#84: "constant inevitable change"

It all started because I won a free burrito. I realize that I'm going to talk about Mexican food twice in the same week, but go with me - they're unrelated.

I discovered this simple free app a week or two ago called Burrito Time. It's run by Dos Toros, the NYC/Chicago chain that's really just a Chipotle impersonator. The marketing concept is so simple and perfect - once per day, at a random time, Burrito Time will send out a push notification to everyone with the app (and notifications on). The first ten people to click through to the app win a free burrito. Everyone else gets to play again tomorrow. I honestly didn't think it was winnable, but then I left work a few minutes early one afternoon and I was playing games on my phone as I pulled in to Times Square and saw a notification and BOOM I WON A FREE BURRITO AND THAT COMMUTE SUDDENLY SUCKED SO MUCH LESS.

So of course I couldn't sit on such a wonderful prize for very long. I had to go the next day to the closest Dos Toros location and get all that free burrito goodness (with guac included at no extra charge be still my beating heart!). The UES location is on Lexington Ave. at 78th Street. It was a nice day out, so I took a walk.

I don't often walk uptown on 3rd Avenue. If I'm going that far for lunch I'm going to get spicy cumin lamb noodles, which is in a different direction. But as I'm walking up 3rd, I notice one block that just feels strange. Everything on this particular block is closed. Every window is covered in brown paper, every sign unlit. Not one single thing was open for business on either side of the block.

I realize it's not at all uncommon for businesses here in New York to disappear without any notice. It is the cost of doing business here - you have to understand that there's likely to come a time when it just doesn't work anymore and you'll close so a bank or a chain pharmacy can open in your place. The churn of the city means that turnover is inevitable. Nothing here lasts forever; those that feel like they have are a dwindling number indeed.

Yet it felt strange for an entire block to be devoid of retail or restaurant. Of all the other people that were walking by that day I wonder how many either noticed, or thought about those businesses, the people that worked there, or the people that enjoyed them.

The constant inevitable change of life waits for no one. It feels like just yesterday that we were a one child household, then suddenly we were a two child household, and now we're a two kids in daycare household. It won't be much longer before Ben is crawling and then walking and later talking. I wonder what discussions the two lads will have. They do grow up so fast.