A couple of things I loved that recently went away forever:
Half dotcom was a site owned by eBay, where you could buy used CDs, DVDs, and books. I bought roughly a million CDs from them through the years. They were the best, and I just recently purchased a handful of Green Day discs there. I was in one of those frenzies where I NEEDED (a powerful need) to own every album by a specific artist. So, I went to my old standby and completed the task. That was literally a few weeks ago. And now the site is gone! What in the harelipped hell?? It sincerely makes me sad. Sure, I can go to Amazon, but their prices aren’t as good, and their shipping costs are higher. Half has been a part of my life since 1999, I think. And that’s a long time.
Burger King hot dogs were the shit. They were always good — grilled and topped with chili and cheese — but the prices were way too high in the beginning. About six months ago, though, they cut ’em down to about $1.29 each, and that was the sweet spot. I was locked in, goddammit. But the other day I went through the drive-through, placed my standard order, and the woman broke the news to me: they’re gone, and they’re not coming back. She was speaking like we were at a wake. She was aware of my deep, deep fondness, and was very gentle. I didn’t break down, but it was close. There’s a hot dog-shaped hole in the middle of heart.
Another thing I love that’s gone, hopefully not forever:
Toney’s in Myrtle Beach, by herself. I remember a co-worker telling me his wife went to the beach alone, years ago, and I thought, “Well, there goes that marriage.” And I was right. Within six months they were separated, and divorced shortly thereafter. But that’s not what’s going on with me and Toney. We just can’t leave our kids alone for extended periods, on account of the hooliganism. So, we’re going by ourselves. It’s weird, I know. But there’s nothing more to it than that.
I took her to the Allentown airport yesterday morning, drove back to our little town here, had eggs and cheese at Waffle House… and she texted and said she was in Myrtle Beach. It was bizarre. It felt like I’d just dropped her off a few minutes earlier.
Her sister “Nancy” will be joining her on Saturday. We’ll see how it goes. Toney was drinking some ludicrous cocktail at noon today, so I guess she’s having a good time. She also sent me an incredible sunrise shot from the beach this morning. Me? I’m getting ready to leave for work, and will come home to some version of dumbass chaos which will make me insane and I might kick everybody out. Yes, it’s quite a life I’ve carved out for myself.
I knew a hipster girl years ago who insisted that Myrtle Beach is “the worst place on Earth.” She was one of these types. You know? Anything that everyday folks enjoy is automatically stupid? In any case, I’m going to call it a day here with a Question based on her ridiculous statement. In the comments section, please tell us what immediately jumps to your mind when you read the words “the worst place you’ve ever been.” I somehow got lost one time, and ended up in Camden, NJ. And I’m going with that. Holy shitballs! Can you do better than that? Please tell us about it. Keep it to places you’ve actually experienced firsthand, please. And if you have any recent losses to share, we’d like to hear about those, as well.
And I have to go now. Have a great day, my friends.
I’ll see you again on Monday!
Now playing in the bunker
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I have been in a couple of countries that were how should we say – not so pleasant. I won’t say which ones – as to not offend anyone.
At a strip club in Mexico City where we were held hostage because we didn’t have the money to pay our bill, after buying some of the girls cocktails. They let one of us go back to the hotel to get more money, then took his gold chain. Yeah, we were gringo hotshots.
Gringo Hotshot would be an awesome band name.
I think they need a lead singer. Maybe Manolito and the Gringo Hotshots.
jtb
Southeast DC in the 1990s was pretty bad. I also didn’t enjoy the overnight walk from Boston to Worcester.
OMG nobody ever, ever walks from Boston to Worcester. I’ll bet it was bad. WTF?
I was living in Worcester in the spring of 1979, and I went to see Horslips at the Paradise on a Sunday night. I don’t know WTF I was thinking, but I took the bus and the T to get there. I had a car and could have driven. And I knew the T was closed at night. Anyway the show let out at 1:00am or something, and all public transit was closed, so I started walking. I was able to thumb one ride from a bunch of scary dudes in a van, but walked most of the way. It was light when I got home Monday morning, and I called in sick to work. Still, it was a really good show and I’m glad I went.
Drove through Gary, IN. Also, Portsmouth, OH, is a dump.
I understand Portsmouth is also radioactive as hell.
I feel bad about this because I have family there, I’m from the South and I love the South, but Alabama is AWFUL. And in particular, Birmingham, Alabama, in late November. I get depressed just thinking about it.
I’ve been to Huntsville. It was kind of creepy. I did not care for it.
Hah, I’ve been to Birmingham and I that’s probably the second worst place I’ve been!
