The American Dream, served with cow cod soup
People are just lazy, naive or don't understand the opportunity they have.
In September, he opened the Hot Spot Caribbean Bodega on Central Avenue, across Townsend Park from his Albany restaurant, carrying Jamaican ingredients that are hard to find upstate.
Douglas' rise from poverty is as familiar to Americans as baseball, yet to listen to the current chorus of naysayers, you'd think it was now impossible.
"The American Dream is dead," said boorish Donald Trump in a recent speech, before presenting himself as the only man to resurrect it.
Business start-ups began declining in the last 1970s, and by 2008, the number of closed businesses surpassed new ones for the first time since the statistic was first recorded.
"Business dynamism and entrepreneurship are experiencing a troubling secular decline in the United States," wrote Ian Hathaway and Robert Litan in a study released last year by the Brookings Institution.
The researchers didn't identify a cause but noted that new businesses have long played a vital role in job creation.
The area around Hot Spot offers a polyglot stew of ethnic eateries and stores, and Douglas dismissed the suggestion that he was doing something remarkable.
In his spare time, he buys and flips real estate.
Wearing jeans and a gray turtleneck sweater, Douglas bantered with his customers, clearly enjoying himself.
