Mancino's Pizza and Grinders of Big Rapids

Mancino's Pizza and Grinders is a restaurant located along State Street in Big Rapids, MI; and is also a notable location for several Dozerfleet projects.

Overall history
Mancino's had been in Big Rapids for a long time before the Dozerfleet founder began attending Ferris. However, it most notably received a boost when its business operations were made more efficient, courtesy of manage Marianne Evans-Christianson keeping a tight ship during her tenure. Yet, the building began showing its age, and then shut down briefly in 2009 for a remodeling. By the end of 2009, the store had been refreshed, and was looking very nice on the inside. Marianne commissioned for the students in professor Glenn Okonoski's spring 2010 class of TVPR 499 to make an ad for Mancino's, to show off the new remodel and promote the student discount deals available. This was by no means the first time Ferris students had made ads for Mancino's, however.

The ad in 2010 paid off, and Mancino's enjoyed several more years of success. However, the glory days under Marianne weren't meant to last. In late 2019, amidst her husband John suffering health problems, Marianne elected to retire from management. Amidst the struggle to cope with losing her - and with the insane demands of the Globalist Scamdemic making it difficult for the building to even stay open - Mancino's began having a harder and harder time satisfying customers. Complaints on Google mostly consisted of longer-than-reasonable wait times for food to be baked, as orders got backlogged in the scramble to find workers and fulfill orders with less efficient management and no sit-down options. Desperate to get delivery times up, workers began deliberately underbaking pizza and grinders, leading to complaints about doughy food. The owners would, however, respond to negative reviews from unreasonable Karens.

As of last checked, Mancino's is still in business. There remains some hope that it may recover from 2020, though the area around it also suffered significant economic harm due to Whitmer's over-the-line and unconstitutional edicts.

Typical menu
See also: Official menu

Mancino's allows customers to order customized pizzas in 12", 14", 16", "pan," or "Chicago-style" sizes and styles. Standard flavors include pepperoni, sausage, "Pride" pizza, Meathead, Slammer, Steak, BLT, Hawaiian, Bacon Double-Cheesburger, Chicken Bacon Ranch, Vegetarian, Chicken Alfredo, Buffalo Chicken, Barbecue Chicken, and Personal.  Similar options exist for Grinders, though a few options (such as crabmeat) are non-standard for pizzas.  Salads, wraps, wings, and various Mexican dishes are also possible.  Drinks mostly consist of various Pepsi products.

Orders may be sit-down or takeout. However, only take-out and delivery options existed in 2020, due to Whitmer's violations of the state constitution.

Dozerfleet real world history
The Dozerfleet founder and Tabby Young were assigned to meet with Marianne and make the ad in question for that year's lineup of ads that would feature on Ferris State Live and Ferris in Focus. Scripting began on January 15th, and a script was approved on the 19th. Around the 20th, an initial audio mix was made for the ad. This was rejected by the class instructor Glenn, due to finding the Volkonir cartoon voice and mixture with Kevin MacLeod's "Darkness is Coming" to be "creepy," rather than charming / refreshing / awe-inspiring.

The theme being aimed for with the mix was a sort of Greek choir-esque rejoicing over the novelty of the remodel, as Marianne requested. But since Glenn didn't feel that this combination successfully achieved that end, new recording was done. The Volkonir cartoon voice narration was replaced with narration by then-student Josh Byers. "Soporific" was inserted as a replacement for "Darkness is Coming," to produce a less-engaged-and-more-relaxed vibe. Classmate Tabby Young and her friend of the time, Kaileen Shannahan, assisted with shooting the actual ad on January 24th of 2010. Kathleen posed as a typical customer, eating a grinder to demonstrate how nice the new establishment was. Work to perfect this ad led to last-minute edits of Blood Over Water running overdue, preventing the Ferris Access Channel from ever broadcasting it.

In 2019, Mancino's was visited again, this time after a Blood Over Water remake-inspired tour that also led to a visit with Merre Bowmaster - just one year before she died. The tour wrapped up after a few hours, and things progressed back to Grand Ledge later that same day. The area was visited again in late 2019, after A Very Anarteq Tour of the Soo was wrapped up. However, Mancino's wasn't visited then. In the summer of 2020, the location was visited again - this time, to ensure that a more life-accurate version of the suite that Mancino's was in could be made for The Sims 4: Oughties Big Rapids Living Stuff. At that time, no patrons were allowed inside the building.

