Small town groove, Copenhagen style

The team at my co-working complex has been getting their bagel-ordering algorithm nailed down, which means there are fewer and fewer excess bagels for me to take home each Monday. Yesterday there wasn't even one for me to turn into my lunch, with a little PB&J on it. Which has a bit of an end of an era feel to it but is honestly generally to the good. 

So yesterday I found myself at work trying to figure out what I was gonna eat. I am by and large disinclined to get in my car to go to lunch or, indeed, do anything, since doing so involves taking an elevator down to the ground floor, walking across to the parking deck, taking another elevator up to where my car is, leaving the parking deck... and at that point in time I still haven't gone anywhere. 

So I decided I really needed to try out walking to lunch. There aren't a ton of walkable options, but there is a Subway and also Brenz Pizza over in the complex where the Schwab office is. East 54 is what they call it. So I pre-ordered a pizza and walked over, with an Economist in my pocket to be sure because I planned to sit and eat.

Once inside I saw a guy I knew from the noon AA meeting out in the park. Good guy. He had struck me as a pretty serious Big Book thumper, which is to say a serious 12-step traditionalist, which is not entirely my style but one that I recognize works for a lot of people. He recognized me too so I sat and had lunch and an excellent talk.

While we were sitting there he started talking to this woman on their team who it turns out is part of the chain's founding family. I had not realized that Brenz was originally from Durham and is in fact a very small chain, there's only 6 of them, spread across just a few states. Since I too am from Durham this enhances the appeal of the place.

Anyway, in short I am validating the "Copenhagenize" design-principle of the new Glen Lennox by walking to lunch. That said, as I walked past some of the empty units that are likely slated for destruction in pretty short order it's hard not to get a little melancholy about the loss of affordable housing stock that has meant so much to different groups of Chapel Hillians over the years.