The West Virginia Surf Report!

Last night Toney and I watched two episodes of a new show on HGTV called Self-Made Mansions. It’s basically House Hunters for people who recently became self-made millionaires. It’s an odd premise, but whatever. We watch these kinds o’ things. And there were a couple of things that struck me:

• Both couples seemed appreciative and grounded, not cocky and demanding like many people we see buying high-end homes on those types of programs. Yeah, I only saw two episode, which is a small sample size, but both couples seemed genuinely grateful. It was so unusual, I noticed it right away.
• Also, despite having almost identical budgets, the types of houses each couple had to choose from were wildly different, because of where they lived. I mean… strikingly different.

The first couple was in Charlotte, and had an $800,000 budget. And the houses they looked at were sprawling and luxurious, with a crazy amount of square footage. I don’t know if you’d call them mansions, but they were really, really nice.

And the second couple was in Portland, OR, with the same approximate budget. But the houses they looked at were similar to the one we live in here. I mean, it’s not bad, but nowhere near what those Charlotte folks were contemplating. It was amazing.

Today I thought I’d take a trip through Zillow and see what $250,000 would buy me in the various places I’ve lived during my life. Toney informed me that $250K is the average home price, so that’s why I chose it. And before we get started… I want you to know that I tried to choose a representative house for each city/town, I didn’t go with anything trying to be dramatic. So, let’s get started, shall we? I’ll do them in backwards chronological order.

Clarks Summit, PA

This one’s about $240K, in the town where we currently live. Here’s the listing, if you’re interested. It’s 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2083 square feet. It’s a ’70s throwback, but there’s a pool table.

Santa Clarita, CA

I had to raise the price to $300,000 on this one, because I was only getting results for land — no actual houses — at $250K. This one is listed at $279,999. It’s a 700 square foot, 1 bedroom, 1 bath condo built in 1985. Here’s the listing. “Cozy” and “super-cute” don’t bring me much comfort.

Lithonia, GA

I’m not sure why there are random shutters missing, but whatever. This home is listed at $260,000. It has 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2976 square feet. Here’s the listing. Looks nice! They need to place an order for at least six new shutters, though. Maybe there was a windstorm?

Atlanta (Virginia Highland area)

Atlanta is huge, so I limited my search to the area near where we lived. This is a 2 bedroom, 1 bath condo with 723 square feet. For $240K. Check out the listing if you’re interested. That area is not cheap.

Greensboro, NC

This one is listed at $249,000. It’s 1942 square feet and has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths. Here’s the listing. The inside looks nice. Reminds me of the house my parents had after they inexplicably moved to Charlotte for a few years.

Dunbar, WV

This is the most expensive house currently listed in my hometown. It’s $219,000: 4 bedrooms, 3 baths. There’s no square footage listed, but it’s big. Here’s the listing. I hope you love paneling!

So, there you go. The outliers, of course, are Southern California and our old neighborhood in Atlanta (where we were renters). The rest are relatively similar. Well, the Dunbar house is cheaper and probably bigger, and the one in Lithonia is big too. But it’s not as dramatic a difference as Charlotte vs. Portland on that show we watched last night. That was insane.

If you’d like, please share a link of a $250K house listing where you currently live. I used Zillow, but any will work.

And I’m calling it a day, my friends.

Have a great one!

Support the Surf Report with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). In Canada? Do your holiday shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!

There’s been some discussion here at the House of Kay about possibly shitcanning our always-rising cable bill and going with an all-streaming alternative. I feel like I’d be cool with it, ’cause I watch very little TV. But some other members o’ the family might feel differently. At least that’s what I anticipate. Have you done this? Does it really save much money? I mean, once you pay for internet, a primary streaming service, and all your add-ons… it feels like it would be only slightly lower than a regular cable/satellite bill. Am I wrong?

Another question: if you go with YouTube TV or Hulu Live, or one of the other similar services, do you miss anything? Do you suddenly realize that something isn’t there anymore and throw your hands into the air out of frustration? I have a feeling there would be something I didn’t even think about, until I went to watch it. Then, “Dammit! This is utter bullshit.” I need some guidance on that as well, my friends.

