Blintzes, Brisket and Bikes.

Like many of you in the advertising industry, I have been looking for an exit plan. My own, not one imposed on me.

After all, there are fewer and fewer places who are looking for the skills of a 44 year old freelance copywriter. Particularly one who looks, and now walks, significantly older than a person born in the halcyon days of 1976.

Naturally, because of my extensive background as a short order cook/sous chef/bartender/and hospital kitchen dishwasher, I considered a late career shift/return to the food business.

Now, I would never open a restaurant, because restaurants have a notorious 95% failure rate.

But I did consider opening a food related retail boutique. Thinking, perhaps naively, all I've got to do is hit upon a food no one ever thought of glamorizing.

And then it hit me -- blintzes.
What Starbucks had done for coffee, I would do to blintzes.

If you're not familiar with blintzes, you don't know what you're missing. Not only are they delicious and satisfying, they are incredibly versatile. You can have dessert blintzes, filled with sour cream, strawberries. Or chocolate and chocolate chip. Or you can shift the blintz paradigm and stuff them with meat -- like a tiny Omaha steak -- and potatoes, so they can be an entree. Blintzes are that versatile.

Not a bad idea, right?

Thanks to my friend Evan, I recently found out a guy in the DC area has already been there and done that.

And in a Twilight Zone twist of fate, that guy's name was Rich.

Tapping into my heritage, as well as my love for fire-cooked flesh, I also considered doing the same for brisket. This was inspired by a college touring trip to Austin, years ago. I'm not sure there's anything on the planet that compares to Texas style BBQ brisket. It's as good as sex. And afterwards you'll actually want to lick your fingers. Sorry.

In my imaginary incarnation of the store, Bubba and Bubbe's Brisket Emporium, I would offer brisket lovers two distinctively different flavors. One the aforementioned, slow cooked in an authentic hickory burning smoker. And the other, stewed in a pan, with carrots, onions and potatoes, shtetl style, just the way your Cossack-persecuted grandmother used to make.

When I began to crunch the numbers, this too became infeasible. Oh who are we kidding, I didn't crunch any numbers. Look, I'm not about to empty the Nest Egg to start some fakakta business.

Especially one in retail. Do you know how much money you need to ring up in sales, every damn day,  just to make the nut for rent? Too much.

That's why I tip my hat to Culver City's own Abba Padre Bikes and Books. (Libreria Cristiana, pictured above)

Why open one business, thought Señor Abba Padre, when you can open two? It's a bike repair shop AND it's a seller of fine Christian books?

"While Manuel is putting these new brake shoes on your Schwinn beach cruiser, why don't we open Deuteronomy and read the passage about Jacob and Esau?"

That's when it hit me. 

There is no exit plan. Not for this 44 year old.

I'm going to be writing banner ads and email blasts right up until the day some mortician tells my wife, "He's a big fellow, we're gonna need the EEE extra wide casket."