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Peak bagel hits West Roxbury
By adamg on Mon, 07/21/2014 - 5:58pm
Bagelville on the VFW Parkway, just past the Dedham line and the McDonald's, is now open, joining Brueggers and Panera Bread in stuffing West Roxburyians with round doughy goodness.
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Comments
Yet another place opening
Yet another place opening before Stash's in West Roxbury...
Bagel Event Horizon
Peak bagel? I don't think so... We are merely approaching the Bagel Event Horizon, where it will become economically non-viable to open anything other than bagel shops in every storefront....
We came perilously close in the early 90's, when Einsteins, Finagle, and Brueggers were opening stores faster than a cake-fueled five-year-old opens birthday presents, Au Bon Pain and Dunkies expanded big into bagels as a defensive move (and a weak defense it was), toasters were removed so they could sell the things even faster, spreads were made in flavors and colors that no human should ever consider putting in their mouth, and all concerned ended up with cream cheese on their neckties.
(miss you, Douglas Adams...)
Bagels vs. pizza in West Roxbury
I was explaining Peak Bagel theory to the kidlet who, wise beyond her years, said something like "No, West Roxbury is nowhere near Peak Bagel. Peak Pizza, yes, but Peak Bagel, no."
Which raises an interesting question: Can Peak X be different than Peak Y? I'd posit that West Roxbury has lower Peak Bagel than Peak Pizza given that there are only so many people in the neighborhood who could possibly want to buy bagels that don't come frozen.
Unrelated
Adam, I'm in Montreal right now and visiting the site. The adhost for the upper of the two square ads seems to be a rather...risque one. I've seen several ads for what are basically porn services (the ads are not explicit but rather borderline), and I've also had one pageload where I was redirected to install some malware (purporting to be an updated Chrome video player).
About 50% of the time nothing loads there at all (or at least no images anyway).
I don't know if you have control over this but I thought I'd point it out. I assume your ad network hands off the ads to partners based on regionality, so it may just be the fact that I'm in Canada right now.
If you need me to take some screenshots, let me know.
Porn
Screenshots, yes please!
actually noticed the same
actually noticed the same thing at work earlier & im right outside boston
Thanks and my apologies
No screenshot needed because I know what the problem is. I've finally found a way, I think, to make sure mobile users do not see any ads coming through Google Ads (because that's ultimately where the problem is). But it's a rickety system and it seems every time I thinker with anything having to do with templates on the site (like I was doing yesterday), I have to remember to reset the template cache (which I forgot to do) or the ads could come back (which they did). Before I started typing this, I checked on my (granted, Android) phone, and saw no ads. Obviously, I need to figure out why some things aren't working right here so I don't have to rely on such a Rube Goldbergesque system.
It's not mobile for me
I don't know if maybe you were speaking to something else, but I was on hotel wifi on my laptop, so not browsing mobile.
Montreal Bagels
More importantly, will any of the bagels in West Roxbury be half as good as a Montreal bagel? I'd prefer one real bagel shop to ten so-so ones.
And I don't agree that every single ad is a reflection of your viewing habits, although some are.
Yo Porn guys.
You are looking at reflections of your own browsing habits.
And I'm not sure we need or want to know about them.
Modern web "Nagvertising" just looks at the most common elements you surf and makes sure to provide you with more of same.
You all must look at a lot of porn to just have that crap show up. I usually mess with nagvertising by clicking on odd things like obscure building part stuff at Granger
Adam has little real control over it.
Web ad serving involves some host like Google that earnestly tries to match up surfing patterns on the assumption you'll be more likely to click.
If you clicked through enough to hit malware, you really need to give it a rest or find more intelligent ways to reject cookies and mask identity.
I basically ignore ALL advertising usually.
Although, when I want to check something I actually plan to buy like another tera byte external drive, I'll click through from UHub, just to help Adam get a bit more pittance from the lopsided ad serve deal.
I wish it were that easy
There are two problems going on here:
There are some affiliate scamsters out there who are buying ads through Google that don't just advertise apps in the Apple and Google stores, they redirect people's browsers to them. It's been going on for months and yet it doesn't stop, sigh - and it has nothing to do with the user's browsing habits.
I have two separate template sets on UHub and software that is supposed to detect mobile devices and use the non-Google Ads version to those devices. It's not working right (seems to have a particular problem with Chrome for some reason), so mobile users keep getting the templates with ads and so the redirects.
The first one I can't control. The second one, I keep thinking I can control. At least as of a couple minutes ago, it's holding.
My friend at All About Jazz has handled those issues.
I'll query him later and shoot you an e mail.
You are supposed to have settings in these platforms but some ad servers do slip up.
He typically eliminates the usual troublesome assortment.
You are getting those strange yap ads with voices that are widely despised.
And something keeps trying to download a video player accelerator java thing I don't want.
The selections will reflect browsing but may not be overt.
I use Chrome exclusively but I only have a desk top for my online stuff.
I mainly see reflections of activity when I'm looking up a purchase.
Yesterday it was wondering if I wanted to buy Edward Rose Snow books after I mentioned them to bibliotequetress last week.
I've heard there are exploitable app flaws on the mobile side but I'm clueless about that.
Nice...but...
This was actually a brand new system I was using. No cookies, no logins.
And think what you want, but no, I don't surf porn. Call it denial if you want, I don't particularly care.
Panera
Those things Panera sells are not Bagels -- maybe Brea-gels?
OK, bagel-like
Bagel-like bread substances.
Bread donuts
Bread donuts
Great lox spread
Stopped by for lunch today, which in my case was a marble bagel with lox spread.
The lox spread is much better than the equivalent at Bruegger's. Unlike at Bruegger's, where you get what seems to be regular cream cheese with lox scent spritzed on, Bagelville gives you something that is pinkish from all the visible lox bits that have been mixed in. And they're more generous with it, at least in these opening days (almost wasn't even able to get it; the counter person did not seem to grasp the concept of "lox spread" until I pointed to their menu on the wall, although, granted, it's just their second day open).
As for the bagels, well, they're big.