There was that one time that I was lost in the rain in Juarez, and it was Easter-time too. Hanging out with some guy named Robert Zimmerman. He’s cranky!
Did your gravity fail?
I’m sure something pulled him through. Oh.
jtb
Biloxi Mississippi, circa 1983. Was a hell hole. I hear it is much better now.
I was very disappointed visiting Stone Henge. They roped off the stones to prevent vandalism. What the hell is the point in going if you can only glance at it from a distance? I’m glad I saw it but it was a real let down.
Do NOT get lost in Stamford, Connecticut. Holy hopping hell. That’s when I began leaving a set of weights in my car.
“There’s a hot dog-shaped hole in the middle of heart” Isn’t that a line from the Police’s King of Pain?
East Saint Louis, and Cairo, IL. They may have been something long ago, like when goods were shipped by riverboat, but nowadays both are in pretty bad shape.
The Bowery, late ’60’s. Somehow when we drove to NYC to visit family my Dad always drove through there. It was a scary dang place.
We drove through Trenton, NJ a few years ago. My daughter woke up from a dead sleep, yelling about the smell.
She deemed it the Hobo Dumpster.
H, I was born and raised in Trenton, starting in 1973. Left in about 1996. Went back for an extended visit in about 2014, and holy freaking shitballs, is it a disaster!
Abilene, TX is a horrid shithole.
Rotgut whiskey numbs the brain
If I stay here I’ll go insane
Think I need a change of scene
To Abilene, my Abilene
jtb
Wow, last I heard it was the prettiest town I’ve ever seen.
I understand the wimmin there don’t treat you mean. That means my attorney will have to defer his next boat upgrade, but times are hard.
jtb
Bridgeport, CT has the worst smell. When we would pass through, the windows got rolled up.
Paterson, NJ during visiting hours at the county jail.
Gunhill Road in the Bronx in the early 70s after a detour due to buckled pavement.
For an adventure in stench, drive through Staten Island in August with the windows open. I suggest going from the Outerbridge Crossing to the Verrazano. Fresh Kills has an aroma beyond compare.
New York City comes immediately to mind as one of the worst places I’ve ever had to visit. The place reminds me of a giant ant colony somebody ripped out of the ground and turned upside down, then filled with 8 million jackasses. On the west coast, Seattle isn’t an altogether bad place, it’s just the overabundance of insufferable idiots who live in the area that puts that on my list. And yeah, Gary, Ind. and Detroit make it pretty high up the list. Also Mexico as a country, and all of the cities I’ve been to in the southwest that are rapidly being turned into the shithole that is most of Mexico.
As far as some of the nicer places I’ve been, I’d have to say Anchorage, AK. is right up there as clean and friendly, and southwest Idaho (Idaho City, Payette, Emmett) also makes the list as a place I hope to retire to.
No words.
Coupla crack alleys in early 90’s, Philadelphia. Nuff said.
Yeah, Philadelphia has to always be in the conversation due to, well, Philadelphians.
Domestically – Memphis. Globally – Belize. Although I think you can find bad parts of most major cities.
I’m something of a modern day renegade, you couldn’t imagine the things my eyes have seen darnit. Last year I jostled into the mean streets of Greenwich, CT. I saw a silver haired lady in a 2007 Camry dump the remainder of her Smartwater bottle in a parking lot. Some of it even splashed near a handicapped zone!
I’m still mourning the loss of the chili-cheese burrito at Taco Bell. And now half.com as well
I tried to post a story but the website won’t let me. Too long I guess.
Yep. Oh well, y’all’s loss.
Port Arthur, Texas, in the summer of 1979. I was on a Greyhound bus heading home to MA after a 6 week road trip around the whole country, 18 years old just between high school and college. I had just left San Antonio and a gal I had met in San Diego – I stayed with her in SA for a week, and very nearly forever. But that’s another story for another day.
As the bus rolled into Port Arthur on a hot August afternoon, you could smell the poverty and all that comes with it. I remember barely clothed kids wandering in the street, trash everywhere, and dilapidated tiny houses that radiated despair from every corner.
Nicely written. I could hear Port Arthur in every sad song Janis Joplin sang. And they were all sad.
John
Wow Jeff, it’s gonna be tough to beat Camden, but here goes. Coming back from a Mets game several years ago I was BS-ing with my friend and missed my exit for the Turnpike. I ended up in Paterson – and not the good part, if in fact there is such a thing. Late at night, back alley-like streets and all kinds of riff-raff just hanging out on the streets. I really had no idea how to get re-routed and I REALLY didn’t want to pull over and ask directions. Eventually I pulled over – I was almost considering keeping it at a slow roll – and had my friend roll down the window about halfway. I figured that by the time I got directions all my hubcaps would be gone and maybe a tire or too also. Somehow made it out and we still disparage Paterson any chance we get!
