, I like my chefs to take their time. Not too much time, the sea creatures still need to be recently dead, but enough time. Otherwise you might get bits that aren't jiggly enough. Or worse, bits that are a little too jiggly. The sort that you don't notice until they're way back at your molars and you already got a mouthful of food and your eyes start to cross.
Ever since Iron Chef hit basic cable, there's been bevies of poor students seeking to undo their dorkitude via swanky food. They buy unpronounceable stuff on sale at Gristedes and try to Emeril it up. Then they annoy the hell out of their roommates the day after, talking about "This awesome kung xiao pepper fish on a bed of havarti pesto I made" when it's clearly sitting at the top of the trash can.
Teriyaki Boy is part of this growing trend of making rich food for po' folk. Fast Sushi can only be followed by McFoieGras and Paella King, and that can only lead to stuff too nasty for even me to envision.
Let's face it, rich people food is made of different stuff than po' people food. Just like it is with human food and dog food, no matter how many steak-shaped bits of gravel they mix in your puppy chow. So let's keep sushi expensive and hand-made. That way we know it's sushi and not day-old dollar menu fillet-of-fish.
The Strand
Don't get me wrong, I love The Strand. You can wander around for three hours, not find a single thing you were looking for, but end up buying eight other things just because hey, look at that. Many people have said they "got totally lost at a bookstore" but The Strand is the only place where it totally comes true. At the door there's a post of missing art students, girlfriends, and small children who have disappeared into the caverns of used books. Maybe they're now living in a whimsical universe full of fictional characters. Or maybe they've been fed to Morgo, the basement moth-monster.
But The Strand Annex, downtown, is a dubious idea. An extra store just for textbooks? What's next? A The Strand Basement for cookbooks? A The Strand Garage for failed celebrity bestsellers? A The Strand Compost Heap for Harry Potter 7?
Having one yawning cavern of used book value is enough, the fact that it takes up five floors is icing on the valuecake. I do think it should take up a whole block, that way all the concentrated value will cause a rip in time, ala Ghostbusters or My Science Project.
However, a spattering of mini-caverns would stretch the value too thin, causing no rips in literary space-time. Einstein proved it in his theory of general relativity. Using, like, numbers and stuff.
Ray's Famous Pizza, and other Places that Shouldn't be Famous
What made these random, run of the mill pizza and hot dog joints famous? What makes someone go to a place like Gray's Papaya when they can get the same mashed donkey lips and sawdust, I mean hot dogs, at any corner? The one distinction Ray's Famous Pizza has is that it was featured at the beginning of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.
The only reason anyone would need to visit Ray's is because they wanted to go on a walking tour of Ninja Turtle New York but couldn't find that junkyard hideout in Brooklyn or the rooftop they kicked the Shredder off of.
Ricky's NYC
I confess, I've never actually been in this store, but the empty Ricky's bags billowing out from behind the bead curtain door of my ex-roommate's room leave little to the imagination. Why on earth there would be enough demand for spiked bracelets and pink wigs to warrant having a Ricky's on every corner in those hip but well-off neighborhoods worries me.
Since I haven't been in one I don't really know if they sell shoes but that won't stop me from ranting about weird shoes. What's with weird shoes?
I prefer plain, comfortable shoes, the sort that you can wear to work and also out to a night of ninjaing in the bamboo forest. Try ninjaing in them spiky six-inch heels, kids. You'll be the laughing stock of Shinobi everywhere.
I'm a pragmatist when it comes to fashion. Besides, I like my shoes like I like my women: 6½ and all tied up.
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