I remember, I remember when I lost my mind /
There was something so pleasant about that place
Gnarls Barkley
Real estate is a people business. And people eat. And when they can eat together, real estate people make deals. Meals and deals can be fancy (RIP NYC’s 21 Club) or - more often than not - they can be lowbrow. And in my experience, the lower the brow, the better the deal.
So when I got a call from someone wanting to talk real estate over prison tacos, I made a point of saying yes.
The directions to our lunch took me deep into Southeast Atlanta, to a rutted parking lot in the shadow of a handsome United States Penitentiary. Built in 1902, the Atlanta Pen is a rare old building in Atlanta’s sea of stucco strip malls.
Across McDonough Boulevard from the Pen, in a building also with bars on the windows, is El Progreso Carniceria Y Tienda. The taco counter is in the back next to the butcher, through the narrow aisles filled with puffy packages of cartoonish Mexican junk food.
My lunch mate, Ben, is an El Progreso veteran and chorizo taco champion. He proved to be a talented guide.
The El Progreso hot sauces are world-class:
I made a mental note to consider prison proximity for my next taco excursion.
Taco origination isn’t Ben’s only skill, as I learned when we returned to his office.
Ben H. Allen III got his professional start in New York City in the late 90’s working at famed hip hop studio, Battery Studios. A short stint at NYC’s the Cutting Room then led to working with P Diddy and the Bad Boy Entertainment camp for a few years. In 2001, Ben moved to Atlanta, where he linked up with CeeLo Green. He spent several years recording and mixing records with Green, including Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy, the first song in history to go platinum on the basis of digital downloads alone and won a Grammy in 2007.
We didn’t make a real estate deal, but we’ve got a friendship and a cool (non-real estate) project in the works.
And we haven’t been to prison - yet - but we’ll be back to El Progreso for tacos.
Thank you for reading Asphalt Jungle - if you’re passionate about transformative real estate development, apply to join AUTOMATIC - a gathering for real estate developers interested in making wonderful places and the innovative retail & hospitality brands, designers, contractors, and capital providers that bring those places to life.
AUTOMATIC is coming to TEXAS!
Join us in Houston on May 7 & 8th and hang with innovators like:
Superica
Tootsies
Scarlet Capital
Radom Capital
Alamo Drafthouse
Flower Child
Yonder Yoga
Heim BBQ
Sorelle Capital
El Carlos
Culinary Dropout
Triten Real Estate Partners
Dunmoor
Hot Joy
Little Death
HomeState
Three Littles
Deal Co.
Ojo de Agua
Local Foods
Hamsa
The Rustic
Many more
“AUTOMATIC is the snowball before the avalanche - it’s good shit”
Nico Marin, Pinewood Social
**follow along on LinkedIn , Twitter (X) and Instagram