A few days ago Toney called our cable company, Comcast (which is very expensive, but incredibly stable), and asked the price to keep only our high-speed internet. Wanna guess? No, it’s even more than that. It’s $125 per month. Crazy! But that’s the center of the whole streaming universe. Right? You can’t be expecting to stream everything, and have shoddy internet. Then, if you add Hulu Live at $65 per month, you’re at $190. I think they have some kind of DVR service with that, which is good. But it’s still a lot of money.

And we have too many streaming services right now, which I’m paying for out of my personal allowance money, not the family budget. I need to get rid of some of them; it’s getting out of hand. Here’s what we have:

Netflix (feels essential)
Hulu (has Seinfeld and It’s Always Sunny, so it’s staying)
Amazon Prime (good stuff, always interesting and surprisingly cool)
HBO Max (love it already, especially the Turner Classic Movies section)
Disney+ (almost certainly the first one to go, after I power through the Pixar films)

We also get ESPN+ as part of a package deal, and that’s useless, except for the 30 for 30 documentaries. They have all of them, and they’re great. Maybe when baseball season starts? I don’t really pay for this one, but it hasn’t been very exciting so far. I could drop it and not miss it.

So, you see what’s happening? I don’t want to add it all up, but if I did it would be a breathtaking amount of monthly dollars — just for TV/internet. And I don’t even watch very much TV. The problem? Those streaming services are all really freaking good. It’s all right there at your fingertips, and that brings me comfort. Someday I might want to watch something specific, and need it to be there for me. I don’t really want to give up any of them, to be honest. Disney+ is the weak-link, but even it’s kinda good.

What are your thoughts on this? Help me out, won’t you? Has cutting the cord worked for you? Did it really save you much money? Or is it a fool’s errand? If it worked, let me know which “live” streaming service you’re using. Any downside? I need all the help I can get. Also, which of the add-on streaming services do you have? Is my lineup excessive? It feels like it is. But I was talking to somebody at work recently who scoffed at it, and proclaimed it “for beginners.” He had many, many more than I do. And that made me feel a little better. If you had to give up one of them, which would you choose?

Please bring us up to date on all this, if you’re so inclined.

Also, if you’re dying to hear my Appalachian accent through your earbuds, you’re in luck! Here’s the latest podcast episode.

And I’ll see you guys again soon.

Have a great day!

Support the Surf Report with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). In Canada? Do your holiday shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!

Not anymore. At this point malls offer little more than expensive clothing for the young and angular, jewelry stores (why so many jewelry stores?!), hideous shoes, and unreasonable underwear for high school girls. I don’t really fit into any of that (so to speak). On the rare occasion Toney drags me to one of those places I almost instantly lapse into a semi-catatonic state. Here’s an Instagram account that does a great job documenting this phenomenon; these are my brothers.

It wasn’t always this way. As impossible as it might seem I can recall a time when I didn’t object, or even secretly groan, when somebody suggested a trip to the mall. There was stuff for me there, things I didn’t mind checking out. Do you remember? What happened?! It would be easy to blame it on the age difference, but I don’t think that’s it. The 1983 Jeff Kay would’ve been bored as shit with the current malls too. Oh, he might’ve been young and angular, but hip and shockingly expensive clothes was never an interest. No, a time-traveling me would be equally despondent. ‘Cause there’s nothing there for me now.

Here’s some o’ the stuff that used to make it kinda fun:

Record stores. At the Town Center Mall in Charleston there were two: Camelot and National Record Mart. Camelot was fairly lame — a standard mall record store. But NRM was fun. I genuinely liked exploring in there, and found some surprisingly cool things on their shelves. The NRM in the Huntington Mall, also not far from where I grew up, was even better. For whatever reason they had an AMAZING cutout bin. Cutouts, in case you’re unaware, were albums that had been discontinued by record companies, and were being sold at a very low price. Sometimes just a dollar, but usually $2.99 or thereabouts. Most of it was garbage, of course, but there were treasures mixed in if you had the patience to look. And mister, I had the patience. I discovered some of my favorite records of all time in the NRM cutout bin at the Huntington Mall: the first two Undertones albums, All Mod Cons and This Is The Modern World by The Jam, and the original Nuggets compilation. That shit was electrifying!

