I love donuts. I have always loved donuts. Jelly donuts. Boston creme. Bavarian creme. Bear claws. Glazed. Vanilla sprinkled. All of them.
I used to go every Sunday morning to Caputo's bakery and get a dozen jelly donuts for Sunday breakfast. Perfection. We had a few independent donut shops around that would make a much bigger variety. There was one on 9th St and 5th Avenue in Park Slope that I went to for forty years. In our drinking days we would go to the all night Burger King on Fourth Avenue and get a bunch of burgers when we were wasted. Then we would stop at the donut shop and get two dozen. One for the hangover and one to eat on the way home. Man those were delicious greasy donuts.
Sometime in the 1990's you started to see a bunch of Dunkin' Donuts come around. They were the first big chain to open on Court St. Everybody said it was the precursor of big chains coming in to push out the Mom and Pop. They were right. The joint on 9th St closed. Or more accurately became a falafel stand. They became ubiquitous and you saw them all over the place. Well not anymore. They are closing over 450 stores.
These stores are principally in gas stations. Now that sucks because when you are traveling it is always great to see a name you know and trust when you want to get something. Lots of people out of work and a lot of people without donuts.
I call that a tragedy.
I blame Black Lives Matters. By defunding the police department they are destroying a huge part of the donut shops target demographic. Along with the communist governors closing businesses with the bogus Kung Flu bullshit how can the poor donut survive.
God bless the Donut. Please Jesus preserve it. I can give George Washington and protection from the criminals but please Jesus take the wheel and save our Donuts!
I beg you!
5 comments:
I'll take part of the blame - I had a couple of donuts back in 1991 but none since. You can pin the failure of chain donut shops on me. Yep, even Krispy Kreme.
Know what you mean.
We had Horn & Hardart, thanks to my Aunt Mary.
There were no donut shops around where I grew up until Dunkin Donuts opened near my high school. Then there were constant "off-campus" trips over there by pretty much everyone. The Dunkin Fiends got all of us kids hooked and we needed our sugar fix. That Boston Cream donut brings back vague memories probably obscured by the diabetic coma haze. Small donut shops are (were?) more of an east coast thing. I saw a lot of them when I lived in Providence and later in Boston. Bakery waft is a nice thing as you're walking down the street but the stuff is too sweet for me and I've never gotten hooked again. Krispy Kreme just looks like insanity - too much!
I too have not had donuts in a long long time. Krispy Kremes were the last. Unfortunately for them, just after they started to expand the carb free dieting kicked in. That drove Hostess bakery also into bankruptcy. The link also says Starbucks is closing 400 locations. I've never been in a Starbucks and never had one of their products. Not a boycott thing with me just cost
conscious.
There is a rich history of small biz donut shops in SoCal. Dunkin is trying to put them out of biz. Damn shame.
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