Just Tuesday I was at a rural gas station that didn't have the option of paying at the pump. I noted my number and went in anticipating a struggle. The exceptionally amiable guy asked me how much I wanted, after a bit of ships in the night entirely on my part he said why don't you just fill up and come back. It's possible that this interaction was facilitated by our mutual lack of melanin but that did not seem to be the vibe. In fact on this particular journey the only trouble I encountered was with a similarly pale hotel security guard of the "you are all equally worthless" Ermey mold hassling me for having the temerity to use the pool at 2130 when it closed at 2200.
It’s funny. Last week, I went to my local BP since they had the cheapest gas at that point. But my BP Visa card, which was just taken over by the First National Bank of Omaha (same as Speedway cards), for some reason, wasn’t playing nice with the pumps, and for whatever reason, you have to use the card at the pump instead of the BP app in order to ensure that you get whatever discounts you have available. (Same with GREEDway!) Card gets stuck in the reader after the NFC thing fails to work, so I trudge towards the store.
The counter attendant, a pleasant woman of color, immediately asks what the issue was, and then asks for the pump number. As she walks back into the back room with the controls on the pumps in order to free my card, she apologizes six ways to Sunday, and states that they have been having no end of trouble with the card transition, and that they’re trying to resolve things! She even showed me a copy of the Email from corporate. I brought the card back in and had her tee up the fill (guessed $90), filled up with no issue, and she was genuinely happy when I saw on my receipt that I’d gotten all the discounts; she was whooping and hollering like I’d found the lost coin! 😉
I should have gotten her name and given an attaboy to the station manager.
Among the many despicable aspects of the "turning into your parents" series of insurance commercials is the one where apparently it is uncool to compliment an employee to his or her manager. That could make the difference between getting a raise or getting fired, but helping people is lame.
I drove - in segments - from Chicago to Los Angles, and ultimately to Monterey for the PARSH Rennsport Reunion in 2018. I met a friend in Denver, and we did a fairly long haul from Denver to Las Vegas in one hit; we arrived at the Wynn valet with just enough time to make a 10 PM dinner reservation. Side note - I have never seen so many people eating A5 Wagyu in sweatpants.
Naturally, our departure from Sin City the next day was, ahem, delayed. The drive along I-15 was hellish, for a myriad of reasons. We were somewhere around Barstow when my buddy’s Turbo needed gas, so we stopped at a substantial truck stop / gas station off the Interstate - think Love’s / Pilot Flying J, it wasn’t an Arco. The parking lot was mostly gravel, and there were numerous occupants of said parking lot who were clearly on speed; naturally, I felt right at home given my humble, hardscrabble, hillbilly upbringing.
We finally made it to Malibu, where we had a beachfront Airbnb for a few nights. Another side note - it was probably a mile or two from The Malibu Kitchen, where you and I once had breakfast with a certain Fortunate Son. It was just before 9 PM on a Sunday night.
Apparently, there are precisely three places to find dinner at 9 PM on a Sunday night in Malibu:
1-Jack In The Box
2-NOBU
3-Mastro’s Ocean Club
(The Taco Bell inside the 76 station at the intersection of PCH and Sunset was, inexplicably, closed.)
We were driving tastefully on this jaunt, so we settled for Mastro’s (NOBU was booked).
The next morning, we were up and into the Malibu canyons before sunrise, and we’d had our fill by lunchtime. We spent the afternoon on our balcony overlooking the Pacific with a box of cigars and several bottles of wine. It was one of the best - and most carefree - days of my life.
————
On another trip to Los Angeles, I had dinner with a certain former journosaur-cum-PR flack at APL; APL references the initials of Adam Perry Lang, restauranteur / former Jeffrey Epstein personal chef. For some reason, APL is no longer in business.
APL’s menu (in)famously included a “Felony Knife,” which was priced at $950.01 to deter theft:
“Dead fucking serious,” he says. “If they steal it, it’s $950 because that’s the bare minimum for a felony in the state of California.”