Book stores. I mean, they weren’t the greatest, but they weren’t bad. We had the two standard offerings at the Charleston Mall: B. Dalton and Waldenbooks. Both had a ton of magazines, which I always enjoyed. If my girlfriend wanted to do a deep-dive on clothes shopping, or whatever, I might wander over to one of the bookstores and check out their roughly one million magazine titles. Sometimes I even bought a few of them. I was always a magazine guy, especially anything to do with music. But also baseball, National Lampoon/MAD, photography, travel, and anything else that caught my eye. I liked those stores. I bought a bunch of books there too.

Pet store. I know these are frowned upon nowadays, but my girlfriend and I always made a pilgrimage to the pet store at the Charleston Mall. We used it as nothing more than a dog zoo. Ya know? But it was enjoyable to walk over there and take an extended gander at all the puppy-mill cuteness. I don’t remember any cats at the zoo, but there might’ve been some. I’m all about the hounds, and always have been. I think my mother bought a dog at one of those places once, on a complete whim. She named him Tojo for some reason, and he later turned into a diarrhea cannon. He could shit thirty feet, on a good day.

Heaven. This is an obscure one, but a few of you might know what I’m talking about. It was part of a chain, and there was one in the Charleston Mall during the early days. They sold rock t-shirts and kitschy things. All very hip and cool. In retrospect… seems like an odd choice for 1984 Charleston, WV. In any case, I loved that place. They sold retro candies, from elevated candy counters. They were way up in the air, so you could feel like a little kid looking up. Get it? And they sold stuff like Zotz, which you didn’t see all the time. Also, in the back they had a small selection of vinyl LPs. There I discovered a record label that was totally new to me at the time: Rhino Records. Again, electrifying! I bought a surf rock compilation that blew my mind, and a collection of songs by the 1960s garage rock band The Standells. I believe I purchased an album by the Chocolate Watchband there too. Do you see why I didn’t object to going to the mall then?! Here are some pictures of a young Sharon Stone sporting a Heaven sweatshirt.

Food court. I was wildly sheltered as a youngster, when it came to food. Even Americanized chain restaurant Mexican felt like the complete outer limits of exotic back then. So, when they opened that crazy food court at the Town Center Mall, with all those different offerings, it was amazing to me. They had a Greek restaurant up there, and Chinese, maybe even Indian. All sorts o’ things. They also had a Chick-fil-A and a place that made really good cheesesteaks, called Steak Escape. And they had all those mysterious places like Corndog on a Stick (WTF?) and Orange Julius. Oh, it was mesmerizing. It felt like a trip around the world every time you went to the third level of the mall. Fun stuff!

Arcade. I was never a big video game nerd, but always loved pinball machines. So, this wasn’t a huge draw for me, but I enjoyed the fact that arcades existed. The downside: it was always very hot, and there were too many asshole 13 year old boys in there. Also, it never smelled very good, probably on account of the two things just mentioned in the previous sentence. So, not my favorite. But the fact that they existed made me happy for some reason.

Today? Nothing. Unless you’re in the market for an over-priced diamond bracelet, or a pair of banana-yellow skinny jeans. You can’t even get those giant chocolate chip cookies anymore. Man! There’s nothing for me there anymore. And I reject the notion that I’m outside the demographic now. It’s just boring. Oh, I used to like to watch dipshits climb into that hurricane machine. That was just a couple of years ago. Have you ever seen one of those? It’s a booth that you climb into and experience hurricane-level winds. That was fun. I always hoped someone would totally freak out and turn the whole thing over, but it never happened. Now it’s gone too. Oh well. And there’s still Spencer’s, which is shockingly trashy. I went into one this past weekend and couldn’t believe some of the stuff they sell in there. Trashy!