When inquiring about Marianne, the Dozerfleet founder learned that she had retired. He was treated to a free Pepsi for his efforts in promoting the place, then sent away. Whitmer's bully squad had made clear to the store in Big Rapids: no patrons, not even film crew. Instead, shots of the interior from years' past would be used as frames of reference for the building's virtual reconstruction. A call to Big Rapids City Hall confirmed which shops were in the other parts of the suite in the late 2000s, leading to those being the selections made for the Sims 4 build.

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Characters in Blood Over Water will sometimes casually eat at Mancino's, and think nothing of it. A year earlier, it featured in Hadley's time loop dream sequence dilemma in Sorbet. Hadley would also order food from here frequently, thinking nothing of it.

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For Volkonir Meets the Power Rangers, a crude, early build of Mancino's was constructed in the spring of 2017, when the Dozerfleet founder was living in Apartment 1105 at Devonshire Apartments in Lansing, MI. Vinny and MODM treat the 2017 film Rangers to a lunch here, to celebrate defeating Slaisionnach (and also so that Vinny can get a new Biggby mug, after Kimberly sacrificed his other one to break one of Slaisionnach's teeth.)

It's in this particular machinomic in which MODM explains the "Every Big Rapids is Roughly the Same" rule that is so central to Megaverse mythology and cosmology.

Television and video
As mentioned above, an ad was made in January of 2010 for Mancino's, which then featured in Ferris State Live and Ferris in Focus for the spring 2010 semester season. On August 22nd of 2020, an ad for the OBRL stuff pack was uploaded to YouTube, featuring a 2020 remake of Mancino's for The Sims 4 based on photography from a tour of the area near it earlier that year. Mike and Meagan, the couple being given a tour of Big Rapids throughout the 2000s by Merre's Echo, enjoy the environment.

Mike even utters "Gotta grab a grinder!," a slogan first uttered on the airwaves in 2010 by Josh Byers' recorded narration and first drafted into the script by the Dozerfleet founder as a way to propose a slogan for Mancino's. However, Meagan hasn't yet found the place she most desires to eat at. The couple then check out Szot's, but aren't truly satisfied until they visit Biggby.

The building
Mancino's became one of the most important locations to re-create for The Sims 4: Oughties Big Rapids Living Stuff. Marrianne was given her own Sim, as was her husband John. The Mancino's section of the suite was made fully functional as a restaurant, operating on the gameplay in The Sims 4: Dine Out. A custom mesh sign was made for Mancino's as well, along with two signs to go together for the adjacent Boost Mobile store. However, Boost Mobile in the game is mostly decorative. To date, OBRL is the only known instance of a game featuring this particular Mancino's in it.

The January 2010 version of Mancino's was aimed for in lot re-creation. As such, the two other shops in the suite are implied to be Tracy's Hair Salon and Re/Max. In 2011, Belltone and Lighthouse Group moved in. Some time in the late 2010s, Re/Max moved out of the suite. The build for the game features Boost Mobile anachronistically, as Boost didn't move in until around 2014. In 2014, Five Star Real Estate Leaders moved into the area where Re/Max was once located. However, Five Star abandoned that location in 2016. The former Re/Max and Five Star section was remodeled to become the Rise Smoke and Vapor Shop between 2016 and 2017. As such, the in-game build features the following shops:
 * Mancino's
 * Boost Mobile
 * Tracy's Hair Salon
 * Re/Max

Sims may use the Tracy's shop, but it doesn't register as a retail center. The Re/Max area functions mostly as a computer lab. Boost features free-use public tablet devices, as Sims in The Sims 4 by default already have smartphones.

Management
The Evancri that ships with OBRL is also available for download on the Sims 4 Gallery. They are modeled after the real-life Marianne Evans-Christiansen and John Christiansen, natives of Big Rapids. Marianne was the manager at Mancino's during its remodel in 2008 and 2009, as well as during the spring semester of 2010 at Ferris State, when the TVPR 499 class and Dozerfleet Studios teamed up to make an ad for the store to appear on Ferris in Focus.

Marianne would eventually retire from being the store manager in late 2019 and early 2020, to look after her husband's health. She left shortly before the Globalist Scamdemic wreaked havoc on Big Rapids, nearly destroying its economy, and making it hard for Mancino's to do business. The Evancris are modeled after approximations of what Marianne and John may have looked like around January of 2010. The cutoff point for time period representation in the pack is April of 2010, with the IRC Ferris in Focus video lab's Dark Knight movie poster on its one wall being the most recent item of history represented in the pack.

Marianne is set up with the intent that players will make her the default Mancino's manager, if they so wish to play Mancino's with Dine Out gameplay, and see how well they can run a Big Rapids pizza restaurant. Players can opt to replace Marianne with any other Sim as manager if they so choose.