I Ate Taco Bell and I Liked It. Again. Kinda.

Well, it's been a year. ...Actually, it's been more than a year. It's been 16 months. I know because I wrote about it in my blog last time I did it. I ate at Taco Bell. And I liked it. Well, kinda. 🤣

Wendys--; TacoBell++;

My inspiration for "Making a run for the border" again was a particular Taco Bell restaurant.



This one opened near my house several months ago. It replaced an old Wendy's that had been there for at least 30 years, probably longer.

I drive past this spot at least a few times a week. I even used to work around the corner from here. The Wendy's used to do a fair business at lunch. It got hit pretty hard, like most restaurants did, during the Covid downturn in 2020-21. It closed for good sometime in that period, after which the building sat empty for a while before someone new bought/leased it and renovations started.

Multiple times during that period I thought, "I could really go for a Wendy's combo for lunch today." I could have gone to the other Wendy's in town 3.5 miles away, but the drive over there is annoying with midday traffic. Wendy's isn't that good. 😂

Thus my impetus to try Taco Bell again this past week for the first time in over a year was part curiosity about the new place and partly sublimated desire for Wendy's. 🤣

The 1980s aren't Completely Gone

Well, the outside of this old fast food spot is refreshed; what about the inside?



Inside, the restaurant is refreshed... but not thoroughly. The stupid "greenhouse" extension that Wendy's had at the far end of the dining room, where the temperature could never be regulated properly and some of the side windows leaked, has been removed. The furniture is all new and 2020s style, for better or worse. But that 1980s drop tile ceiling— yeah, that looks like maybe all they did was replace some of the dirty tiles with clean ones.

Okay, enough about the building. How's the food?

newPrices = oldPrices * 3;   // Haha yes I'm still writing code

Before I get to the food I need to spend a moment on prices. That's because before I eat the food I have to order it, and ordering it means looking at what's on the menu (remember, I haven't been here in 16 months), and the menu includes prices.

Recently I've seen discussions online where older Gen Z members complain about their Boomer* parents not understanding that the cost of things has risen, markedly, since 30-40 years ago. (I stick the asterisk next to Boomer because, really, Gen Z has Boomer parents? Their parents are three generation cohorts older than them? Of course, lots of Gen Z thinks anyone over 40 is a Boomer. Including my nieces and nephews.)

The generational misunderstanding in these situations is that because prices have risen so much, wages also need to be higher. The $7.50/hr that a Boomer (or Gen Xer) fondly remembers as a great entry-level wage from way back when is nowhere close to sufficient today... if someone wants to live on their own and afford things, not live with their parents who carp constantly about "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe!" ...Yeah, for a paltry $7.50/hr and a jackass boss who thinks that's generous, they don't.

One way I put in perspective how prices and wages are different today is by comparing fast food prices with what I remember paying as a teen and early 20-something. Overall I think of things today being 3x what they were 30 years ago. In fact my first time eating at Taco Bell was a hair under 31 years ago (I was a late bloomer) and a basic 3-taco combo then was $2.99. Of course, that was 3 plain tacos. A taco supreme combo, which seemed splurge-y at the time— I mean, c'mon, who can afford to add sour cream all the time?— was $3.59. And that same combo now is very nearly 3x that, at $10.79.

So, did I order a 3 taco combo, for old times' sake?

I'll Try the Cantina Menu

No, I decided rather than try food that Taco Bell's been hawking for decades I'd try something that's at least marketed as new. The "Cantina Combos" were advertised as new and special. Plus, they were the same price, $10.79, as that lowly taco supreme combo. I mean, for $10.79 my fast food combo had better be something special. 😂



Well, the Cantina Combo sure came packaged special. Look at that fancy cardboard box! We're way above plastic fast-food tray with paper liner level, here. We're up to cheap pizza level now. 🤣



Inside the box are tucked a chicken burrito, a ground beef taco, a bag of chips, and dishes of cheese sauce and green salsa. The green salsa was a special order. I was happy they obliged me... and didn't charge me $.80 extra (or whatever an extra 1-oz. dish of sauce costs nowadays).



Once unwrapped the food looks... not disgusting. 🤣 Yeah, that's damning it with faint praise, but I feel it's necessary to put it that way given how much many of my peers deride the notion of eating food as lowly as Taco Bell.

Disgusting? Only the Pepsi!

Sure, Taco Bell isn't great food. Especially here in California there are tons of tastier choices if you want Mexican or Mexican-inspired food. Though most of them are 2x the price or more. And that dish of nacho cheese sauce, which I really thought was going to be disgusting, was actually decent. I ate the whole thing with my chips. And overall, that's what everything was: decent. ...Oh, except the Pepsi. The Pepsi was disgusting. If there's any one reason from this visit I won't set foot in a Taco Bell for at least another 16 months, it's because they serve Pepsi.

And look, nobody's getting sick from eating at Taco Bell. There aren't lines of people outside the restaurants throwing up in the bushes. Nobody's dying from Taco Bell, either. Though maybe that's just because nobody's filmed themselves eating there for a month solid and then died 20 years later from alcoholism and cancer.

Alviso Marina Park, Like a Gateway to Mars

On Sunday this weekend we started off taking it easy. We were pretty wrecked— but in a good way— from our epic hike at Zim Zim Falls a day earlier. We spent the morning taking it easy, went out for lunch and to run a bunch of shopping errands, then came back home before deciding what to do next. "Spend the afternoon laying around the pool" was seriously entertained as an idea... but then we agreed getting out for a short hike in the area would be better. We could always come back to the pool afterward. 😂

"Where to go hiking?" was the next challenge. For that I suggested Alviso Marina County Park. It's nearby... almost deceptively so, because going to Alviso is almost like going to another planet.



First, Alviso is like the land that time and Silicon Valley forgot. It's an old time-y, down-on-its-luck little burg in the shadow of Silicon Valley. It was a bustling local port some 120 years ago. In the mid 20th century it was a heavy manufacturing town. Now all that remains of those industries are the empty shells of buildings that haven't actually been torn down. Ah, but there's something different I noticed compared to our previous visit here, in August 2023. There's no longer a wrecked ship in that grassy field in the scene above. It had only been there for, like, fifty years. For 50 years nobody cared to take it away, and nobody cared that nobody cared.

Alviso is also like a gateway to another world in its gateway to the great outdoors.



Go through these gates and it's not just rushes at the foot of the San Francisco Bay you're walking into. The South Bay is full of salt ponds.

What's so special about salt ponds?



This. This is what's special about salt ponds. It's like the surface of Mars, but it's water.



With a beach made entirely of salt.



Salt ponds here are a naturally occurring phenomenon. The Ohlone people native to this area harvest salt for centuries. When Americans settled here in the1800s they commercialized salt production. There's still parts of the South Bay shorelines that are used for the salt business, though this area was sold back to the public for restoration as a natural habitat. So this orange water and salt beach (and the salt islands in the photo above) are natural.