h a l f b a k e r yBaker Street Irregulars
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[brief synopsis]
The abandoned property my wife and I bought has two motels, (30 rooms), 50 RV sites, 10 tenting sites, a laundromat, several office spaces which we intend to turn into staff housing as there is nowhere to rent in this town, and a pub/restaurant.
Then because of covid we scooped
up a 1958 food bus that had been sitting in a field for years. Renovated that shit. Even the next-stop ringer rings let alone the convection oven or deep fryer. My wife's crispy chicken burgers are becoming legendary as we speak.
It's called The Fork in the Road.
When we had to close down and winterize the bus she rented a bistro with a much smaller kitchen to keep the ball rolling.
Now we are about to open up an entire restaurant complete with equipment, table settings still on the tables from when it was abandoned.
Like a zombie apocalypse movie site. True story.
We've fought with the local electrical company for a year and a half to rebuild our electrical room which was attached to a building which collapsed. (Sears/Safeway), Took me two years but I cleaned that shit up and salvaged everyfuckingthing which could be salvaged.
Hundreds of sheets of 1/2 '' plywood and every compressor/gizmo.
So I spent an entire winter refurbishing that laundromat and the space adjacent to it. As a tile setter they sent me all over the province building dual dog-baths for Pet-Smart stores and so that business is going to be called the Suds'yerDuds'nSog'yer'Dog.
(side story, you guys will love this, since we have no power I swapped out every fluorescent light for LED's so I could patch an electrical cord directly into the panel for light and heated the place by wiring a 220 stove element to a 110 cord and stuffed it into a beer keg full of sand with the top cut off of and a lid with a small oscillating fan on top.
For less than the cost of cooking a pot roast that sand radiated heat all night and allowed me to work at minus 20 temps),
then I spent the next winter working on the interior of the pub.
Both businesses are close to being ready to open. Gas has been tested and pressurized, Electrical room is getting rebuilt and I'm elbows deep in a few thousand feet of slate tile flooring that I got a smoking deal on.
So far so good. We are shooting for spring on both businesses.
We are now in the process of picking a name for our pub.
My wife wanted something indicative of the crap we've gone through since undertaking this project and so my first pick is The Longshot Pub and Grill, but we have to pick two more in case the name is already taken.
Suggestions are totally welcome.
: ]
Randy's Pub has a nice ring to it, but seems a bit narcissistic.
The Wagon
The_20Wagon
[Voice, Sep 12 2024]
Hornpub
https://www.reddit....r/pics/s/8E8aJ0xU1p
Pub in the Philippines [xaviergisz, Sep 12 2024]
Long Shots Bar And Grill
https://www.longshotsaz.com/
Yours is better [doctorremulac3, Sep 13 2024]
Already got your theme song written and recorded.
https://open.spotif...OWuVoSSgLMx5GvkPJ1M
[doctorremulac3, Sep 13 2024]
[link]
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Motto: "per ardua ad tavernam" |
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I admire your perseverance. |
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End of trouble's booze and bubbles?
Grit and grumble, sleep and tumble?
Sweat shop's sweet stop? |
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Hornpub - suspiciously an anagarm of Pornhub |
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Congratulations! I can't think of a good name right now though. |
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“The Last Pub In The World” (technically accurate when you finished it and it was, for a brief period of time, the last pub to be created in the world) |
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“Walk The Dog” - so that people can, truthfully, say “I’m just going out to walk the dog” when they want to go to your pub. |
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Ooh, that 's clever. In that vein:
The Doctor's
My Therapist's Office
The Office
Work |
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I like it, but I wonder whether pubs are already named that. |
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You /could/ go the other way, and call it "get absolutely hammered" or "get shitfaced" or similar. |
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Yes, Hornpub is a play on Pornhub. My wife laughed when I suggested it and them went deadpan and said; "Um, no."
I can't believe there actually is one. Nice link. |
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Walk the Dog is a good one.
Coincidentally, at one time this pub was called the Red Wagon.
Another pub in town which burned down a long time ago was called the Time and Place.
We've toyed with calling it the Here and Now. |
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"Here & Now" is great!
The logo/coat-of-arms could be a clock sitting on a map, or a hand wearing a watch pointing at a map... |
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Doctorremulac3's Drink N Think. |
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Or The Longshot Pub and Grill, both equally good. |
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But seriously, if you have't contacted one of those real estate, or home flipper shows you really should. This sounds like about three notches above epic. I'd totally watch. |
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There's a "Long Shots Bar And Grill" but it's different enough. I have a friend named Mike that I wanted to start a barbeque restaurand and there's approximately ten trillion "Mike's Barbeque" restaurants. |
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There's a bar called "The Long Shot" too, but you're good. |
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Out-To-Lunch
Moose Breath
The Klondyke (if you want to attract a loyal lesbian following) |
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//two motels, (30 rooms), 50 RV sites, 10 tenting sites, a laundromat, several office spaces which we intend to turn into staff housing as there is nowhere to rent in this town, and a pub/restaurant.// |
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Just secede and declare yourself a sovereign entity. You've got a better start than most existing states. |
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Call it “Pubs Near Me” so that it comes up as the top hit when people search Google Maps for “pubs near me” |
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//if you have't contacted one of those real estate, or home flipper shows you really should.// |
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Well, I seriously considered filming everything we've done in the last five years because 'Island of Brian' ain't got nothing on us, but there's two very good reasons we didn't.
One; I can either do the work or I can film it but both would add years on to my already extended sentence.
And Two; because I am doing all of the work with just one helper I am almost always pulling some stunt I would never be able to get away with if I wasn't the owner, so I don't need evidence of it hanging over my head.
