Pepé Taco of Salinas (Salinas, California)

If you're familiar with Pepe's Mexican Cafe in Bryan, this mascot should be instantly familiar to you. (The Californian, 11/23/1968)
While Pepe's Mexican Cafe in Bryan won't be on Brazos Buildings & Businesses anytime soon (hopefully) due to blog policy concerning operating businesses (it needs to have a former occupant), it started out in 1969 as Pepé Taco, a Mexican fast food chain based out of the Dallas area. In the 1970s the Bryan location disconnected from the chain, but by that time many of the restaurants it once boasted had disappeared (according to an article when the Bryan location opened, there were once 300 of these restaurants).

Despite this, Pepé Taco did have a few franchises that succeeded during this time of rapid change in the fast food franchising bloodbath, including Salinas, California, a world away from Bryan.

In November 1968, Pepé Taco opened at 701 East Alisal Street and operated much longer than others in the chain (possibly the last Pepé Taco branded as such) and closed in November 1982.

Pepé Taco's menu from its last year of operation.
From there, the restaurant with its equipment changed hands and it seems to have opened as "El Pollo Bravo" and "Mi Taco Loco" at the same time (it's not clear, just looking at notices, not advertisements) before becoming "El Pollo Dorado" and operating to this day, with the same Pepé Taco-shaped sign.

Fleet Farm (Owatonna, Minnesota)

This picture is mine and taken July 2026. It was cropped slightly and rotated to be more even.
Today's post (well, I took a little while to finish it) is on the Fleet Farm in Owatonna, Minnesota. I visited this in July 2026 (the "silo" is where the restrooms and are noted as a shelter for inclement weather). It was my first time in such a store (never been a place where I could find a cattle prod and a jar of marshmallow creme in the same place...and their selection of dog food is second to none). I can't find when it opened, though. It looks like on Google Earth it was built in its current form in the early 2000s, and in the 1990s I can find references for "SPX Power Team" at this address, despite looking like a big box store with a large parking lot in front, so it's a bit of a mystery to me.

A few of my pictures taken in the same trip are below.

Tech Ridge Center (Austin, Texas)

Official picture from Regency Centers (source)
From Volume 4.0 (when I first covered the In-N-Out Burger here) to Version 12 (when I removed it entirely), I had covered Tech Ridge Center (not to be confused with The Shops at Tech Ridge at 12901 North Interstate 35) on Carbon-izer's North Interstate 35 in Austin page.

This plaza built its first phase in 2001 with an 86,000 square foot H-E-B (at 500 West Canyon Ridge Drive) but all share the same address, just different suite numbers. There was an outparcel, Golden Wok, with the 500 West Canyon Ridge address, which operated from 2005 to around 2015. The building was demolished and In-N-Out opened in September 2016, though the new In-N-Out had an actual I-35 address (12431 North Interstate 35 North).

Pinstack, an upscale bowling alley, is another major anchor. It sits next to Baylor Scott & White Clinic – Austin Tech Ridge, which was a Petco until sometime in the late 2010s. Pinstack itself was built as an Office Depot in 2010, which only operated for around five years before closing. The building expanded substantially when it became Pinstack.

Mo's Irish Pub - Cypress (Cypress, Texas)

Photo by Jorge Medrano, Google Maps (source)
For a time I featured Mo's Irish Pub (14102 Mueschke) on my Northwest Freeway (Outer Belt) page, but I took it out as of Version 9.0, and in the upcoming Version 10.0, won't even feature Mueschke Road anymore.

In any case, Mo's Irish Pub opened in late 2015 as part of a mini "restaurant row" near Mueschke joining Cracker Barrel and Gringo's Mexican Kitchen and closed somewhat unexpectedly in April 2026. I liked driving past it at night...it looked like a tree permanently covered in Christmas lights, which change colors at night (or at least how it appeared on a Friday night in April back in 2016).

Directly attached to the building is 14106 Mueschke. As of November 2024, the tenants here include (from right to left) Chicago Title, Twinkle Nail Bar, Marco's Pizza, and Sherwin-Williams Paint. Back in March 2016, the strip center existed but was completely empty.

Sunrise Mall (Corpus Christi, Texas)

This is my own picture from June 2007.
I have yet to write up a "full" Sunrise Mall story on Carbon-izer.com but I'd likely be just re-treading what I wrote for Labelscar all those years ago. But since Labelscar is gone, I might be able to refashion it into a full post either way.

Located at 5858 South Padres Island Drive (with the address now used for the self-storage facility that replaced Sears), there's not much I can say at this time other than noting that the Wendy's closed in the late 2000s.

Hopefully before the end of the year I'll fix the page up better.

Link: Sunrise Mall: Director's Cut on Carbon-izer

Hammond Square (Hammond, Louisiana)

From HammondSquare.com. The filename is theirs, not mine. I covered Hammond Square Mall on Carbon-izer.com earlier this year, but now it's time to give it a proper canonized Numbered Exits entry. The original mall was located at 2000 SW Railroad Avenue. The current shopping center is sprawls out a lot more than the old mall used to be. The map below shows what is considered part of the mall per the center's owner Stirling Properties, showing the old (AMC Hammond Palace 10 opened in 1999 as Gulf State Theatres Palace 10) and later the additions (the Academy Sports + Outdoors at 600 C.M. Fagan Drive opened in 2011). JCPenney was a new addition (the original JCPenney moved out of town) while the small Dillard's remained. Initially, the north part of the mall featured Sears and Rite Aid, but when both closed (Sears as part of the failure of Sears Holdings Corporation in the late 2010s, and Rite Aid's pullout from Louisiana around the same time), they were demolished for new tenants including Five Below, HomeGoods, and Marshalls.

I visited the Best Buy here around August 2025 but I don't think I took any pictures of it.

Pete's College Inn (Waco, Texas)

Pete's College Inn could be seen from Interstate 35 (cropped from source)
I first about Pete's College Inn (located at 525 Dutton, not far from the businesses near Ivy Square) from the now-defunct Baylorfans (now part of Sicem365, though sadly the thread in question wasn't archived)¹ which told a story of a bunch of Baylor students watching rats run around the restaurant (it served primarily some sort of chopped steak and mushrooms with punchcards) after hours, to the point of dragging in bleachers and cheering for them.

But beyond that not much is known about it other than the proprietar Pete Dris passing away in 2017 there's much I can say about it.

Newspaper and tax records show that the building was built in the 1930s as a small corner store business (home to a residential house a decade or so prior) and first served as a tailor shop before aforementioned Pete's, then became Chanello's Pizza, a Texas-based pizza delivery chain around 1980 (closed 1985)² and from 1986 to around 1990 Bear Necessities. (Other than bringing to mind the song from The Jungle Book I have almost no information on this. There's a tax listing and being mentioned to buy concert tickets for Lorrie Morgan performing at a local nightclub and that's it). Afterwards, it was Rother's (later known as University Bookstore) until demolition in the late 2000s, so it was on Google Street View.

1. Regarding Hobby Lobby, if I recall, the story was that someone had blocked a drain on a lesser-used part of parking lot (that already tended to flood) to turn it into a "lake", and completely destroyed the parking lot in the process. Don't quote me on this.
2. Chanello's Pizza lives on from a Virginia franchise first opened in 1987.