What’s your current relationship with the mall? Do you buy anything there? I do buy shirts from JCPenney sometimes, and maybe sneakers at Shoe Depot, or whatever that place is called. But other than that… nothing. What about you? Tell us about it, won’t you? Also, if I’m forgetting anything from the old days, please remind me. Like Chess King? Ha! Ludicrous.

I need to call it a day, my friends.

I’ll see you again soon!

Support the Surf Report with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). In Canada? Do your holiday shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!

In 1975 I was 12 years old, and obsessed with baseball. During that summer my brother and a couple of friends decided we were each going to attempt to build complete sets of that year’s baseball cards. And we were going to do it the only way we knew how: by buying pack after pack after pack of cards. They went for 15 cents each that year, which is equal to about 75 cents in today’s money.

This became an obsession for me and my friend Steve. Some of the others were less enthusiastic, and a couple dropped out without completing the task. I remember typing, on an old manual typewriter, my own homemade checklist. There were 660 cards in the set, and I sat down and typed in long columns every number between 1 and 660. Then I began marking the numbers off as I purchased more and more packs.

By the time we reached a point where we each only needed thirty or forty cards we could buy many packs and not get any of the ones we needed. Of course we traded with each other and helped one another as best as we could. But there was a time, late in the season, when we were all buying tons of baseball cards and not moving the needle whatsoever. Plus, it felt like every pack I opened included the Los Angeles Dodgers pretty-boy Steve Garvey, and it was maddening. “Not Garvey again!!” I’d scream, standing outside Wagner’s Market, or Bowen’s Pharmacy. We were beginning to panic, because time was running out. And fucking Steve Garvey and his freakish forearms taunted us again and again.

But we powered through and completed our sets without resorting to mail order or anything of the sort. And the weird thing? By the end we weren’t chasing stars, or household names. No, it was obscure sumbitches on teams we didn’t care about. I feel like Topps purposely printed fewer of a handful of random players to take advantage of nerds like us. It was crazy! By the end of the summer I was spending almost all of my paper route money on baseball cards. Indeed, we were buying out all the stores of their entire stock, and would have to ask our parents to take us to neighboring towns to buy cards. At K-Mart and Murphy’s Mart they had these see-through display packs, which hung on pegs. But you could see six cards in each of them: three on the front and three on the back. Man… we plundered those bastards like the addicts we were. If one of your missing cards was visible it was like Christmas morning.

My brother, Steve and I completed our sets. Everybody else quit or came up short. And it was one of the most exciting and enjoyable summers o’ my young childhood. So much fun! Eventually we bought plastic sheets and put the cards into notebooks, and I still love those things. Just looking at them makes me happy deep down.

Then it got even crazier. We started buying cards through the mail, participating in auctions and subscribing to magazines about the hobby. The two main mags were Sports Collectors Digest (still around today!) and The Trader Speaks (long gone). I remember early in the process we found out about some outfit in Dearborn, MI, called The Trading Card Company. They had some kind deal where you sent them a small amount of money and they’d send you a random card from a long time ago. The first one I received was for a player I didn’t know — Moe Drabowsky — but it was from 1957. And man, that was like receiving a jolt of electricity. I romanticized the shit out of that card, imagining some kid having it before me, back during the Eisenhower era, and it just blew my mind. So cool! It almost felt like time travel.

And that was how it started. Steve and I went into it full-on. For a few years it’s all I thought about. I was quite literally obsessed. My Dad took my brother and me to a baseball card convention near Cincinnati one year, and I bought a complete set of 1954 Red Man tobacco cards. I occasionally ran display ads in Sports Collectors Digest, at the age of 13 or 14, and was just running wide open on that shit. I used to place ads in the local Penny Saver too, and bought cards off people all around the area. WANTED TO BUY! People couldn’t believe it that somebody would hand them cash for those old cards in the back of the closet. This was before the hobby became so insane. Most people still thought of it as something for kids.