The scourge of Arco has recently made its way to my neighborhood in Atlanta; there’s a palatial new Arco station that sells prepared food and also offers an extensive selection of wine. The bathrooms are unlocked. For now.
I disagree with his conclusions. He is confusing the visible elements of Three Forks with the town itself. Addicts and wheelchair families are always going to be left behind. They didn't fall on hard times, their times are always hard. The motivated residents have adapted and gotten their sip of the milkshake too. While I too find much of the development around Bozeman and Big Sky to be in poor taste, the money is definitely flowing into the area, not out. Bigger pie, unevenly distributed.
I found his characterization of Chick-fil-A customers as horrible, awful, evil, RACISTs who are raging at the dying of whiteness a little curious. I’m confident he - and many other concerned observers - lay on the ominous specter of disaffected rural white rage a bit thick.
As you know, I am among a small subset of Americans that has significant life experience in both Red and Blue America. Although I grew up in Appalachia, and still spend plenty of time in Appalachia, I don’t necessarily present as the humble, hardscrabble, hillbilly that I described myself as in my earlier comment. I have never experienced firsthand the degree of barely contained tribal fury that the author breathlessly relates…
I think he imagines himself becoming a general of a Meth Platoon, helping the Trumptards learn to appreciate art in between infantry actions against the 69th
I can fit into a business-degree-and-a-tie crowd. I generally did in Albuquerque. But my heart is really in the cornfields and with my blue collar guys.
I grew up in a small town in Southern Appalachia that was Deliverance Country when I was a kid (the movie was filmed nearby, in fact); it’s now a bona fide “destination” that has experienced a growth tear over the past ~20 years. The downtown area was moribund until the mid 1990s, when it was inundated with antique shops, which have steadily given way to upscale boutiques and fine dining restaurants. Locals carp about growth, but there’s not the tension described in Montana. I should note that the growth generally comes courtesy of Atlanta and Florida, although there are New Yorkers and Californians arriving, as well.
After high school, I went to a top liberal arts college before working as an investment banker in Atlanta, Chicago, and Atlanta again. I spent ~4.5 years living and working in downtown Chicago, and there was a roughly equitable political split between guys I worked for or otherwise knew/know with eight figure and above net worths. I recall a guy that I worked for (in Chicago) railing against Trump in 2016; he has four luxurious houses and is probably worth at least $50MM. I suppose when you get to that rarefied echelon, you may prioritize other considerations above your personal financial position.
There are a lot of ideas put forward in his article and it takes a lot of unpacking. I think the concept of comparing impacts on a resort town (Big Sky), it’s nearest city (Bozeman), and “the next town over” (Three Forks) has merit when talking about growth, development and displacement in the Northern Rockies (for the purposes of my argument mountainous Idaho, Wyoming and Montana). In this case he cherry picked Three Forks (only known for being where Bozeman goes to find a gentleman’s club) rather than the more natural for comparison Belgrade, Manhattan, or Livingston to impale his thesis on the facts.
I found his invocation of the “soul” of Montana to be disingenuous. He seems to want to play on the romantic notions of the Costner/Duvall/Redford western oeuvre, but that never was, any more than the mafia was The Godfather (I think art influenced life regarding that much in the same way for both).
His further attempts to engender himself to the reader by sitting in judgement over the aesthetic merits of mountain modern/minecraft architecture and new clothing trends, it rings false if he feels the buildings are detracting from the appeal of the place, but gives no credit to Lululemon’s contributions to the area’s natural beauty. I do think a serious discussion of the Minecraftsman (clever) style vs. other forms of rapidly built housing, climate appropriateness, building codes, residual value, 15 year maintenance costs would be a great topic to explore.
All of that was simply a prelude to his complete misunderstanding of the historical relationship between the Northern Rockies and coastal capital, from the time they were all territories on.
