One of the most unusual heists in America seems to be unfolding at Taco Bell | Hacker News Reader

One of the most unusual heists in America seems to be unfolding at Taco Bell

sfgate.com

106 pointsturtlegrids38 comments

> “I’m real nervous about this,” said Blake Boesky, an eBay seller and former “international lotion salesman” who recently got his hands on some of the paintings

Missed opportunity to describe this guy's hands, which I'm certain are well moisturised.

That Westlake Taco Bell has had quite a life.

* It burned down in 2007[0]

* a car ran into it and set it on fire in 2014[1]

* aforementioned art heist

* 3 (three!) employees shot and killed an armed robber and another got away in 2017[2]

* a drunk driver somehow lawn darted in front of it after hitting its sign in 2021[3]

Lots of other stuff over the years I can’t even remember at this point, but it’s strangely a hot spot despite being located in a fairly affluent neighborhood. Of course, I imagine most Taco Bells are.

0 - https://www.cleveland19.com/story/5919348/westlake-taco-bell... 1 - https://fox8.com/news/car-crashes-into-westlake-taco-bell-sp... 2 - https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2017/09/armed_robber_fatally... 3 - https://fox8.com/news/westlake-police-suspected-impaired-dri...

From the title, I was expecting this to be about some new strategy invented by private equity vultures.

I’m happy to learn that it wasn’t

Given the news about Red Lobster, I was thinking the same. YUM brands wouldn't divest Taco Bell, though.

beyond bed bath and beyond

There is a much older Taco Bell grift: the charity coin drop game. Drop a coin onto the bottom step of an acrylic spiral staircase in a little water tank and you get a free menu item based on the denomination of the coin. It was designed so that if you landed on the last 2-3 steps you had a chance, but any higher and the centrifugal force of walking it down the steps would send the coin off the edge. It was very random with poor odds.

But eventually employees got sick of changing nasty change water and left it empty. The physics were a little different, but it seemed to be sufficiently difficult. Rather than wafting around, the further the coin dropped the more likely it was to bounce off a step. The much more deterministic coin movement enabled a new strategy: walk the coin backwards off of the first step and catch the coin directly on the final step. After ~$1 of practice, I had years of 5¢ tacos.

Man against the odds. Well played :)

had to look this up to understand how that worked: https://youtu.be/ypyGP6kSa-Y

(also wanted to see one with water, but couldn't find any)

> I had years of 5¢ tacos.

You are the epitome of truly living más.

I had my nickel land squarely on its edge once. The employee at the time just gave me whatever I wanted on merit.

Sometimes quality rises to the top and people notice. Not often, but sometimes

Life is like a septic tank. It's the really big chunks that rise to the top.

With the words "heist" and "Taco Bell", I thought for sure it was going to be a repeat of Operation Soda Steal.

I have never even seen a Taco Bell IRL and yet I would consider hanging a reproduction of one of these paintings because of the story. And they're not really ugly either.

Very odd to refer to "Baja Blasts" in the plural. Like saying mountain dews

Should be Bajas Blast, like Attornies General

A six-pack of Mountains Dew

six mountains dewing

five bajas blasting

four attournies generalising

three jokes fading

two eyes closing

one final line

Don't forget witches three and Airpods Pro.

> Attornies General

How archaic! This seems wrong and broken, and surely in a generation or two it will no longer be considered proper.

I'm glad the collective might of society and culture, much like a river changing course, can mutate language.

Modern example: AirPods Pro.

This discussion being AirPod Prose.

Birds of Prey.

> This seems wrong and broken

Does it? "Attorney" is the noun. "General" is the adjective. You pluralize the noun, not the adjective.

As a military rank, "general" is already a noun and you say "army generals", so why not "attorney generals"?

I think it's the word order, borrowed from French, that's scrutinized here. I don't know if that makes it "broken" but it is a special case with only a handful of peers.

A native English construction would be general attorneys.

This reminds me of my favorite Onion article: "William Safire Orders Two Whoppers Junior"

https://www.theonion.com/william-safire-orders-two-whoppers-...

I have stated this case before for Doctors Pepper

I'm actually OK with Baja Blasts, but not so much with "Taco Bells"... Tacos Bell? (keep in mind that Bell is a proper noun, the name of the company's founder, of which there is only one)

“I don’t want to get anybody in trouble, but the gentlemen I purchased it from renovates Taco Bells”

Crunchwraps Supreme is clearly the plural.

Why? Those two are the same to my ESL sensibilities: one Taco Bell, two Taco Bells; one Mountain Dew, two Mountain Dews. "Bell" may be a name of a specific person, but that's arguably subsumed by the "Taco Bell" being the name of a company. That may be a proper name in context[0] of all local companies, but once you use it to refer to restaurants - as in, "Taco Bell restaurant" with "restaurant" implied, then why wouldn't plural be "Taco Bells"? One ${opaque name}, two ${opaque name}s, etc.

Same with Mountain Dew - one Mountain Dew[ drink], two Mountain Dew[ drink]s...

EDIT:

The answer here seems to agree with my thinking: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/190023/why-are-n....

[0] - There are no truly unique names; there are only names referring to a specific entity in the context they're being used in.

It can't be tacos bell because Taco Bell is the name of the restaurant, Tacos Bell would be Tacos of Bell, not the same meaning.

As opposed to Taco’s Bell, which would be the Bell of Taco.

There's "Bells Line of Road" in Sydney, which goes to a town called Bell. Why it's a "Line of Road" instead of just a "Road" or a "Line" remains a mystery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bells_Line_of_Road

Both of those seem idiomatic to me. English generally marks the noun as plural. Blasts of the Baja type. Blast is the noun, Baja the adjective. Dew from the mountain. Dew is generally uncountable, but referring to a serving of a soda as a countable noun doesn't seem grating here.

You know, if they sold cans of Baja Blast I could see it, but I think it being a fountain drink makes it feel weird. Then again, if they said "Fantas" maybe it would be less weird.

Maybe it's just me. Language is weird.

> You know, if they sold cans of Baja Blast I could see it

They do, actually.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mountain-Dew-Baja-Blast-Tropical-...

I knew someone who decorated their apartment with Panera artwork after the location that they worked at closed down. They told me that it otherwise would’ve been thrown away. Pretty nice artwork all in all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com