Lincolnite

If any of you folks have ever longed to be my neighbor, now is your chance! After quickly tearing down a bit of an eyesore, workers are now quickly assembling a new house at 5208 S. 50th Street. That's not exactly next door to The Wilsons, but it's pretty close. The property won't have much of a yard once the house is finished, so if outdoor maintenance isn't your thing then you're in luck. The big thing I wonder about is the price. At $179,000 the price seems on the high end to me. Then again, I haven't paid much attention to the local real estate market so perhaps that's where prices are sitting these days. I'll let current house-seekers clue me in on the expected cost of a property like this. Anyway, I know many of you are just dying to be my neighbor. I'll have a cup of sugar ready for you to borrow any time.

The Missus and I grabbed a quick bite to eat at Pancheros (SouthPointe) last night. I expected something ... different. I didn't get it. Everything about Pancheros was fine. The food was fine. The atmosphere was fine. The service was fine. But Lincoln is crawling with burrito joints and Mexican food. Is "fine" good enough? I don't think so. Consider my first impressions. When I walked in the door I immediately got the sense that Chipotle and Qdoba had had a child, and their spawn, although adequate in its own right, didn't inherit any of the components that make its parents special. There's no emphasis on high-quality ingredients; no outgoing staff; no immediately-recognizable decor; no extensive and creative menu. At first glance it was little more than Just Another Burrito Joint. The menu hanging over the front counter is a good example. It couldn't possibly be more generic. Pick one: burrito; quesedilla; bowl; salad. Pick one: veggies; chicken; pig; cow. I actually yawned while placing my order. Pancheros does bring a couple unique components to the table. First, they press your tortilla right when you order. Down in Albuquerque where my in-laws live, all the good joints make their own tortillas on location. It's about time somebody brought that to Lincoln. Pancheros also stirs your burrito's ingredients using a tool they call "Bob". (I guess that does sound better than "el putty knife".) The marketing is dorky but the effect on the burrito is nice. And as for the taste? As I said before, it was fine. Good even. But it didn't knock my socks off. How could it? I've eaten so many burritos it's pretty tough for a burrito to wow me. And that's Pancheros's biggest hurdle. They're so late to the game and they have so little to differentiate themselves that they're just not going to cause a stir. It's the sort of place you go to because it's nearby, not because you sought it out. Considering how much they're likely paying in rent, that's not good for them. On the plus side I can't really think of anything bad about Pancheros. If you find yourself eating there you will, in all likelihood, satisfy your taste buds and your hunger. But will you specifically seek out Pancheros for supper tonight? Probably not.

Sometimes I like to try to find the hidden link between the words on the tabs on the Journal Star's homepage slider. ...yeah, it's Friday. My brain has already checked out for the weekend.

Heavy Snow Expected in Nebraska Panhandle No comment.

Judds Bros. Construction has been put in timeout by the City as a result of delays associated with the company's failure to finish the South Street bridge project on time. Judds has been declared an "irresponsible bidder" and now can't win any City jobs -- not even as a subcontractor -- for 8 months. I wish I knew more about exactly what went wrong so I could more accurately determine if the consequence is fair. You've no doubt seen Judds Bros. crews working on projects all around Lincoln. They seem to do good work, yet four out of eleven projects done for the City since 2007 have been finished late. That doesn't seem consistent with the motto splashed on their homepage: "On schedule, quality construction, with attention to detail". It's not pleasant to see a local company be blacklisted, but maybe that's what it will take to snap them out of this funk. Or maybe it's not a funk at all. Perhaps it's not uncommon for four out of eleven projects to come in late. Again, my ignorance of construction management is showing. That sounds like a lot to me, but my personal experience with web development projects tells me that some projects just go awry. I have no idea what an acceptable rate of poorly predicted timelines might be in Judds's industry. Does the 8 month ban sound fair to you?