I don’t want to do a line by line take down on his characterizations of the local people, but I found even his positive portrayals (the former Ranch food service employees) to be cringe. It also sounds like a shift in management priorities to Aramark style rather than anything to do with the “soul” of Montana. What does he think happened to those former employees? I have my theories. I would wager they left food service and are doing much more rewarding work in the region's new economic climate. If he wants to slap their backs, I would suggest he could hire some of them as fishing guides for a lot more an hour than they were waiting tables for, but that is me stereotyping. He might find some of them running their own restaurants serving unfrozen food for astronomical prices.
After all that, if we need to invoke the “soul” of Montana again, perhaps in his mind to protect it, let us talk about these newcomers. This author frames it as a coastal liberal vs. Trumpian local kind of way, which is shitty. Without over analyzing the existing political conflicts prior to this most recent invasion, lets look at this breed of person who has a “In this house…” yard sign, the opposite of the MAGA sign.
We know what this means in NY and CA. But what does it mean when since moving to the Northern Rockies, they have made friends here. What does it mean when that sign shares a yard with a SxS? Or there is a nascent gun collection well secured in the home? It means that whatever influence these newcomers have on the “soul” of Montana, the soul of Montana is working equally to influence them.
TTAG used to talk about bringing new people with you to the range. This is the intersection where this is happening. These are people who are open and willing to be persuaded, eventually, but still with the valuable perspective they gained living on the coasts. They just are not going to be persuaded by a no-talent ass-clown looking down his nose at the world like the author of that post.
I love reading your stories about traveling through America. You don’t condescend, and you appreciate what you see. As a native New Yorker who is now an Idaho stakeholder by way of a decade in Columbus, your background perspective is very easy for me to understand. I also think at your best you engage people who think differently persuasively. So more of you in the discourse, less of that asshat.
The sip of the PE/FIRE milkshake was never intended to be for these people, probably purposely so, out of contempt if nothing else. Should the subservient among them wish to clean condos and wait tables, masked, for the cloud people, all the better. Investment in a factory or farming infrastructure would help most of them. To rein in 'PE' and to invest in that form, both in rural and urban areas, elicits memories of the bald pasta and funny mustache men, and we can't be having that.
I emailed this to a friend and Montana native. His reply, paraphrased, was that 'my grandfather said we were so poor we didn't notice the depression'.
Personally, I'm not rural and have never lived so but I get the impression the author moved away from the poor badwhites and has tried as hard as possible to separate himself from them to better blend in with the cloud people for professional or personal reasons.
The money has flowed in, but I'd counter that it's not the 'good money'. The 'starter pack' meme he posted hits the target. If I was a native, I'd see these people as carpetbagging locusts, working to turn my state into precisely the shithole they left, and to wear my home as a skinsuit. And then want to triple-s them. In Minecraft.
Give the transplants two good cold Montana winters and half of them will end up leaving. Given the likelihood of a significant recession that fiber optic umbilical cord that made the great migration possible will be cut for many of them. NYC and Bay Area salaries in Bozeman are not long term sustainable.
I did like the authors description of, "pickup trucks becoming the war machines of an American Taliban"! Never though of myself that way, but it's prolly true!
I have a topical if not personal question with regards to "I slipped a Boker Applegate-Fairbairn into my waistband..."
What's the reason you don't carry a firearm? You have talked about gun ownership in the past, have good working knowledge of them, and often travel to places where such a thing might be necessary.
As an on-again, off-again resident of said state and a fan of the appendix carry, I can assure you that's it's quite simple to check said paperweight and unpack it as the naked rump of the "Welcome to the Golden State" sign shrinks in your rear-view mirror.
Here in Texas (and some places in the South), we have Buc-ees. Somehow, this bucks the trend of bathroom and security issues. Granted, they are located along major highways, but one of their selling points is “Cleanest bathrooms in Texas!”
This is true; we love our Buc’s. That said, we’re moving from one of the big 4 cities--Texas consists of Austin-San Antonio-DFW-Houston and the rest of the state--to a rural town and county both named after Confederate generals. Cannot get there quickly enough. Big cities have now stripped any hyperbole from Dick and Gibson novels.
I first visited SF about ten years ago and fell in love with it. It had the artsy, creative slightly anarchic lefty alternative vibe that appealed to me. Plus the size and architecture were perfect.
