I drank at Taco Bell last night. It’s a fun story, at least for people who associate drinking and Taco Bell but have never been able to do both quite at the same time. I put a picture of my frozen Mountain Dew and tequila drink on my Facebook page; it got a moderate amount of likes.
You, too, will drink at Taco Bell, assuming you are a person who sees the irony in it, when the Wicker Park storefront opens Sept. 22 as the first in the country to serve alcohol. You’ll probably put it on Facebook, or on Snapchat if you’re under 25, and people will ‘like’ it, or do whatever people do on Snapchat when they like something.
But once everyone in Chicago has had his or her one drink at Taco Bell, here’s the question: Who is ever going back to Taco Bell to drink?
At first, the idea of a Taco Bell with a liquor license seemed smart enough. Catch the after-bar diner, who will order a rummed-up frozen fruit punch with his Cheesy Gordita Crunch; the drink, about halfway through, may prompt another trip to the cash register for a Crunchwrap Supreme, which will be washed down by the last of the punch. Better order a beer, which calls for a second Cheesy Gordita Crunch … It’s “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” the 21-plus version.
But then it came out that the restaurant’s serving booze until only 10 p.m. weekdays, and midnight weekends — a solid two hours before anyone who isn’t day drinking or from the suburbs is at Taco Bell.
So, who is the market for a boozy Taco Bell in an urban neighborhood, once the glut of drinking-at-Taco-Bell photos on Facebook becomes worse than the ice bucket challenge, and everyone’s over it? Maybe your friend comes to town and wants in? Maybe your kid loves Taco Bell, and now great, you can drink? Or maybe there are crowds of people in Wicker Park who genuinely like neon frozen drinks and I’ll be booed and force-fed a quesarito and a single-serving screw-top bottle of wine at a regular dinner hour?
Taco Bell has been there for me enough times in my life that I hope so. But I’m skeptical.
As I write this, another comment just popped up on my Facebook post, from fellow writer Ted McClelland: “This makes no sense. Nobody goes to Taco Bell who isn’t already drunk.”
‘Like.’
mconrad@tribpub.com
Twitter @marissa_conrad
