On Double Rainbow Ice Cream and Dessert Café’s opening day our first customer was a prostitute. Our second customer was a doctor. At night, the streets were dark and lonely, the storefronts vacant.

That was Nob Hill in November of 1987.

Even so, the view from our dining room windows was and still is our favorite. We loved the little buildings lined up against each other, each of them unique in their own way. We remembered the businesses that used to occupy them, were curious about the new businesses and tried to imagine what was next for the empty ones. Today, we are reminded of the wonderful scene in the 1960 movie the “Time Machine” where the young scientist, H. George Wells, while taking a ride in his time machine, watches the mannequin in the store window across from his laboratory change outfits over and over again as he speeds through many eras into the future.

Double Rainbow/Flying Star Nob Hill is in a sense, its own Time Machine – we have experienced and have been observers of the many cycles and changes on Central Ave. In upcycles, Nob Hill’s stores and streets were filled with businesses and people, neighborhood houses were spiffed up, the dwindling public schools again swelled with children. The recession of 2009 and then A.R.T. battered its businesses, lowered its housing values but even so, there remained a strong entrepreneurial spirit that continues to flow and fuel the energy and growth of Nob Hill and the entire Central Ave. corridor. People still choose Nob Hill for where they want to live, work, shop and enjoy themselves.

Nob Hill, Central Ave., Albuquerque, New Mexico is like nowhere else in this world and it means to world to many of us that live and work here. Even though Nob Hill currently may look a bit tattered and a number of its businesses have gone, we know that many more will soon come to take their place. Gazing out our windows, we too, see the future and it looks good to us.
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