When I last went in 2019 it was a completely different place - like you say something out of a Gibson novel. Tent cities on every street. The wealth disparity there now is frightening.
The only glory hole I have seen in real life was a rest stop in bat country on the way to Vegas. If that is not a high trust interaction I don't know what is.
Fresh out of college, my wife and I took our first jobs in North Houston. The first time my patents came down from Colorado to visit and check out the Taste of Texas steakhouse we told them about, they stopped at Buc-ees - also on our recommendation.
After they pulled up, they witnessed what had to be a pimp absolutely wailing on one of "his girls."
Once the shock of what they were seeing wore off, my mom joined several other patrons in running inside for help while my dad and a couple friendly Texans somewhat hesitantly started in the pimp's direction to intervene.
After a full-force kick in the face, the girl managed to crawl under someone's vehicle, and sensing the ground shrinking around him, the pimp got in his ride and sped off.
My mom is still traumatized any time she sees that cartoon beaver on bumper stickers and hats, but she admits that the bathrooms were pretty dang clean.
Big fan of Buc-ee's. I live in-between Houston and Galveston. Multiple Buc-ees in this area. About 2 years ago, some urban people (you know what I mean) took to driving to various Buc-ees locations and walking into the foyer area (big foyers with displays, to allow double doors for AC help) and proceeded to swipe Yeti coolers. They hit multiple stores before word got out. And yet, all the Buc-ees I see still have the foyers stocked with expensive gear. Local law enforcement were all over it, though. Apparently in Florida you don't fuck with the mouse, and in Texas you don't fuck with the beaver. For what it's worth.
I have the stellar, local options of Wawa, Rutters, and Sheetz stores so I know that I'm truly blessed. However, Buc-ees are a without a doubt a special treat when I'm in TX!
Here, in the Tulsa area, we have a Mr. Bass maybe a 1/4 mile from my house. Locally owned, open 24/7/365. Beer sales til 2:30am. Need snacks, fishing gear, live fishing bait, kerosene, propane, ice, cigs, lottery tickets, ice cream, fountain drinks etc, it's all there.
They also still sell all 3 grades of gasoline ethanol free, with their own dedicated hoses.
We are right by the lake, so there are a lot of people filling their boats up. A lot of those boats are older and can't handle ethanol. I assume that's the rationale behind all the non-ethanol Gas choices.
We got a new Circle K about 10 minutes away from my house with "E0" 90 Octane. All my old carb bikes get it. My Suburban gets the 30 year old gas that I drain from the 40 year old project bikes I pick up lol
We always used to buy the $2.97(?) six packs of Stewarts Mountain Brew on motorcycle tours in the Adirondacks in college. Was saddened when I just looked it up and saw that it's discontinued as of 2018. Not that it was a particularly good beer, it was just very cheap and I associate it with riding our old UJMs on beautiful roads and camping out by the lakes out there.
IIRC Mountain Brew itself was brewed for Stewarts by Genesee so it may very well have BEEN Genesee all along. I'll be honest I never thought it ever was anything that special (and I'm even more ambivalent about Genesee if I'm honest) but it was purely a nostalgia thing to remember being a broke college student on my $950 '78 GS1000 buying a $3 six pack.
'“Someone is stealing this because they need it,” agreed Delia Kemph, a 28-year-old teacher.'
This viewpoint is acceptable coming from a child but not from an adult. Using perceived need as justification for theft is the lever by which society will collapse. During the Great Depression? Yeah, maybe. Right now, when everyone south of Goldman Sachs has the HELP WANTED signs out? I don't think so.
If I can't find work in my field by winter, I'm going to go to Sheetz and make sandwiches for $22 an hour. I'm not above that work and neither is anyone else. If you'd rather steal than do that, you're acting out of something other than need.
I wonder if they’re seeing a trend of people stealing canned food or if they just lock up everything over a certain dollar amount and inflation has pushed spam and tuna into that territory. But you’re right, so many of society’s problems would be solved if more people understood there is dignity on work, even work that may be “beneath” you.