Many Lincolnites have clamored for years to get a downtown grocery store. Early reports that at least one proposal for the Pershing Center block includes a grocery store naturally raised a lot of interest. I know I was intrigued. Then this came along. According to Deena Winter, the proposed grocery store clocks in at a whopping 5,100 square feet. That's smaller than the Walgreen's at 13th and O. There are houses in Wilderness Ridge with pantries larger than that. I questioned Ms. Winter, thinking surely she had made a typo. She assured me the number is accurate according to the submitted proposal. Whatever boost could have been given to this project by the presence of a grocery store is surely overcome by its insultingly-small size. It's hard to imagine doing much with a space less than one-fifth the size of University Place's Heartland Pantry. That's not to say the entire proposal is bunk, of course. I'm just very surprised by the grocery store's size. I didn't expect a full-blown Super Saver, but something in the Ideal Grocery range (15,000 to 20,000 square feet) seems much more appropriate to me. Then again, I'm not the one putting my money on the line.

KLIN reports that one of the proposals for the current Pershing Center site includes a grocery store, along with other retail and residential space. That's going to resonate with quite a few Downtown-area residents. One of the other proposals is, of course, a new library. The third and final proposal hasn't (to my knowledge) been announced yet. At this stage I've got to give the edge to the grocery store.

I admit I'm a sucker for red pandas. It's with great joy, then, that I learned that two baby red pandas were born this summer at Lincoln Children's Zoo, and they were recently introduced to the public. Only 17 red panda babies were born in captivity this year, and twins are especially rare. In addition, at age 15 the father is the oldest red panda father on record. Unfortunately the babies aren't currently on display. They may be available for viewing when the zoo opens for a couple days in December. In the mean time, you can see some more photos over at JournalStar.com.

The Downtown dining scene is absolutely exploding. On the one hand I wish I still worked Downtown so that I could give all the restaurants a try on a regular basis. On the other hand, the wealth of options would paralyze me every day at noon. There's no way I can remember all of the "recent" entrants to the Downtown food crowd, but here are a few that are open or have been announced:

• Topper's Pizza
• Wahoo's Fish Tacos
• Firehouse Subs
• Rodizio Grill
• Raising Cane's
• PepperJax
• Mr. Goodcents
• Twin Peaks

...and those are just off the top of my head! The glut of new food options is fantastic for those of us who love to eat, but it comes with a downside. There's simply no way all of those places will last for any significant length of time. Not, that is, unless more customers can be brought into the Downtown area. Some of the extra demand will be created by the new Haymarket hotels and next fall's opening of the Pinnacle Bank Arena. That's not enough. For long-term sustainability of all of this food, Downtown is going to need more retail, more residents, and more employees. All of that is happening to a certain extent, but the pace will need to pick up a bit. UNL's goal of topping 30,000 undergraduates would be a big help ... if they were anywhere near actually meeting the goal. The Larson Building helps. Any residential activity that accompanies the arena will help. Even if I did work Downtown and even once all these new joints are up and running, I know what would happen: I'd still wind up back at Oso, Lazzari's, and Ali Baba's. I'm all in favor of trying new and shiny things, but ultimately I'm drawn back to the classics. My impression is that I'm not alone in that regard. And thank goodness. Those mainstays are what make Downtown Downtown. The rest is just filler.

I've gotta tell you, I really don't "get" marketing. Just when I think I'm starting to understand it, somebody goes and throws me for a loop. Consider two recent commercials I saw on TV. The first was for Runza. It was yet another commercial in their "the customer is always wrong" line of marketing materials. I've ranted about these ads in the past but they still bug me. What Runza is trying to say is something like: "Look, we've got our niche and we're good at it. We tried broadening our reach and stirring up our products and it just didn't work. Remember theOven Stuff'd debacle? We're going to stick with what we know." And that would be fine. But their marketing instead comes across, to me at least, as smug and sarcastic. It's very off-putting. The other commercial was for Amigos. Now we all know that Amigos is about as low as you can get in the local Mexican food scene. Taco John's is Misty's in comparison. However, when your food looks like something that would make even a hardened restaurant inspector gag, is it really wise to give it repeated close-ups throughout a TV commercial? Their latest spots for their "cheesy burritos" zoom in on some sort of shiny, orange, semi-solid gunk that the voiceover claims is cheese. I sure hope not. If it's cheese, it's cheese that has given up. Eating that stuff would be an act of compassion and mercy, effects on your own health notwithstanding. And don't get me wrong, I'm no Mexican food snob. I happily lunch at Taco Inn where they assemble your food right before your eyes with all the morose enthusiasm of a circus elephant. Amigos just needs to keep the camera farther from their food if they want to trick me into getting in the mood to eat there. On a barely related note, what is this woman on the Amigos website yelling about?