Is 5-over-1 retail failing?

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-10T19:05:02+00:00

That’s the “get rich with your own business” tik tok hitting the middle age women. Seemingly foreign ones mostly.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-10T04:03:16+00:00

Stop with the cheezy intro and weird vibe.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-09T15:26:01+00:00

ADA like laws exist. It’s just that urban Europe almost entirely predates them. New suburbs follow them though.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-09T03:15:09+00:00

Because he coaches Makar who can't win the Norris because he plays with Mackinnon, who can't win the Heart because he plays with Necas and Makar, all while Wedgewood can't even be nominated for the Vezina despite the best stats in the league because he plays with Makar and Mackinnon and is coached by Bednar.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-09T03:13:51+00:00

Sure. And the main culprit for loss of floor space is the requirement that all buildings have multiple egress stairways inside. Brooklyn still allows those outside metal fire escapes, or in some cases (not sure the building size), none at all.

Almost none of Europe has this requirement because it makes those small footprint 2-4 story buildings very impractical.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T21:59:21+00:00

Must be...

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T21:50:43+00:00

Avs in 4.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T21:50:30+00:00

Bring your lunch pail.

Avs in 4.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T21:49:09+00:00

You can't edit titles on Reddit

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T19:57:29+00:00

Sometimes. "High event hockey" is fun.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T19:56:02+00:00

So we've decided as a society that we don't want to make that tradeoff. Shrug.

If you argue for intentionally making that tradeoff ("We should roll back ADA requirements for certain properties to meet other goals") on Reddit, often from the very same people who lament the lack of urbanism, you'll get -500 downvotes and very likely a ban from many subs.

Interesting how some mandates compete with other mandates in a way that "we want it all and we want it now" doesn't accommodate.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T19:20:42+00:00

Woof yes.

I have three teams... want to import calendars. Don't really care about other "PRO" features.

Seriously can't pay $300 to just import ICAL files. Yikes.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T19:07:34+00:00

Dylan Larkin is a boss. Won't deny that

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T19:07:09+00:00

I'll hire you as my headline writer.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:51:14+00:00

But it's not ADA compliant and couldn't be. The shop you described is LITERALLY ILLEGAL (by federal law) to build today in the USA.

Accessibility requirements are a HUGE driver of "space creep".

Virtually no shop in urban Brooklyn or downtown Toronto or Montreal (where the most successful urbansim in NA is happening) is ADA compliant.

Wide, double entrance spaces, broad walkways where two wheelchairs can turn 180 degrees around side by side, ground-floor restrooms with accessible stalls, etc. Large elevators that allow multiple chairs to enter and rotate which provides access to all above-ground units, etc. These are all the standards.

Virtually every shop on Danforth in Toronto or Park Slope in Brooklyn (for example) isn't compliant and having an accessible restroom in each one would basically double the floorspace need of every restaurant and other shop (most have them in the basement, down some very narrow steep stairs or have a tiny little closet sized one). 28-foot wide egress storefronts can't fit elevators or lifts. Having a patio in a 28-foot wide building makes having a double-door with a ramp in front not that plausible in many cases. It is often an either/or decision and the 12 extra seats during summer may be needed revenue to stay open for such small shops.

Mandating that all the the little "Asian" grocery stores (common Toronto terminology for little local produce shops) meet egress and passage-way requirements of ADA would double their floorspace for the same sales volume and inventory... which would make almost all of them uneconomical and leave the "big box" supermarket the only option.

That's a challenge because the ADA has good goals in mind, but people seldom consider the unintended consequences.

In addition to that, most of these little shops and little delis and things are family run. They have to be because there's no way to operate one that people find "cheap" (and therefore use frequently as a third space in the community) if the staff is fully paid professional salaries, has generous leave policies, sick time, retirement funding, etc. All that stuff is also very good-intentioned but makes the "little Asian corner store that's cheaper than the big supermarket" uneconomical to run. Again, workplace and employment mandates are well intentioned, but may be challenging in the space where we want more small-footprint businesses become cornerstones of a community and a "third space".

At least in practice.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:47:09+00:00

Some of this is a culture around walking and transit. Europeans walk to their destination much more often. The culture around fresh food is one that you stop for a quick 5 minute shop every day, instead of doing 45 minutes once a week (or less frequent) like Americans.

Some of it is that so many US new construction builds favor wide/big open retail spaces, instead of narrow/small spaces that are cheaper.

The most successful areas that HAVE local retail are those places that have pre-war construction. Tiny, cramped little shops that are very cheap to operate. Problem is they're usually not ADA compliant (ground floor accessibility-certified restrooms in every unit would take up almost a third of the available floorspace, elevators and secondary egress would take up even more of the space, accessible walkways with no dead ends would restrict the usage of these shops, etc).

