They’re pretty analogue at Bored & Hungry, but that doesn’t have to mean anything in a pub. You want pretty analog things like a double cheeseburger with onions or fries. The Long Beach burger joint’s logo is a bored monkey; the Bored Ape is the OG-NFT, i.e. the non-fungible token, in whose variants celebrities like Post Malone have invested six-digit amounts and which serves as a symbol for the complete digitization of the world. Only: The Bored Onion Burger does not cost 211 Dogecoin or 0.01 Ethereum, but 14 dollars.
Yes, dollars; and that’s quite a disappointment at this place, which when it opened three months ago boasted that it was the world’s first crypto restaurant and thus totally digital. So: paying in cryptocurrencies, meeting to talk about current trends, exchange for NFTs. The menu is intentionally bland — there’s burgers and fries, all inclusive with beef for stop-cancel culture folks and plant-based options for woke-goers. It’s called “The Boring Menu”, in reference to the tunnel company of Elon Musk, the patron saint of digital believers. Messages on the wall, as far as the metaphors go, so: four monkeys from the Bored Yacht Club and lots of rockets.
“To the moon!” This was the hope of all those investing in cryptocurrencies; that the course of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, Cardano, Neo and of course Stellar Lumens would float completely detached from Earth and earthly currencies; weightless. So off to the moon, because that promised immeasurable wealth for all those who had still invested in the earth’s atmosphere – and even Tesla boss and Twitter aficionado Musk invested in and tweeted about Dogecoin, the currency with the dog. The Space-X mission “DOGE-1” around the moon is planned for the end of the year. The cryptocurrency is currently worth six cents after peaking at 64 cents just over a year ago.
The value of cryptocurrencies has plummeted recently. Is that the reason you can’t use it to pay at Bored & Hungry? Stood like that in the Los Angeles Times. “Fake news,” writes boss Andy Nguyen on Twitter about the report; a term digital believers often use when something is being reported about them that they don’t like. There is maintenance work from time to time, but Ethereum and Apecoin are still welcome. Well, during the visit last week there was apparently maintenance work again, but nobody else wanted to pay with cryptocurrency within an hour. In any case, hype looks different; it’s more like the rocket ran out of power on its way to the moon and returned to earth.
And the burger? Tastes really good. Is it worth $14 when the legendary “Double-Double” from California burger chain In-N-Out, just five minutes away, costs $4.19? Hmm. It would certainly be worth 14 Dogecoins, but they don’t accept them, even without maintenance.