Imagine this: You’re eating in Little Italy on a Friday night — but there’s no spaghetti on the menu. Or you go to Greektown on a Tuesday but can’t order spanakopita. Ridiculous, you say? Why, yes, but no more far-fetched than finding no open bagel shop in Pikesville on Saturday.

In case you’re new in town and don’t know it, there are a lot of Jewish people living in Pikesville. I’m one of them. Bagels are pretty popular around here, especially on the weekend. There used to be a couple of bagel shops in the neighborhood that were open every day of the week. Now there’s only one. Its owners observe the Jewish Sabbath and close on Saturday.

You should see what happens on Sunday. Deprived for a whole day, people act as though they haven’t had a bagel in months. They flock through the doors like bears just out of hibernation. They can’t smear the cream cheese fast enough.

Clearly, there’s a disconnect here, something fundamentally wrongheaded about this whole equation. You can find Sam’s, Einstein’s and other bagel shops open on Saturday in other Baltimore neighborhoods. But the one place where bagels are most popular goes wanting for half of the weekend.

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This is a real no-brainer business opportunity. Just open a great bagel shop in Pikesville, serve on Saturday, and see what happens. You couldn’t fill the place with enough chairs to seat all the bagel-less people. Why, the hole of the world’s largest bagel wouldn’t be big enough to hold all your cash.

For some reason, no one has picked up on it. Maybe it’s because there’s been no outcry ... no marches up Park Heights Avenue with signs declaring the injustice of it all. So, all the entrepreneurs take their big ideas elsewhere, and we Pikesvillians are up a creek without a bagel.

We live in a time when there are more important things to worry about. But if we could just take care of this problem, I’m sure everything else would fall into place. The world is out of balance. And someone had to say something about it.