Newark, Detroit, and South Chicago are to be avoided.
Yeah. Was desperate for fuel while driving a 26 ft. Penske truck through Chicagoland. Got misrouted and ended up on the Skyway instead of Rte. 80. Could not maneuver. Ended up looking for gas in the South Side. Was also pulling a trailer with a shiny TT on it.
That was a butt puckering 30 minutes.
Just remembered. There was just no where to pull over in what was in total a 45 ft. rig and look on my phone for “gas near me.” Just kept driving around in hope while the gauge was pegged on E. The whole time I just kept saying “fuck, fuck, fuck”…”fuck, fuck, fuck” over and over again.
Haven’t been there since the 70s and conditions may have improved, but I’d include just about anywhere in Appalachian coal country on my worst place list – the despair was palpable.
still despairing.
In 1978, I spent 6 months working at a desalination facility outside of Doha Qatar. The city was wretched. People begged for any kind of handout. People slept under cars and in doorways. No sanitation facilities…many people just relieved themselves on the sidewalks or curbs. The police routinely used billy clubs and pistol butts to crack heads for minor infractions, …sometimes just for fun. Yet with all this (and more), many people still came from Indian, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh to look for work there. Their risk/benefit analysis has to make you wonder how much worse their home countries were. Wazoo cultural shock for me.
Limey for the win!! I knew somebody was going to say Memphis. I’m proud of my little shit hole. The worst place I’ve ever been , I spent a couple of years in Pontiac, Michigan. I was glad to move back to Memphis.
I’ve been to a lot of this country, but a part Memphis I spent a night in was one of the few places I’ve felt genuinely unsafe, it was like I caught in a crack-induced zombie apocalypse, wasted people literally lying in the middle of the street oblivious. Not all of Memphis was like that, just the part my cheap arse decided to stay in.
While not feeling in danger, I’ve felt very unwelcome in West Virginia, and that’s happened both times I’ve been there. It must be an Appalachia thing, I don’t have problems in the Carolinas. All you Appalachians know you’re Celts like me, right?!
Limey, I assume you know xenophobia when you see it. It’s odd though, because, although African Americans knew about Memphis music pretty early, the Brits were serious fans of the Memphis sound (Stax Records, BB King and the rest of the Beale Street Blues Boys, Sun Records with Howlin’ Wolf and Ike Turner, and later, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis) way before white America discovered it. Stax Records toured Europe (actually almost exclusively England and Germany) in the early days because they couldn’t sell to white folks in the United States. (The Beatles, upon meeting Booker T and the MGs after a Carla Thomas concert somewhere in London, famously bowed in unison).
Memphis, before the assassination of Martin Luther King, was called the “most segregated city in America”, which was saying something in the ’60s. After the assassination things just got worse. I think you’re looking at the remnants of institutional prejudice. It leaves bombed-out cities like a bad war, and there ain’t no good wars.
John
Jeff,
I’m sorry about Burger King hot dogs and Half.com, but the universe is balanced if you look at it right. Some institutions are born just when we need them. For example, back when I could choose to piss or not to piss for seemingly hours at a time, grocery stores didn’t have bathrooms, at least not for customers. Youngsters might not believe this, but almost NO grocery stores had public restrooms before somewhere around 9/11 (so I guess they didn’t attack us because they hated our easy urination).
Then, magically, about the time I had a discretionary 15 minutes or so, nearly every grocery had a bathroom. Now that I have scant minutes to decide whether to piss in one of my empty plastic FruitWater bottles or just pull over to the side of the road and let ‘er rip, grocery stores have lovely restrooms with air fresheners, flowers, toilet paper and everything. You don’t even have to tip the towel guy.
Live gets worse in huge chunks at a time, but sometimes it gets better in little dibs and dabs around the edges where pleasure hides.
John
I sure hope Toney brings back a good “Nancy” story !
I been some pretty bad places I used to work for a newspaper chain that seemed to have offices next to police stations in bad neighborhoods
#1 Detroit – we pick up our rental car and they say AND I SWEAR THIS IS TRUE… “If the car gets stolen just bring back the keys” Now I have rented cars in at least 25 states and no one EVER said that before.
#2 Trenton, NJ I call the editor to schedule a visit and he asks me what are you wearing and I immediately think ‘You sexist, misogynist son of a …..’ so I say WHY? and he replies if you wear red or blue you might be mistaken for a gang member and shot. Years later I am in the news room and they are trying to track down a gun shot victim and I could tell them I met him out front of the building and he bummed a cigarette off me and if you hurry he is probably still outside.