Cochon du Détroit

Rest in peace, Dearborn Heights Ponderosa 

My local Ponderosa, the last Ponderosa in Metro Detroit, quietly closed for good a few weeks ago. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. Over the past year or so, meal prices had crept up while the generally poor quality of the food remained the same. The building that was at least 40 years old and was originally a Bonanza Steakhouse continued to slowly deteriorate. I imagine the owners couldn’t justify the cost of rehabbing the aging structure that housed a business with a razor thin profit margin, and closed, just like every other Ponderosa and Bonanza location within a 100 mile radius. Just as with the abrupt closure and eventual demolition of the nearby Dearborn Sign of the Beefcarver last year, the loss of my local Ponderosa served as a reminder that I should visit the local broken chains while I still can.

In 1948, before decades of economic turmoil, crime, and urban decay gave the city of Detroit and surrounding communities the negative connotations they have today, it was a pretty nice place to live. Thanks to years of government contracts during World War Two, the Detroit-area based Big Three automakers, and a handful of smaller independent manufacturers were flush with cash and churning out new vehicles for a car-hungry and equally cash-rich American public who hadn’t been able to buy new vehicles during the war. The people of Metro Detroit were gainfully employed by the booming automotive industry, and drive-in restaurants were the latest craze, perhaps thanks in part to so many Americans acquiring their long-awaited new vehicles after riding out a depression and a world war. One of the many new drive ins to open in this era was Bill’s Drive-In, on what was at the time called Jim Daly road in Dearborn Heights, Michigan.

"Je suis Napoléon! Grogne grogne!"

The proprietor, Bill Ihlenfeldt, quickly changed the name to the Daly Drive-In, taking the name from the street where his business was located, and a few members of his extended family soon opened Daly Drive-Ins of their own in nearby communities, adopting the slogan, “Get the Daly habit.” The newly minted chain also picked up an odd mascot, a cartoon pig dressed as Napoleon. A total of 17 Daly Drive ins opened in Metro Detroit between 1948 and 1974, but just as Napoleon found himself late in life, stripped of his empire, and exiled to Elba, the Daly Drive-In chain slowly shed locations as the local economy declined and drive-ins fell out of favor. Since 2003, Daly Restaurants has operated a just a single location on Plymouth Road in Livonia, Michigan. I stopped in for lunch over the weekend to visit Pig-Napoleon in exile and see what kind of experience I could have at the last Daly Drive-In. 

Business in the front...

...Googie in the back.

I’ve probably driven past the Livonia Daly Drive-In 50 times without noticing it. It’s housed in a nondescript brick building marked with a subdued sign. It was only after pulling into the parking lot that I noticed the vintage wavy sheetmetal of the drive-in canopy extending from the back of the building. No one seemed to be ordering from their cars on the gray early December day of my visit, so I headed inside to the dining room where I was greeted by dim lighting, red checkered Formica tabletops, and carpet with a pattern that reminded me of Space Invaders for the Atari 2600. Were it not for the large salad bar in the center of the dining room, the space could pass for the basement bar and rumpus room of any number of Metro Detroit homes built before 1980. I selected a booth near the back and studied the extensive laminated menu. 

Drop down, increase speed, and reverse direction!

All hail Livonia, the town I didn't make up!

Nicely printed menu. 

The definitive offerings seemed to be centered around “Daly Made Chili” and the Daily Burger, a hamburger dressed in a proprietary sauce, and I mean a hamburger. No cheeseburgers are offered on the menu, at least not on the Daily Drive-In's website. When my server showed up, I ordered a Daly Burger, a chili-covered Junior Dog, (the Junior Dog is a standard size-hot dog. The larger Daly Dog is a footlong.) a chocolate malt and access to the salad bar in an effort to sample a cross section of the menu. 

Any lettuce you want, so long as it's iceberg

After ordering, I went to assemble my salad, and found a salad bar that made me wonder why they had bothered. While I live a good retro salad bar like the ones at Rax and York Steak House, the one at the Daly Drive-In was a bit of a letdown. Only iceberg lettuce was available with just a handful of other fresh vegetables. The remainder of the salad bar’s chilled slots were occupied by potato and pasta salads and other various analogs that I didn’t bother sampling. 

I should go back sometime and eat several bowls of chili. 