A lot of the problem here in the UK is people do work, but the minimum wage + any government welfare they may receive (which is extremely hard to get) isn't enough because of spiralling inflation, our ridiculous rent and house prices and childcare costs. Plus energy bills, which have doubled in the last year.
There is work out there, because of the labor shortages caused by Brexit, but companies have yet to catch on to the idea they need to raise wages now they can't count on European immigrants working for minimum.
I don’t think the UK gets much gas from Russia, but was absolutely the right thing to do and I think most Europeans would happily eat the cost. The UKs problem is blatant profiteering because our energy suppliers are privatised (part of the great Conservative nationalisation of the eighties and nineties that ensured all their mates got to own all the infrastructure and got insanely rich).
The difficulty is that it's a regional market so rising prices in Europe mean rising prices in the UK as well. We will have to agree to disagree on the validity of sanctions. From my perspective it's a coward's way to make war on a country... but even if you think that Russia should be punished for the Ukraine thing it seems to me that the sanctions are doing more harm to Europe than to Russia. Come December, when everyone in Germany and Poland is enjoying in-home temperatures of a rationed 15 deg. C and the ruble is worth 2x what it was in 2020, we will see how righteous they feel... I am probably on the wrong side of history here, but I think Russia has as much right to invade Ukraine as the US does to conduct law enforcement in Mexico and South America, which is to say "more than you'd think, but maybe less than what's being done."
yup. in the same city that locks down spam. chinese ladies patrol for 5 cent deposit bottles and cans. they leave every garbage pile neater than they found it. they're clean, never beg and say thank you if you give them your empty. it's a question of values.
It's not just the coasts. When I've gone to Nashville for the summer NAMM show, I've noticed that all the small items in the drug stores are locked up and the grocery stores play recordings telling patrons to watch their purses etc in their carts. I live within walking distance of the Detroit city limits and I've never experienced anything like that around here. Yeah, gas stations have bulletproof glazing but almost everything for sale except for cigarettes and lottery tickets are there for the picking.
I live in one of the safest semi-urban places in the country. The supermarkets lock up baby formula going back ~10+ years because organized Russian gangs steal it. There was a story in the New Yorker about it years ago when a former FBI agent became the head of Target's loss prevention. Which reminds me, is there a way to get in touch with Jack directly? I wanted to pitch an idea.
Many parallels between Nashville and the description of Bozeman in the linked article above. Awash in transplants, clashing architecture having no respect for history, loss of dialect, hipster corporate retail and restaurants . . . It speaks to the power of low taxes and low(er) cost real estate.
I manage a small town hardware store located (inside a grocery store) halfway (20ish minutes) between two of IL's less reputable cities.
The amount of stuff we have to lock up, and the dollars we have dedicated to LP is absurd -- and it's not due to the locals. Every few months word gets out on the street -- go 20 minutes, the have good shit and low security. The staff, the regulars, we all see the absurdity of it. Local PD cracks down, but there is only so much one can do.
Ironically, the liquor department can leave $100 bottles of high-end bourbon on an endcap, but it's always the Hennessy and Crown Royal that get stolen...
We tend to lose power tools, knives, and the like. Oh---and the meet department loses steak.
Society swings left then right. I've read that in the '70s and '80s, parents in New York city would give their kids $20 to carry in case they were mugged. $20, they reasoned, was enough to prevent violence and was a small price to pay for a child's safety. History tells us that the city was a shithole then, with busted budgets, trash in the streets and rampant violence. It was in 1985 that "subway vigilante" Bernard Getz shot four attempted muggers, but by that point things had been bad for a long time.
In the 90s, under William Bratton and Rudy Giulliani, the city got organized and started policing again. The policy was called "broken windows" and focused on the idea that that if you enforce the small rules it will affect the overall life in the city. It seems to have worked as by the early 2000s New York City was supposed to have been an OK place to live again, but there are people who feel that policing was too rough and too focused on people of color. They may have a point, I don't know, but whatever happened crime rates decreased.
