This is just goddamned adorable
It started with some hard-shell tacos and a dream. Glen Bell thought up crunchy, Americanized taco shells, making the traditional Mexican chow more fast food friendly. In 1962, Señor Bell opened his very first Taco Bell in a modest Mission-style building in Downey, California, a city rich with fast-food history (it is also home to the world’s oldest operating McDonald’s restaurant, which opened in 1953).
Today, there are roughly 6,000 Taco Bell restaurants in the U.S. including the run-down, crappy one across the street from my house in Eagle Rock. Now, the small cinderblock structure in Downey where mass-market Mexican food arguably began, faces an uncertain future. Although the structure hasn’t held a Taco Bell for close to two decades, it has played host to a number of other taco joints, the most recent being local chain “Seafood and Tacos Raul”. After that restaurant closed last year, the Downey Conservancy became concerned that the building was under threat of demolition.
#SaveTacoBell at least the Downey Taco Bell. You can tear down the one in my neighborhood instead.