Tag: Restaurants

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Stoned

We visited the “Levitated Mass” at the Los Angles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on Saturday.  It was heavy.  The LACMA website calls it a Megalith which in my mind makes this installation a henge.  The artist is Michael Heizer.  What I admire most, having moved some big stones around myself, is that he was able to convince art patrons to put up the money to move and install the stone.

Walking under the Levitated Mass gave me a control of nature feeling, as if I was taking a big risk, even though it is well designed and not in the least dangerous.

A bit of perspective:

  • This stone weighs about 330 tons.
  • One of the large stones at Stonehenge weighs about 25 tons
  • A medium sized office building, like the one in the background of these pictures weighs about 12,000 tons. Office building construction facts

The Levitating Mass can be seen as a driveby from 6th Street just East of Fairfax.  But this exhibit is best seen from below.  If you can find parking entry is free.  Parking is $10 in the LACMA lot.

We had lunch first with Gil and Nanci C. at Short Order at the Farmers Market.  A very nice outing.

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A Billion Dollar Idea

It is rare that even I the “ideapreneur” have an idea that is ready to go, is brilliant and has the potential to increase someones bottom line by a billion dollars.

Companies like AT&T, Apple, Microsoft, Verizon and others spend billions of dollars each year selling technically complicated products to consumers who don’t know how to use them.  Starbucks has these same consumers standing in line for coffee every morning.  Make the connection the simplicity is brilliant.  Starbucks rents a table in their stores in the morning to, lets say, Apple for $100/hour.  Apples reps can offer technical support and do training.  They cannot sell products.  The advantage for Apple is that their customers become better users and more loyal while they demonstrate a competitive advantage over their competitors.  The advantage to Starbucks is using their “safe space” to generate revenue.  The math I figured was 3000 stores time 4 hours a day time 200 days times $100.  Close to 200 million dollars a year. Starbucks has 17,000 stores worldwide.

One of the great things about this idea is that it can be tested regionally at low cost so that the rules of engagement can be clearly defined before rolling it out internationally.  Perhaps call it “in store reps” and have a different one each day, on a regular schedule that is listed on the web site.  So if I want to talk about my iPhone I will go to the Sierra Madre Starbucks on Tuesday when the Apple rep is there.

 

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CECUT Map Opening

The opening of the map exhibit at CECUT in Tijuana last Friday was wonderful.

Carlos Garcia, Armando Orso, Simon Burrow

Carlos and Armando were the prime movers in getting the exhibit approved and installed.

The exhibit is the best yet.  They did blowups of three of the maps that are spectacular and the space is just wonderful.  I didn’t get many pictures because I was distracted by the delicious Baja Pinot Noir from Cetto Vineyards that they were pouring.  We concluded the evening with dinner at Los Arcos.  An excellent opening.

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Repositioning

This excellent repositioning idea came from Gene B. an occasional contributor.

It has terrific potential as a way to make bars socially acceptable again so that they can compete with Starbucks.

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Business Class Interstate Travel

It would be great if you could stop and get great food when you are driving between big cities like Los Angeles to San Francisco or Chicago to St Louis.  Right now the pickings at the half way stopping points are pretty much fast foods, the Waffle House and places like the Cracker Barrel.  It takes too long and the food is barely above tolerable.

What if there was a small chain of specialty restaurants that catered to up-scale travelers.  They are situated at the best stopping places between the major cities, they have great food, served quickly and courteously and while you are eating they gas up your car and wash the windshield.  The restrooms are delightful and the decor is elegantly local.

The trick to make it successful would be to use the new GPS and cell phone technologies now available.  A customer leaving LA would access the menu on her cellular phone and pre-order lunch.  The restaurant would track the phone via GPS so that as they pulled into the driveway the meal would be ready and the table would be set.  The food would be great.  Terrific young chefs who are struggling to find a niche in the high cost cities would clamor to be able to master their craft and build their reputations out on the highway.

This idea came up because I was reading a book titled An Appetite For America by Stephen Freid at the same time that I was driving a lot of miles on the interstate.  Even I get tired of Beef Jerky and Starbucks Coffee.  The book is about the Fred Harvey Company that for almost a century fed train travelers in the same way I am proposing feeding interstate travelers.

People driving $50,000 cars shouldn’t have to eat fast food.

 

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The Cell Phone Dilemma

Being in the present is difficult with your cell phone constantly urging you to be somewhere else.  Now someone in New York has invented an idea that gives answering your phone during a shared meal consequences.

The Phone Stack

Basically when you sit down you put your phone in the stack.  The first person to pick up their phone from the stack during dinner picks up the check.

Read the article

Good Idea!

 

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Imported Water

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“Imported Water?”

We have no idea what this means.  You are in Las Vegas..all water is imported.  The imagined visual that made us laugh all through lunch was the maintenance men pouring Evian Water into the fountain.

Other than that this was a very nice mall just South of the Strip on Las Vegas Boulevard under the Airport approach.  We had lunch at Brio Tuscan Grille a newish chain from Columbus Ohio.  Excellent food and service.  They are supposedly coming to California next year.