I worked my way to the end of the bar where a cauldron of Daly Made Chili and the soup of the day simmered. I opted for chili after noting the soup du jour was cream of something I couldn’t immediately identify. I returned to my table with a meager salad and bowl brimming with chili in hand, and was greeted by the malt I had ordered, which I was pleased to find was perfectly blended with an ideal balance of chocolate and malt flavors. I picked at my salad of iceberg lettuce, tomato chunks, and red onions covered in Italian dressing while waiting for my chili to cool. 

The view from my table, dark wood and checkered Formica as far as the eye can see

As far as cities on the periphery of the Midwest go, most tend to think of Cincinnati of having the richest chili tradition, with its thin, savory chili used as a sauce to top spaghetti and hot dogs under mounds of shredded cheddar, but just like Cincinnati, Detroit has a also style of chili all it’s own that is distinctive from its more pervasive Tex-Mex cousin. Like the chili of The Queen City, Motor City chili is heavily influenced by Greek immigrants who served it in their restaurants, giving it a decidedly Mediterranean flavor profile in the process. Detroit chili is thicker and milder than its Cincinnati counterpart, but its flavor is no less complex. It’s more often than not eaten on hot dogs, at “Coney Island” diners often operated by the descendants of the Greek immigrants who conceived Detroit chili in the first place, but no one will look at you funny if you order a bowl of the stuff either. My bowl of Daly Made chili had the flavor and texture of the definitive Detroit-style chili, with the welcome addition of beans, making it alone well worth the price of the otherwise lackluster salad bar. 

My burger and coney dog arrived just as I was finishing my chili and losing what little interest I had in my salad. I examined the burger first, noting its quarter pound patty on a steamed sesame seed bun. It was topped only with the Daly Drive-In’s proprietary sauce which resembled salsa. My first bite yielded a flavor that was decidedly un-salsa like. It reminded me of pickle relish in texture, but with more than a hint of horseradish than pickles. I could immediately tell why there was nothing else on the burger. This was all the topping it needed. It was immensely flavorful and distinctive, unlike anything else I’ve encountered at any burger joint, including Miner-Dunn, who top their higher quality burgers with a lower quality relish. I even caught myself wishing that the Daly-Drive in sauce was what topped the West Coast style Big Boy instead of the glorified ketchup they call red relish. 

No sauce is more special than this. 

I moved onto the coney dog and found it topped with more Daly Made chili, this time without beans, and the yellow mustard and minced onions that are standard equipment on all coney dogs rolling off the assembly line in the Motor City. Predictably, it tasted like a Detroit style coney dog, but an especially well-executed one, with great blend of classically bold flavors and distinctive textures, all on a bun that didn’t fall apart as I ate it. I honestly don’t remember the last time I’d had a Detroit dog that good. 

The Daily Drive-In is my new favorite spot for Detroit style coney dogs. 

As I was settling my bill and walking back out to my car, it occurred to me that what made the Daly Drive-In good in December of 2019 were likely the same things that made the first one a hit in the summer of ‘48, the special sauce sauce, the chili, and the shakes. The salad bar wasn’t good because it didn’t have to be. It’s the classic drive-in food that gets people in the Daly habit and has for the past six decades, as drive-ins have become increasingly irrelevant and fortunes changed for the people of Metro Detroit. The salad bar was surely added in the '70s or '80s when salad bars were fashionable, and today only serves as a reminder of that time, when the poverty, crime, and blight that became closely associated with the city as the booming postwar economy faded, breaking Metro Detroit’s native drive-in chain in the process. 

Like all the places I visit, the Daly Drive-In has stood the test of time and survived against all odds. Today it serves as a window to a different time to weirdos like me who appreciate such things and as a fun place to grab a decent burger and a shake for regular unpretentious people who don't feel the need to write flowery prose about outdated burger joints or memorialize recently departed steakhouses. 

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Not Fricking Anybody

 

I was preschool-aged when our local McDonald’s moved from its 1970s-built dark brick mansard on Main Street to a new building on the north side of town, near the Walmart where land was quickly being developed. The old McDonald’s building was purchased by the city and is still in use today as offices for the public utilities department, still looking very much like it did when it was a McDonald’s. Ever since that McDonald’s became a municipal building, I’ve been fascinated by buildings with distinctive, recognizable corporate image architecture being reused for entirely new purposes. I’m not the only person with this fascination, as the Not Fooling Anybody website and subreddit, which are devoted to pictures of hastily-converted fast food and other retail buildings, came into existence to cater to people with the same interest.

