¡Yo quiero TACOS, TACOS, & MORE TACOS¡
I suspect this place sold tacos once upon a time.
I don’t recall it being in business or when, even though it was right around the corner of the former Windsor Star building where I worked for many years starting in 1995 before we moved to our current location on Ouellette Ave. I happened to notice it one day recently while walking down Chatham Street on my lunch hour.
I love the amateur style of the sign and the unusual syntax — the spacing, the Oxford or serial comma after the second TACOS. Also notice the phantom ‘ES’ after MORE. It’s one of several buildings that have ghostly images of signs of businesses that no longer live and I often find myself looking at them and thinking about the life that went on inside these establishments and of the stories behind these places.
Who dreamed up the concept of TACOS , TACOS,& MORE TACOS? How long did it last? Did it outlast the chihuahua on TV who would beg, “¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!
Another reason why I took notice of this sign is because it’s about food.
During entrepreneurial flights of fancy, I sometimes find myself fantasizing about great business ideas that would flourish in downtown Windsor — especially in these times of financial instability in my industry and at my company. The ideas often involve food.
Years ago, after reading a New York Times story about a restaurant in that city, I came up with the concept of Nonna’s Ristorante. It would be an Italian restaurant with true, homemade cooking — literally by nonna — where the chefs would rotate. One week, it would be northern Italian cuisine with a nonna from the Friuli region working her magic in the kitchen, the next week the best of Sicily served up by an Palermo emigrant, the following week Tuscan delights with a nice chianti.
Another time, I wondered why the popular Windsor’s Penalty Box didn’t set up a kiosk in downtown Windsor and sell their wildly popular chicken delights. Imagine all those hungry young clubbers satisfying their appetites after a late night drinking and doing who knows what else!
Then there’s my wife Lori’s delicious meatballs.
“We should set up a store in downtown Windsor and sell these,” I said one evening during a mouthful. (It sounded more like: “Be shawed shetup astar in doemitwon Woondsher n shell dees.”)
See, real Italian meatballs shouldn’t be silver dollar size. You should be able to seize them with a fork and eat them in more than one bite.
Lori’s meatballs would be even bigger when they went on sale — giant six-inch mooshy monsters — to rival the craving-satisfying Chicken Delights.
What would we could call it? Ay yes: MEATBALLS, MEATBALLS, & MORE MEATBALLS.
Part of “Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs” series. Click here to see more.
Claudio D’Andrea has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazine and online publications for 30 years. You can read his stuff on LinkedIn and Medium.com and follow him on Twitter.
