The new Burger King is a real whopper, folks...


April 20, 1999

For today's column, I would like to write about a major recent news event in the Truckee Meadows, which has been discussed extensively on television and talk radio, and in both area daily newspapers.

Kosovo? Rape controversies? Big news from the Legislature in Carson City? No!

There is a new kind of prototype Burger King in town. And the Truckee Meadows has the first one.

Are we COOL or what???

As it turns out, this is the first big Burger King grand opening which I have seen in my lifetime -- yes, lightning does strike in the same place twice.

When I was 6 years old, I lived in Elko. Elko was not much of a metropolis; I remember our fast-food options consisted pretty much of a McDonald's and an Arctic Circle.

Anyway, the rumors of an Elko Burger King started to swirl several years later. As for myself, then a student at Elko Grammar School No. 2 (Elko, showing unparalleled creativity, named its other elementary schools "Northside" and "Southside"), I was skeptical. But then, one day, I saw it.

There it was: THE HOME OF THE WHOPPER. I cried. I wept. I think I wet my pants.

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Flash forward to 1999, and I am back in Reno. One day a couple months back, I was driving down Kietzke Lane when I noticed the Burger King near Vassar Street had a sign that says the restaurant would soon be "closed for remodeling."

Now, when I think of remodeling, I think of putting in new seats, maybe some new carpet, a new kitchen and -- maybe if going all-out -- a different floor plan.

Burger King's concept of remodeling, in this case, was drastic. A few days later, the Burger King was GONE. But it came back, and now that it has reopened, it is completely different. Comparatively, it is like Reno Mayor Jeff Griffin going in for some plastic surgery, disappearing for two months, and returning as Pamela Anderson Lee (before she had her hooters reduced).

Because the opening of the new Burger King has become a Major News Story, I felt I needed to investigate. Therefore, I enlisted two colleagues to visit the restaurant with me: Pat Loveless ("The Goddess of Education Reporting") and David Hunter ("The God of Sports Photography and Looking Generally Lurky").

The first thing that you notice is the BK's color scheme of bright blue, red and yellow. The second thing that you notice is that, geometrically, the restaurant looks like it was designed by drunk monkeys.

You walk in, order your food, go around a corner at an obtuse 145-degree angle to get your food, and enter a semi-circle to get your drinks. Even the new logo is distorted at an angle.

If this is the Burger King of the future, the future needs glasses.

After we got our food, we sat down to discuss our first impressions. Pat hated the colors, while David liked the fact that you could actually see the burgers flame-broiling on your way in. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out how I could work the concept of "booger" into this column (note: nothing yet).

One thing we all thought was weird was how the designers tried to "personalize" this Burger King. The logo, "Welcome to your Burger King" is plastered all over. There is also a big mural depicting Reno events.

While the mural tries to make the restaurant look local, it conjured up chaos in my mind. It looked like the Reno Air Races plane was about to crash into the Reno Arch, while a Reno Rodeo bareback rider was about to ride into Hot August Nights parade traffic.

The three of us finished our food and checked out the children's play area. It was kind of cool; David tried talking to me through some sort of phone-tube mechanism, as Pat watched a girl play on a computer. The computers have several games; in one, the computer took a picture of the girl, and she was able to distort her face.

How nice! Training girls to hate how they look! (Just kidding; I think eating lots of Burger King food will accomplish that more than the computer ever will!)

Finally, we ended by ordering dessert through the drive-thru. We were all impressed by the computerized board which shows your order. Pat, again, was disturbed by the overly zealous color scheme. The primary color in the drive-thru could be best described as "booger yellow" (note: YES!).

One of the strangest features, however, was a button past the drive-thru window to if your food order is wrong. Great idea... but the button is located so far away from the path that someone who wants to push the button actually has to exit his or car to do so.

Overall, we were somewhat impressed by the Burger King's looks. But the food tasted almost the same, and that is the reason most of us go to fast-food restaurants.

Suffice it to say, my pants were plenty dry following this Burger King opening.

Jimmy Boegle, a fifth-generation Nevadan, congratulates Jerry and Gioia on their daughter. Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays; he can be reached via e-mail at jiboegle@alumni.stanford.org.

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