I’ve explored this interest here on Broken Chains in the past, by both documenting the former Taco Tico buildings in and around Lexington, Kentucky and by going hunting on Google Earth for former G.D. Ritzy’s buildings. I was recently inspired to explore my interest further following one of my many trips down I-75 in Ohio.

I happened to make a pit stop in Bowling Green, at an exit I had never previously explored. On my way back to the highway, I drove past a Fricker’s, and had to stop to take pictures of it.

The Fricker's in Bowling Green, Ohio...

Fricker’s is a regional chain of sports bars mainly in Western Ohio. They seem to be doing reasonably well, and do not meet my definition of a broken chain. Likewise, I’m not a massive fan of sports, bars, or sports bars, so their food and atmosphere are of little interest to me. My interest in Fricker’s is due to their expansion strategy, which seems to consist mainly of converting existing structures with few exterior changes beyond a coat of red paint and the addition of some stripey awnings. 

...would have originally looked a lot like the still-operational Dutch Pantry in Williamstown, West Virginia.

The Fricker’s I passed in Bowling Green was housed in a Dutch Pantry building which seemed to have had minimal modifications. It even still sported the trapezoidal Dutch Pantry sign frame. A little Google Street View research revealed two additional Fricker’s housed in former Dutch Pantry buildings. Unsurprisingly, the other two Dutch Pantry Fricker’s are located along I-75 as well, specifically in Perrysburg and Findlay. Dutch Pantry’s strategy was (and still is!) to cater to travelers, so most, if not all Dutch Pantry locations were built along major highways. 

Another Dutch Pantry Fricker's in Findlay, Ohio...

...and a third in Perrysburg, Ohio

Having found multiple Fricker’s locations in old Dutch Pantry buildings, I was intrigued. I had to see if any other husks of failed chain restaurants had been assimilated by Fricker’s. Naturally, I sat down and looked at all 25 Fricker’s on Google Street View, because that kind of thing is my idea of a fun Saturday night. I found a good many nondescript Fricker’s locations set up in strip malls, but roughly as many operating out of the buildings that once housed outlets of broken chains.

Located in Adrian, Michigan's only Fricker's is a former Ponderosa. 

Huber Heights, Ohio is also home to a Frickerosa.

While the facade of the Miamisburg Fricker's makes you remember not only The Alamo, but Lone Star Steakhouse as well. 

I see a quite a few empty and reused Ponderosas in my travels. At this point, they outnumber the operational ones, so it’s not terribly surprising to see a pair of Fricker’s locations housed in former Ponderosa buildings. Likewise, all but four of the 265 Lone Star Steak House locations have closed, so it’s not terribly surprising to see one painted red and serving as a Fricker’s. 

Look close at the tall trapezoid on the left of the Middletown, Ohio Fricker's. It once held a Chi-Chi's sign... 

...as did this Fricker's in Springfield, Ohio. 

Of all the Fricker’s locations I found, though, I was most delighted by the locations in Middletown and Springfield, Ohio. Both are obvious former Chi-Chi’s, still sporting the prominent vestiges of Chi-Chi’s signature adobe architecture under a fresh coat of Fricker’s red paint. (Sadly, there are no Chi-Chi’s locations left in North America, though Hormel still sells a line of Chi-Chi’s-branded grocery items here. There are still Chi-Chi’s locations open in Europe, and you better believe I’ll eat at Chi-Chi’s if I’m ever in Luxembourg.) Well-preserved Chi-Chi’s buildings are becoming increasingly rare. Most have been demolished or renovated beyond recognition, and I think their light touch is with their buildings is what has drawn me to Fricker’s.

When the larger chains take over an existing location, they’ll often erect new facades and erase any hint of the building’s original purpose. While in Fricker’s case it’s more likely due to a limited construction budget than an attempt at historical preservation, they walk a delicate line, adding their own corporate image to a building without significantly altering its original shape, thereby preserving its connection to a struggling, defunct, or otherwise diminished brand.

I’ve never set foot in a Fricker’s, and I probably never will, but I hold them in higher regard than I do other sports bar chains, which I also avoid, simply because they give historic chain restaurant buildings a second chance at life when most other chains would heavily modify or raze them. In a time when such buildings are becoming endangered, it’s nice to see them getting regular use with a moderately high degree of preservation.