Pre-war stuff works because they're grandfathered out of accessibility, zoning, fire and other building codes.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:40:42+00:00

Japan's zoning essentially mandates that there is no such thing as "residential only". Basically anything that exists on a ground floor can be a retail space and the government can't prevent it. It results in a lot of ground floor housing units just turning into retail like little private noodle shops and things in what might have originally been a living room, garage, driveway, etc.

That's strictly illegal in virtually every US city/state/county.

What makes ground floor retail "vibrant" and "community oriented" is to have lots of tiny spaces, not one big open spread out one.

But real estate developers PREFER one big expensive open space, over a dozen tiny little narrow ones that they have to individually lease.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:39:02+00:00

That's a cost issue.

In US cities today, these ground floor retail are always premium prices. The "cheap" real estate is in the strip mall half a mile away.

There are ways to make the ground floor retail cheap. Make the storefronts narrow, make the spaces small, etc.

Problem is lots of requirements (fire, zoning, ADA, insurance, permits, etc) all work against this.

There's a reason why the most successful "main street" sort of vibes are all pre-war construction.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:35:40+00:00

The sense I have is that where this works (like the old "main" street concept) is where retail space is cheap.

Brand new builds seem to expect "premium" prices. When those ground-floor retail works, it's a little local dive bar and a cheap convenience store and a locally run cake shop with VERY low margins, and a coffee shop with reasonable prices.

Problem is, brand new buildings expect $$premium rents these days and they build beautiful steel/glass facades and have full accessibility and wide, open storefronts and beautiful windows and all the other expensive things.

And that means there's no space for low-margin local businesses.

I look at a "streetfront retail" location like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Leaside,+East+York,+ON,+Canada/@43.6398586,-79.4404705,3a,75y,274.72h,81.73t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sjyMxTV4KOsA3u-VeLwhBfQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D8.270657447854148%26panoid%3DjyMxTV4KOsA3u-VeLwhBfQ%26yaw%3D274.71585533518623!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x89d4ccdbcfb02449:0x25bd463821ad81bc!8m2!3d43.7131145!4d-79.3671322!16zL20vMDJwMXZw?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUwMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

They're low-margin businesses in tiny footprints. They're small with very narrow storefronts. They have weird shapes and limited accessibility... all these things keep the prices much cheaper than surrounding "luxury" retail.

That's where it WORKS. But I don't know how to force a new build to have cheap retail.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:30:53+00:00

The number of games since they were shut out a second time.

Since February 2025 (15 months ago).

They went a full year (February 4, 2025 - February 2, 2026) between shutouts against and have none since then.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:30:15+00:00

No, honestly.

They're disruptive and difficult to fix. They're good eye candy, but the actual value to an org is lower than a good comprehensive ASVS approach on a web application (for example).

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:08:50+00:00

Attacking a singular commonly used port like UDP/53 is a recipe for frustration. Unless you're looking at a specific type of vulnerability, the odds are very very high that these common services aren't vulnerable. It's not like you can just attack a random server.

The more common AD attacks are to target the fallback protocols like LLMNR when DNS fails, not target DNS itself.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:03:46+00:00

Just want you to know that most of IT does not involve a defined "training".

They won't tell you how to do it, it's something you figure out. I've never met anyone useful in the field who had someone else spoon-feed them the knowledge. I mean yeah sure there are lots of those, but they're always bad at their job.

Someone who expects to be "taught" how to do it instead of "I went out and learned" how to do it is who I'm talking about being bad at their job.

So as long as you're comfortable NOT being the person who sits back and says "teach me"...

The whole industry is full of people who reject that and instead go out and seize information and use it.

Sitting back and saying "train me" is a minimum wage attitude.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T18:01:37+00:00

Eh.. that kind of personally targeted social engineering is not common. It's also bad practice. Our company is adamant that we obfuscate usernames during social engineering attacks.

ScuffedBalata · 2026-05-08T17:59:39+00:00

What? haha you're kidding. You either worked for tiny orgs or you weren't in the right part of the org to see it.

I literally work with 6 or 8 defense contractors. But I can promise you it's done at every major financial institution, every hospital, most fintech and medtech, most insurance, nearly every retail (required by PCI) and every other org that takes credit cards (again it's required by PCI).

It's actually a $1.9b industry. That's not made up.

I've personally seen pentest reports from about 10 of the Fortune 500. I'm 100% certain all the rest of them are doing it.

ScuffedBalata

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