Diagnosing Real Estate

Try as they might, Square Residents cannot forget Real Taco. Painful images of its mercifully brief stay still fester in our minds—the liquid guacamole squirting from ketchup bottles, the inexplicable mélange of salad bar leftovers masking a meager amount of grey chicken and the universal look of shock and anger prompted by the bill.

With the opening of Felipe’s Taqueria, we must return to the space next to 7-11 and face the specter of Real Taco. Can cheap, quality Mexican food exist in this location or are there larger forces at work?

The art of Feng Shui might just have the answer. Originating around 4000 B.C. in China, this practice aims to improve quality of life through manipulating physical environments. Lynn Taylor, a Feng Shui consultant based in Watertown, analyzed the positive and negative forces at work in this Mt. Auburn storefront.

While the Mt. Auburn location seems prime to attract the daily traffic of students and tourists, its entrance might be working against it. According to Taylor, an exposed corner of the Fox Club is pointed at Felipe’s entrance, disproportionately directing bad chi, or life energy, at the restaurant.

But once they overcome the bad chi and enter the building, customers will be quite likely to return. The room’s central column, “a beautiful thing” in Taylor’s eyes, faces the door without exposing customers to any more unseemly corners.

Using a Bagua map, which assigns different aspects of life such as health and fame to the sections of a space, Taylor found the abundance of window-front seating signalled a positive future. Because water, the main determinant of the Career section, is associated with reflection, the presence of windows is auspicious. Overall, Taylor made it clear that the “current establishment is going to go far.”

But Felipe’s owners should still beware. Taylor determined that the “knowledge” section of the Bagua map is missing entirely in this building. Business savvy is more important than ever with such a deficit in the location. Hopefully, Felipe’s will compensate where Real Taco did not.