Below are a few Fricker’s locations I could not definitively identify. I’ve captioned them with their location, and my best guess as to what I think they might have originally been. Please comment below or email me if you can tell me if any of my guesses are right or wrong. 

2599 W Michigan St, Sidney, Ohio
I think this may be a former Ryan's Steakhouse. What say you, dear reader?

An anonymous contributor tells me this was previously a location of CJ's Highmarks, a local chain in Western Ohio. 

1580 Goodman Ave, Cincinnati, Ohio
This looks like a former Steak and Ale to me. Who can confirm or tell me different?

Edit: Mike from Houston Historic Retail tells me this is a former Cambridge Inn Cafeteria

8850 Governors Hill Dr, Cincinnati, OH
This one has me feeling pretty stumped, but I get a vague Joe's Crab Shack vibe from it. I'm probably wrong, but who knows what it actually is?

Edit: Multiple sources tell me this building was originally a Cooker restaurant.

Also, don’t forget to like the Broken Chains Facebook page to see when the blog has been updated. I also post a bonus picture every now and then.

Edit: My head Lucky Steer Correspondent, Map Cat, shared a link to this grain-tastic 2007 vintage Street View image of the Richmond, Idiana Fricker's that shows the Fricker's sign in an old Lucky Steer sign frame, meaning that the Richmond, Indiana Fricker's is likely a former Lucky Steer. 

Tiny Narratives

In gathering experiences to share here, I encounter a good many interesting phenomena that fit the Broken Chains theme, but for various reasons, do not warrant an entire dedicated blog post. One of my favorite podcasts is 99% Invisible, which explores the history and design of the unnoticed elements that shape modern society. The staff of that show run into similar problems when doing their research. Occasionally they find something interesting, but there's not enough to say about it to fill a full episode of their show. In order to share these smaller stories with their listeners, 99% Invisible does an annual "Mini Stories" episode at the end of every year, combining their smaller stories into a viable podcast episode. This post is shamelessly ripping off inspired by the 99% Invisible Mini Stories episodes, and represents my attempt to share my own mini stories tiny narratives. 

Lum's: Home Edition

Following my trip to Ollie's Trolley earlier this year, I got curious about Lum's. Since there are no Lum's restaurants left open, I went online looking for a copycat recipe for their hot dogs steamed in beer. What I found exceeded my expectations. Ollieburger Spices USA is a website run by a former Lum's manager. For a reasonable price, you can purchase authentic Lum's recipes there along with the spice blends used to make Ollieburgers, special Ollie sauce, and the distinctively seasoned Ollie Fries. 

Ollieburger marinade

I decided to use the recipes and spices I bought to host an informal dinner for me and ten of my closest friends. The Ollieburgers I cooked were very close to the ones at the Louisville Ollie's Trolley, and steaming hot dogs in beer is my new favorite way to prepare them. The food was a hit with my friends. It was nice to share a little real life Broken Chains experience with them. I even went on to host a taco night where I served copycat versions of Taco Tico's meat and refried beans a few months later.

What? Don't you like Bonanza?

Until recently, my various adventures saw me in a hyperbolic function, constantly getting nearer to, but never reaching an operating original concept Bonanza Steakhouse. I visited four related Ponderosa Steakhouses one weekend this spring, and later dined at the only operating Bonanza Steak and BBQ, an attempted revamp of the original Bonanza concept. My plans to visit the Lincoln, Illinois Bonanza were thwarted when reports of a roach infestation scared me away, and sadly that location closed a few weeks later. At the time of this post, there are only eight original concept Bonanzas left operating in the continental United States, a mere fraction of Bonanza's one-time imitator and current sister brand Ponderosa, which is still hanging on with around 60 continental U.S. locations. (I say continental US because both Ponderosa and Bonanza are still hugely popular in Puerto Rico.)

I would hang this tray on my living room wall if it were mine...

...and this rug would be on the floor right below it. 