For example, when the building collapsed the portion of wall facing the highway leaned outwards so far that it threatened to pull the front off of all of the rest of the two adjacent buildings, so I waded in. It took three weeks to get enough crap removed to be able to get all the way to the front to be able to come-along and cable it to the far end so I could cut through and relieve the pressure.
My skill saw wasn't quite up to the task of cutting through the top of the wall, so I'm like 20 feet up a ladder which is resting on the cabled off section while hanging one handed from the old electrical conduit and wielding my reciprocating saw in the other.
When it let go it was quite the ride.
I no sooner finished the cut when my wife yells. "WCB, (workers compensation board) is here! I told them to stay out." |
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I said, ''Good girl."
Then they made me pull a demolition permit and shut me down for five weeks so it was about as close to the wire as it gets. |
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After needing hazardous materials specialists to come out, and structural engineers they've soaked me for about ten grand so far for the permission to clean up my own yard. |
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So... Zombie Mall of Randy will have to wait. |
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The experts don't want anyone muscling in on their turf. And their turf includes any work they could be paid for doing. Reinforced by politicians who have been lobbied by groups of experts. It's for your safety and totally not a cycle of bribery and regulatory capture. But that aside, yeah: that doesn't sound like a good idea, that thing you did. |
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//that doesn't sound like a good idea, that thing you did.// |
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It was necessary, it worked, and it didn't even set off my adrenal glands as I rode it out.
Bureaucracy be damned, that example pales in comparison to some of the crap I've had to pull off.
When I got thrown to the wolves and was moving oil rigs before puberty there were no rules and nobody to enforce them if they had existed.
If the lease got too muddy you whistled for the crane operator, stuck your boot in the hook and got swung above the chaos. If a passing truck was close enough to make a jump for you grabbed on to the chains and got a ride without the driver even being aware of what you'd done.
Crews were tight back then. Much less injury, and new guys didn't last a week if they didn't have the spatial awareness to be a steel climbing monkey.
I've climbed the spar with no gear on a long-line trawler in the middle of the ocean to replace the stuck line on the top pulley in a storm while describing hundred foot arcs through he air and almost touching the waves on each descent.
I had one trucker try to kill me five times in one day and got his ass fired even though I'd only worked for that company for a single week.
One crew on a triple rig I got a job on told me that they would lock me in a trunk for a week if I fucked up the 15 days they had to go to each get a $200.00 bonus and leather jackets for reaching their safety quota and I shattered my right hand index finger on day three. Like obliterated it with a sledge hammer pounding in flare stakes at three in the morning in the arctic. I couldn't really feel it at first it was so cold and it was near the end of the 12 hour shift.
Back at the motel I soaked in ice water for five hours the next morning, set it myself, chewed extra strength Tylenol like candy and kept working, so that they got their jackets and I didn't get locked in a trunk for a week. Those are just off the top of my head... |
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Yep, it's been one hell of a ride. |
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This place won't throw me anything I can't think my way through.
Someday though my Spider-Man like reflexes will fail me, my intuition will wane, my thoughts will slow, and the words, "Oh shit!" will be cut abruptly short.
Until that day I will continue to make this place my bitch while trying to keep the old synapses firing at a decent pace. Really close brushes with death has let me keep a permanent state of flight-or-fight response activated without losing sanity or adversely affecting my health and I can't help wonder if this;
'is today the day something is going to get me?'
attitude I seem to have picked up is supposed to be our natural state.
Like SO many people now are dealing with anxiety and depression issues. When those things are either necessary or happen regularly because of very real reasons for sadness then the mind can accept those extremes.
A life of absolute safety and comfort would produce a need to create one's own stressors. It just kinda makes sense. |
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"The Well-Earned Restaurant" |
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"More luck than judgement" |
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“Ceci n'est pas une pub” (with apologies to Magritte) |
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//"More luck than judgement"// |
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Well there was some luck involved, but far more judgement. |
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I worked double time for 20 years to gather a nest egg. Then we sat on it for three years living in our trailer and renting.
Our realtor, with at that time 30 years in the business, says he's never even heard of anybody pulling off a stunt like this. |
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There was a fire.
Neither realtor told their clients about it.
I drove 270 km's on weekends to tresspass and do all of the work the fire department demanded to hold off on a 60 day work order to commence or they were going to bulldoze this place and hit the owner with the bill.
I made my realtor send this fellow a letter, on threat of having his license revoked for non-disclosure, offering the owner in China the opportunity to sell this almost 10 acre property to me for $350,000 because he'd left absolutely no paper work behind nobody could get a mortgage from a bank in north America and since I was the only thing standing between either a several million dollar bill or recouping some money, he would need to vendor finance it himself for at least three years so that I could gather financial statements and blueprints and such.
He came back with $450,000 and I said deal. |
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I did an end run around lawyers and banks and everything to land this whale. |
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I estimate that in no less then four years time this place will be worth about $5,000,000.00 and I forced the sale of it for less than a tenth of that. |
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Anybody could have done it, but I'm the only one who saw a way. |
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That's way more reason then luck. Judgement follows. |
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//Well there was some luck involved, but far more judgement.// |
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Sure, but I wasn't talking about your business dealings. |
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"so I'm like 20 feet up a ladder which is resting on the cabled off section while hanging one handed from the old electrical conduit and wielding my reciprocating saw in the other." |
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My first thought was 'Schroedingers Cafe" |
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as you probably existed in a few states at that moment but surely there's a ton of those out there already. |
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Well, the name search went through and we will officially be The Long Shot Pub and Grill. |
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Gonna have test tube shooter glasses, and I'm retrofitting a dart board with a normal shot-glass to its centre on a slight upward kilter, (to be determined by rigorous experimentation), which patrons will pay a dollar per shot, (or three shots for a toonie), to stand forty or maybe fifty feet away and try to hit with a Nerf dart.
Dart stays in the target... you win the pot. |
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