People come in and out of our lives all the time like the rocks that wash up on the beach. Some you pick up, take home and learn their names, so that you might not forget their beauty. Others, you see for only a moment, in all their glory shining under the crystal waters. Before you can even reach out to grab them, though, they’re gone with the tide, and you soon forget what they looked like, except for the simple fact that they were wonderful.
Pancheros is a fast-food restaurant that serves burritos and burrito bowls with ingredients of your choice, much like Chipotle and QDOBA, except for the fact that it is way better than those places. Up until the end of the last winter semester, there was a Pancheros, only five minutes from where I live. I am certain most people will remember it, seeing as it was a popular spot for late-night meals and post-party snacks. It may seem like it was just a restaurant, but it was more than that. It was a place where people gathered after long nights spent together or hours-long sessions of studying. People often ambled in after going bar-hopping on weekend nights, and those with late-night cravings took advantage of their 2 a.m. closing time. Now, the building where Pancheros used to stand is a pile of dust under some construction equipment.
Two weeks before the closure of the Pancheros on South University Avenue, I went in for lunch, as I was known to do. I was a bona fide regular at that Pancheros, so much so that most of the employees knew my order by heart: a burrito with rice, steak and queso. (I know it’s a weird order, OK?) When I was paying for my food, one of the workers, a long-time staff member who had a serious demeanor that I had grown acquainted with, told me the bad news.
They had been bought out by another company that wanted to build a high-rise, and they would be closing in just two weeks. I was the only one who knew.
I probably should have seen the revelation coming. Other stores on the same street had been closing one by one in the weeks prior like they were succumbing to a slow-moving plague, but I still didn’t want to believe it. There was a lot to love in the little place and a lot of good memories there.
In my first couple years of college, I had trouble making friends. Meeting people was hard, and convincing them to stick around felt insurmountable. When I finally managed to make some friends from a weekly Dungeons & Dragons game, we would always go to Pancheros after our sessions. We would sit and talk for hours while we ate burritos and refilled our drinks, usually well past midnight. Pancheros had the atmosphere of a casual place where things like that could happen, where you could lose track of time just discussing your passions without reservation.
Thanks to the desirable pricing and convenient location, I was at Pancheros a lot. I also came to know the staff. There was the manager, who was usually running all over the place and fairly serious, but seemed well-intentioned. She probably put more effort into running that restaurant than I have ever put into any single job in my entire life. There was one employee who always asked about how I was doing, how my job was going and what exams I had coming up. They always greeted me as soon as I walked in, before I could even see who was working behind the counter. There was an excitable guy who always worked the late-night shifts, and he was always entrancing people as he made their burritos. There was an older man who struggled to wrap burritos but always seemed very earnest.
I moved back to my hometown for the summer before the restaurant closed, but I still remember the final time I went in for a steak-rice-queso burrito. I had planned to say goodbye, but none of the people I usually talked to were working that day. In my final moments with the space that had done so much for me, that had helped me connect with new friends and shown me the kindness random strangers can have, I simply ordered one last meal and walked away in silence, knowing that I would never see that deep orange interior again.
The thing that made it sting so much more was what was coming to replace Pancheros — yet another high-rise. The Metropolitan is taking the place of my favorite restaurant, totally destroying any community to be found. There is already ample housing no one can afford (a simple Google search of “Ann Arbor high-rise” will demonstrate that). One more complex full of apartments only the richest renters will ever see the insides of is going to replace the community built up by not just Pancheros, but the entirety of that South University strip. They didn’t just wash it all away — they prevented anyone from experiencing anything wonderful there ever again.
What I miss most about Pancheros isn’t really the food. Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious and well-priced, but my true despair is for the people. The people whose names I never learned, the ones who seemed to only exist behind the counter, who were always excited to see me again. The people I connected with, sitting in a booth drinking a watered-down Mr. Pibb at two in the morning. Before I even realized it, before I could grasp at it, the world I had been part of was washed away.
What I regret is that I never asked them their names. I got to keep the friends I spent the long nights with, but I will probably never see any of the workers who were so kind to me again. They always went out of their way to ask me about my night, and I was just some guy with a really weird order who came in almost every other day. I wish I had asked them their names, so that I might remember them better, so that they didn’t slip away with the tide.
It’s easy to take the things you have for granted. If you care about something, make an effort to capture it. It won’t stay forever, so do what you can while you can. Be kind to those around you, because the next time you go looking for them, they may already be gone. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends behind the counter, and I’ll always be mad at myself for that.
You can’t keep every rock that washes up on the beach, and that’s OK. Just make sure that, before it washes away, you really take it in. Remember why it meant so much to you, so that you know why saying goodbye hurts so much.
Senior Arts Editor Hudsen Mazurek can be reached at hudsen@umich.edu.