I had to visit an OG Bonanza while I still could, so while on a trip to Minnesota that you'll hear more about in January, I stopped by the Bonanza in St. Cloud, which is still doing a booming business out of an old Bonanza barn-shaped building, not unlike my local Ponderosa which began life as a Bonanza. While I had a wonderful meal in delightfully outdated surroundings, the whole experience wasn't significantly dissimilar from dining at an especially well-run Ponderosa, a chain which I've already discussed at length. Still, if you're looking for buffet dining in the Gopher State, you could do a lot worse than the old Bonanza in St. Cloud.

The food was great, but decidedly Ponderosa-y.

Imitation Sliders

Fast food history is full of imitators. The roast beef boom started by Arby's in the late sixties gave us Rax, as well as countless other forgotten chains like Neba, Heap Big Beef, even Kentucky Beef, a KFC venture. McDonald's early success inspired Sandy's, Henry's Hamburgers, Burger Chef, and Mr. Quick. Even my beloved G.D. Ritzy's shares more than a few similarities with Steak and Shake. Much of American Fast food history can trace its lineage to the original hamburger chain, White Castle which had plenty of imitators of its own, a few of which survive today. White Tower was one of many restaurant chains that sprang up in the 1920s and 1930s seeking to emulate the White Castle model. Royal Castle and Krystal are also examples of White Castle imitators. The folks at White Castle generally tolerated the knockoff chains unless they attempted to expand into existing White Castle territory, which is exactly what White Tower did, resulting in a lawsuit by White Castle, which dragged on for years. The eventual result was that White Tower had to change their building designs and pay royalty fees to White Castle. The chain fell apart in the 1970s, and today there's a single White Tower left open, located in Toledo Ohio. I had lunch there early this year with Bo-Luke Coyvance of Uncle John's Pancake House fame, and found essentially no resemblance to White Castle or the original White Tower concept.

That's a 1970s-era White Tower sign. It was by far the most interesting and authentic thing at the Toledo White Tower.

Rather than a fast food format, it was a full-service restaurant with printed menus and servers waiting tables. The menu was several pages long offering a selection of sandwiches and breakfast foods. I expected the burgers to bear some resemblance to those at White Castle, but found them to be full-sized, round, and completely devoid of caramelized onions. Any ties to the original White Tower chain were gone. A former White Tower in Hamtramck, Michigan operated as Campau Tower for many years before closing. I ate there once on a blind date around 2010, and found the burgers to be authentically small and oniony, if not square. I can't help but think this was the last real White Tower. The last time I was there, they still had the old Campau Tower sign up, with the Tower part being from the original White Tower sign, but these days they sell street tacos, and a second sign in the window reads "Dos Locos Tacos."

Tandy: Falling Slowly

ALIVE IN CAMPBELLSVILLE

I've always meant to cover more retail stores here, but broken chain restaurants are easier to find, and I generally have more to say about them. I've struggled to find retail stores that I'm inspired to write about. Radio Shack, an offshoot of the Tandy corporation, fits the Broken Chains theme nicely. Once a fixture of every mall, most Radio Shack locations closed at the time of the company's bankruptcy in 2015, but a handful of franchised locations remained open, the unlikely survivors of an extinction level event. I encountered one such location in Campbellsville, Kentucky, directly across the street from the last operating Druther's restaurant. I stopped by to check it out after a hearty breakfast at Druther's and found it to be operating both as a Radio Shack and an independent carpet store. The sole employee excused himself from a conversation with another customer shopping for carpet to ask if he could help me. Not looking for anything in particular, and slightly flustered, I asked if he had a car charger for my iPhone. (I didn't need one, but it was the first thing that came to mind that a Radio Shack would be likely to have.) It turned out they didn't have any iPhone car chargers in stock. Without any reason to linger in the store further, I thanked the employee for his time. He returned to his carpet customers and I left, taking a couple surreptitious pictures on my way out. 

When Blue Lights Fade

Just as I perceived Taco Tico and Taco Bell as equals during my early 1990s childhood in Central Kentucky, I saw Walmart and Kmart in much the same way. At the time, Kmart was the undisputed champion of discount stores, and Walmart was still the young up and comer from small-town Arkansas. Each chain had a store at opposite ends of Nicholasville, Kentucky which were roughly the same size, each offering a store full of clothing and homegoods with a few token grocery aisles. I'd get dragged to both stores on the regular as a kid. As the '90s progressed, however, Walmart's presence grew with larger and more numerous stores opening seemingly at every major intersection in and around Lexington, while the aging Kmart stores, most of which were 1970s builds, closed one by one. The Nicholasville Kmart closed its doors right around the time Walmart started building its new Supercenter across town, which remains open today. The Kmart has since been demolished and replaced by a Kroger.

