Strip mall

All I saw was Jeff suddenly come really quick on that beer, and I was a little bit jealous.

So, yeah, the Eastside Plaza over here, Strip Mall had a service merchandise back in the day, which I discussed with you and Beast, and how little kid Jeff would go over and play Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis.

Yeah, yeah.

But now that's a Dollar Tree.

Man.

So what's there now? Is it just like another strip mall or something? Strip malls are homes.

Like a place that's got like a Starbucks and a... club champion and a TJ Maxx and a Nordstrom rack and a

stretch lab.

Oh, I wanted to mention, too, dinner plans tonight.

If you want to help support Veterans Honor Flight at HiHo South in the strip mall there off 32nd and 25th Street there by Family Fair, the HiHo South, between 5 and 7.

They're doing a meat raffle, and I think they've got a burger thing going on, too.

Is that in Fargo or Moorhead? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Hi-Ho Burgers, you know? I have to look that up.

Boppa's Bagels in the Strip Mall, Family Fair in the Strip Mall off 32nd and 25th Street.

Oh, over there.

Four teenagers are planning a sleepover.

Two of them have to work until 11 p.m., so the younger two, only 15 and 13 years old, go to the mall for a little while to hang out, until they get picked up and taken a short distance to their friend's workplace in a strip mall.

It's the last shift before the weekend, three weeks before Christmas.

And the plan is simple.

You're shocked and you're surprised and you're connecting all the dots and that's what I want.

Just don't put it in the comments because then it ruins it for the people who don't know yet.

But let me take you back to that strip mall on Wes Anderson Lane.

It's just before midnight on Friday, December the 6th of 1991.

I actually had to bring Sabrina to dance last night at a new... a new place that was, I'm telling you, man, this place was in the, you know how you always talk about the Long Island strip malls? Oh, yeah.

This was like the classic Long Island strip mall.

I pulled in there.

I was just laughing.

It had everything that you always say are in the strip malls.

Oh, yeah.

So then I go in there, and I drop her off, and there's just this little cramped area that you can watch them dance, but there's like a curtain down.

You know, like Sunrise Highway, Service Road.

Yeah

... festival, and it wouldn't- It was like, "What is happening? What is that noise?" I was inside of Strip Center, and the lights flickered.

And I go, "What? What is that? What's going on outside?" [laughs] And I look outside, it's like bucket drops of rain just pounding the cars.

And it was like, gosh, Eric, I think it must've been, like, 5:00 or 6:00-ish, something like somewhere in there.

So last question then, because, you know, I've been talking about this a lot on this show over the past, probably year, year and a half, you know, kind of the, I don't even know if that's the right word to use or phraseology to use, but like the Venn diagram of the Walmart super center, the QSRs in said Walmart strip center and drone delivery.

So like, you know, if Walmart can light that up and get all of these various QSR partners that are inside those strip malls into the this arena over the next five to 10 years.

Does that make you like this move any more or less?

Yeah, it makes me like it more.

And so I think that gives them an advantage, but if the Papa John's, I mean, I'm sure they're doing it very strategically, but if this thing's like way down the road and it's not next door, it's a little harder to, to manage the delivery time, the fulfillment side of it.

I don't know.

But I do think, yeah, if they can, when you think about strip malls and you have them close from a geographic, you know, location standpoint, I think it's good.

I think that that will help tremendously.

So I'm going to kind of blend the two and I'm going to say...

America is a strip mall.

You either come here to shop and go home or you come here to work at Banana Republic and then send your money home.

That's basically the two things that happen in America now.