But eventually it did become insane, and I tapped out. Prices went way up, and I couldn’t afford it anymore. Also, I became more interested in beer, music, and girls. Not necessarily in that order. But it was a great run. There’s something primal inside me that still gets very excited by old baseball cards. Just looking at that Drabowsky card, for instance, does something to me.

Did you ever catch the collecting bug? Steve still has it, and never really quit. He travels all over and is still deeply involved in sports collectables. He has an enormous collection. What have you collected? Did you ever reach the point where it was a true obsession? Or was it always fairly casual? Tell us about it, won’t you? Use the comments section.

And I’m calling it a day, my friends. As is the tradition, I’ll now link to the latest podcast episode right here. In it I share a long list of things I’ve never done. Check it out, if you’re so inclined.

And I’ll see you guys again soon.

Support the Surf Report with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). In Canada? Do your holiday shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!

What’s your relationship with the veggies? I encounter a surprising number of people — adult humans — who reportedly never eat them at all. Except, they always say with a smirk, french fries and potato chips. This is foreign to me. I’ve always loved nearly every vegetable, since I was a little kid. I don’t know how this happened. I believe my brother is fairly picky in that regard, and we were raised by the same people at the same time.

I’ve been known to order the vegetable plate at home cookin’ style restaurants, forgoing all meat options, for no other reason than I like it. And nearly every weekend I prepare a gigantic salad here at Chez Kay, and Toney and I work on it ’til it’s gone. I love a good salad. In fact, I insist on using so many things, Toney asks me to prepare it with just the core components: lettuce, tomato, onion and cucumber. And keep all the additional stuff separate. I often have radishes, green peppers, and celery on the side. Sometimes other items. Toney doesn’t want to commit to all that, and wants saladic options.

And it’s not just the standard vegetables I enjoy, I also go for some of the more controversial offerings. I love, for instance, brussel sprouts. And just a few days ago I was super-excited to learn that Cracker Barrel had boiled cabbage available that day; I went to town on that shit. I don’t consider broccoli to be controversial, but many people do. I love it. Same goes for cauliflower.

Needless to say, this isn’t because of health concerns, or anything along those lines. No, I’m not super-invested in that sort of thing. In fact, I eat lots of garbage passed to me through laziness holes carved into the side of various “restaurants” around town. I just sincerely enjoy vegetables, and eat them when I can. And I also like fast food, and eat that too.

However… there are a handful of vegetables I don’t like. These are the bad vegetables, in my opinion. They are: any kind o’ squash (probably not even a vegetable, but gets lumped in), zucchini (same thing?), asparagus (blecch), and sweet potatoes (blecch again). I also have only limited exposure to turnips, and don’t know enough to have an opinion. Same goes for okra. I’ve had it in gumbo, and stuff like that. But am not qualified to pass judgment.

What are you thoughts on this? It’s very important that I know.

On a related note, I also like most beans. The one exception that jumps to mind is black eyed peas. Not good. They taste like dirt to me. I’ve tried multiple times, even at great soul food restaurants in the South. Not a fan. Here’s a bowl of Great Northerns I made a couple of weeks ago. My grandmother called ’em “white beans,” and I’ve been trying to re-create the ones she prepared when I was a kid. This latest batch was close, if not right on the money. It’s taken a long time, but I think I’ve finally unlocked the mystery of the sacred white bean. Those are chopped onions on top.

In your opinion, what are the good vegetables and what are the bad ones? And if you have any beanpinions, feel free to share them, as well. Use the comments section, so thoughtfully provided by our WordPress overlords.

Also, check out the latest podcast episode where I tell the story of how I ended up selling meat door to door at one particularly dark point in my life. You can listen here, or wherever you get podcasts.

And I’ll see you guys again soon.

Have a great day!

Support the Surf Report with a monthly $4 donation at Patreon, and get an extra podcast episode every week! We’re also at Venmo (@thewvsr) and PayPal ([email protected]). In Canada? Do your holiday shopping at Amazon! Thank you, guys!