Major suppliers have stopped doing business with Sears and Kmart, fearing that the bankrupt company won't be able to pay for their merchandise. The lack of merchandise has led to shelves that once held electronics being stocked with pillows and mattress covers...

...And bare shelves as beverage distributors stop supplying inventory. 

When I moved to Billings, Montana in 2012, I rediscovered Kmart, preferring to shop at the never-crowded, heavily dated Kmart in town rather than the more modern and popular local Walmart and Target locations. The old Billings Kmart was just as I remembered the Kmart in Nicholasville from two decades earlier. I was a regular there until its closure in 2014 or so. The distinct lack of updates in most of their stores is what attracts me to Kmart. With no budget to modernize stores, most Kmart locations feel exactly as they did 20 or 30 years ago. It's that time capsule feeling that keeps me seeking out Kmarts that are still open for business. 

Operating Kmart locations are increasingly rare specimens, and may soon be extinct. Kmart was bought out of bankruptcy in 2003 by ESL investments, a hedge fund controlled by Eddie Lampert, who became the de facto CEO of Kmart. Not long after Lampert also acquired Sears and merged the two brands, and generally proceeded to mismanage them, resulting in massive financial losses. Lampert has been trying to recoup these losses for a decade or so by selling off company assets little by little, effectively very slowly liquidating the company. Each new financial hardship has brought about a new wave of store closures. Sears Holdings, the company that controls both Sears and Kmart, declared bankruptcy in October.  

Prior to Lampert's takeover, the Kmart corporation, a descendant of the old S.S. Kresge department store chain, was based in Detroit. In fact, the very first Kmart, which opened in 1962 and closed in 2017, is located not far from my metro Detroit home. As a result, Kmart had a significant presence in and around Detroit well into the Lampert era. These days, there are more empty Kmart buildings around than operating ones. With the long term survival of the Kmart and Sears brands as we know them looking increasingly unlikely, I've spent the last few months visiting as many Kmarts as I can, mostly in Michigan, but a few elsewhere as I encounter them. While Sears isn't as close to my heart as Kmart is, I've visited a few of their stores too.  I don't have much to say about the decline of Kmart and Sears that the mainstream press isn't already saying, but I have shopped at, and taken a lot of pictures of their surviving stores this year. I'll close by sharing a few of my Sears/Kmart pictures. 

Warren, Michigan, a former Sears Essentials store

Waterford, Michigan, The brick columns make me think this used to be something else. If you know what it was before it became a Kmart, comment below.

Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, a very nice, modern-feeling store, just up the road from an operating Ben Franklin

Grayling, Michigan, perhaps the last operating unmodified prefab pole barn Kmart

Oscoda, Michigan, I'm told this store started out as a pole barn similar to the one in Grayling before being expanded into its current form.

Clio, Michigan, a '90s build store that's starting to show its age

Marine City, Michigan, wearing the distinctive curved top facade that I refer to as the Kmart tiara. 

Belleville, Michigan, this is the closest Kmart to me. I shop here once every couple of weeks. 

Marshall, Michigan, another '90s Kmart. This one feels the most vibrant of all the stores I've visited. It's pharmacy, and in-store Little Caesars are even still open. 

Grayson, Kentucky, This store is now in the process of closing...

...as is this store in Lake Orion, Michigan

Peru, Indiana, This is the smallest Kmart I've ever seen. The absence of the word "Big" from the sign was very fitting. 

Longtime Broken Chains readers will remember the Midland, Michigan Kmart from my Retro Roadtrip back in February. 

A Meijer in Lincoln Park, Michigan that's clearly a former Super Kmart. It still feels decidedly Kmartish on the inside. 

Sears, an anchor store of the Fashion Square mall in Saginaw, Michigan. This store is in the process of closing. 

A 1950s vintage Sears in Lincoln Park, Michigan, also in the process of closing. I hope they keep the logo on the water tower. 

Thanks everyone for your readership and suggestions. This silly blog project of mine has led me to having a solid year of adventures in 2018. I'm looking forward to another year of Broken Chains, and I'm excited to see where 2019 will take me. Wherever I end up, I'll be sure to tell you all about it here.