A Local Mexican Restaurant’s ‘Millennial Gray’ Bathroom Is Blowing Up on TikTok

Wrapping my 35-year-old brain around this story has been borderline impossible, but in the interest of the readers, here's my best shot.

On Tuesday, a tipster sent Racket an email with subject line "Millennial Gray." In it, they wrote: "I haven’t seen you guys cover this and I think you should. A local restaurant is blowing up on TikTok."

Intrigued, we then witnessed the following clip...

The video, which has been viewed over 3 million times, was shot by user @chloeisag inside the Pineda Tacos at 330 E. Lake St.—home to half our staff's favorite tacos in Minneapolis. The focus is, of course, the juxtaposition of walking through a colorful Mexican restaurant and ending up inside a "millennial gray" bathroom. For the uninitiated, the term millennial gray—used to describe one generation's abysmal taste in home color design—has been snowballing as a meme since last year.

Per the meme scholars at Know Your Meme: "Discussions about gray, generic redesigns of 'vintage' rooms and furniture gained virality online in early 2023, with a viral TikTok later coining the term 'millennial gray' to refer to these design choices."

Inspired by Pineda's gray-washed restroom that features inspirational wall sayings (which are more Gen X, really), @chloeisag created an original song that's pouring further gasoline on the millennial gray discourse, as cited by KYM. "Did YOU just make the SONG OF THE SUMMER???" asks one TikTok comment with almost 100,000 faves in the affirmative.

Still with us? OK, here's where things get weird...er.

In a subsequent video, @chloeisag updates her 33,000 followers on a "major drama alert within the 'There's a millennial gray looking restroom inside the Mexican restaurant' fandom…" The TikToker explains that she had just revisited Pineda, with hopes of uploading a new video to hype their biz, and when she attempted to add her song to it, a copyright infringement notice flashed across the screen.

In yet another update, we learn that the alleged copyright thief is none other than Bob Tik, a notorious copyright troll who makes blanket claims to the works of TikTokers. Apparently, Tik's copyright is for the exact phrase, "There's a millennial gray looking restroom inside the Mexican restaurant.'" To which @chloeisag says, almost certainly with accuracy:

"I know for a fact I'm the only person on Earth to ever say that sentence. Because all of those words make sense separately, but together… only I could have lived that experience."

We unsuccessfully reached out to @chloeisag for the full story. Pineda Tacos is unaware they're at the center of a viral TikTok, according to someone I spoke with via phone this afternoon. This song is, we should add, objectively a bop. (Update: Sahan Journal's Alfonzo Galvan tracked down the TikToker, Chloe Guild, and the owner, Luis Reyes Rojas, in this much better version of our story.)

And we're pleased @chloeisag, who seems cool, is doing her part to pay the attention forward: