The transformation from shitty vacant lot to shitty repetitive business

Not long ago I thought it was kind of a funny situation about how some graffiti taggers had been scoping out a long vacant lot near my neighborhood and how it was just days after the taggers started doing stuff that the construction crews came by and started building something.

In the first picture you can still kind of see the tages in the background behind the bricks that the business is obligated to put up in order to separate them from adjacent properties.

This "slop job" happened very quickly and it became clear very early on that whoever was building this was not interested in doing a very quality job on the build.

What this almost always means is that the person who is building didn't actually buy the land, they are just renting it for a couple of years. Nobody is going to dump a ton of moneyon a build that they don't get to keep and cannot move.

Jumble of cheap bricks poorly put together? Check

Sheet metal roof? Check

Later comes the facade that reveals what sort of business this is going to be.

Now you can't realy tell it from this angle, but the other sign on the other side has an image that kind of appears to be a scantily-clad woman and that is a dead giveaway about what this is going to be.

These bars never work out here because Vietnam is not Thailand. Prostitute bars are not allowed here the way they are in other SE Asian countries but I think many of the tourists are unaware of this. The girls will sit with you and you can buy them overpriced drinks but unlike Thailand or Cambodia, it is highly illegal to have anything like a brothel here in Vietnam. That doesn't mean this trade doesn't happen, i'm quite sure it does... but it would never be in a bar that is open and visible to everyone that is passing by.

There is no chance that bar like this can last for very long and it wouldn't surprise me if this one doesn't even make it a full season. There have already been two attempts at this sort of establishment in this part of town and they both failed badly.

Why on earth would anyone try to open a 3rd bar of the same sort in an area that has already proven twice that such a thing isn't going to work? It's kind of like how this part of town went form having zero coffee shops to having a dozen of them, and none of them are making any money and now all going out of business. The ones with more financial backing are probably hoping that they can weather the storm and then reap the benefits once all the others go under but here is the kicker: most of the time when the coffee shops do close, someone else buys the business and opens..... (drum roll!) another coffee shop!

I think that if anyone were to come by here with any idea that isn't just the same exact thing as everyone else that they would experience very little difficulty in being successful.

case in point: There is a bar that has had 3 different owners in the past 2 years and the most recent one instead of just re-opening the same shitty bar with a new name put a taco truck at the entrance and guess what!? They are doing well even though the tacos, quite honestly, suck! Why is this working? Because it is something different and unless you are from North America you probably don't know what an authentic taco actually tastes like anyway.

There was also a guy that opened an "American Chinese" restaurant which basically just means unhealthy versions of Chinese food and he was so wildly popular that he ended up moving to much larger building. His food isn't even good, but it is different and that is what matters.

This fake girly bar will be open in a week or so and I will imagine it will have a month or so of people going to check it out, then their clientele will completely fall off and I imagine they will be out of business by the end of the year. Then, when they sublet the property it will be taken over by someone that will do something like open a fucking coffee shop there. haha