An organic lemon can cost $1.30 without proving Waco has become a luxury market, and a Waffle House can inspire civic delirium without saying much about affluence at all. The arrival of The Scout Guide business directory is making a different wager: that there are currently enough places selling expensive things to benefit from reaching an overlapping clientele.

At Hotel 1928, a gathering for the forthcoming Waco edition of The Scout Guide leads to a conversation with a fine-art gallery owner, leaving host Mark Long with the impression that the gallery’s buyers are becoming more local—a small piece of evidence, not a census of people with disposable income. Downstairs, gold lettering on the “Gents” bathroom door by Mike MacDonald complicates the sense of being somewhere foreign: apparently, these different Wacos already share a sign painter.

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Developers and advocates for the homeless can look at the same low-budget motel and make two very different assessments. One sees redevelopment leading to affluent buyers, short-term rentals, and upscale retailers to transform the property; the other warns that removing cheap lodging will push precariously housed people into even worse conditions.

Dottie Oaks advertised $695,000 townhomes that could approach $900,000 after being made habitable, and the complex has been sitting empty for years. Meanwhile, Mission Waco founder Jimmy Dorrell’s warning about Waco’s “invisible homeless” eventually helped inspire Creekside Community Village, a supportive-housing tiny home development near the edge of town.

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The first version of a dish you eat can become your standard for it. Years later, someone might tell you the recipe was all wrong. And maybe it was. But what does that verdict change about the meals you remember loving?

At Lupita’s on 19th Street, host Mark Long unexpectedly orders what may be his first bowl of menudo, pig’s foot and all. He likes it but then Googles what makes a good menudo to see if he’s right.

That search takes him back to his mother’s huevos rancheros, which appeared on mornings when the whole family seemed to be in a good mood. When he calls to ask how she made them, she says she did it “all wrong”: store-bought picante sauce and shredded cheese. He’d never thought to look up whether her version was good.

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