It makes me think that many of the problems we are seeing in urban areas today could be handled if there was no tolerance for bullshit. When people are soft hearted and reluctant to enforce rules bullshit thrives - and Seattle, where I was raised, is a good example. Seattleites are nice people, they usually try to help people and the result has been an influx of homeless people. The city has become a dangerous place to be. Homeless camps have sprouted up in various areas, some sponsored by local churches, etc, and now even once quiet neighborhoods are having issues. The typical, nice Seattleites are at a loss for what to do.
Their current mayor of choice seems, like her constituents, unwilling to lower the hammer and I keep wondering when Seattleites will get finally tired of this shit, realize they have to get hard, and start voting the other way. I am convinced it will happen and the region will swing from soft touches and easy marks to "get out of my face" and "I have no tolerance for your bullshit." It will be a good thing, but how much will the average person have to suffer before the majority figure it out?
My understanding of the entire homelessness problem is probably not complete but I see three main groups: people with mental problems, druggies, and the homeless by choice. Each group requires different solutions. I think we, as a society should help the people with legit mental issues - I am not so sure what that help might look like, but we should. Drugs should be legal and as long as you don't become a problem you can do what you feel but, should a drug user become a problem, there should be consequences for crimes and some sort of infrastructure to help wean them off of drugs. If they can't be or choose not to be weaned, then we start looking at other options - maybe permanent hospitalization or prison. And for those people for whom homelessness is a lifestyle choice, the goal would be to make it so miserable on them that they would make better choices.
Right now, small-town America benefits from two things. One, they don't have the infrastructure to deal with permanent homeless populations of any real size - no large soup kitchens, no large shelters, and not enough people to make panhandling worthwhile - so large numbers of homeless are not attracted to those places. And two, small-town America has an abundance of people who are willing to call others out on their bullshit - the down home version of "broken windows" so maybe there really is something to that after all...
NYC (somewhat) kid here....used to carry $20 in my sock for this purpose. Gross bill after a couple days, but nevertheless, still do it whenever I'm in the city. Manhattanites think I'm being ridiculous, but having the pleasure of going to school in the other boroughs, can confirm that it's necessary. The way women walk around in a city drunk, is mind-boggling too.
i see twenty something girls in short skirts teetering drunk on heels entering my building every weekend after midnight. most take uber but some walk from the subway alone. my first thought is, where are their parents? no one was this dumb when i was their age.
my kid still carries the $20 but i told her it was for emergencies (the frequent mugging hasn't returned to downtown yet). she mostly uses her debit card. the other day she told me she owed the nail salon $8 bucks because her card maxed out. i gave her a hard time for not having the emergency $20. i then made sure she went back the next day to pay them, apologize and leave an extra large tip.
I looked tonight at my local gas station/convenience store. Restrooms unlocked and clean, all food items were unlocked and unguarded. The only thing that was locked up was the cigarettes/tobacco. Ice was in a cooler outside the side door and completely unsupervised. I guess suburban Utah must be a pretty high-trust community. I did read a local news story this week about a bridal shop in downtown Salt Lake City that had to close/move to the suburbs because the local “unhomed” individuals kept coming in and harassing/assaulting the employees.
Eh, even in the worst parts of the UK (usually the poorest parts of any given city) you never have to pre-pay for gas, and ours is much more expensive than yours. Because we're such a small country, we really don't have regional chains (of anything). It's all big multinationals (and supermarkets) who supply gas. Shell, Texaco, BP. So they tend to be kept to a certain standard (although I expect they're franchises).
Weirdly nothing is ever locked up here. Tobacco products are always behind the counter (and now have to be kept in a closed cupboard). Hard liquor (usually in supermarkets) will have some kind of anti-theft device on the cap which is removed when you pay. If it's your standard liquor store, have at it.
And we're having just as much of a standard of living crisis as you guys and it's getting worse.
Just Tuesday I was at a rural gas station that didn't have the option of paying at the pump. I noted my number and went in anticipating a struggle. The exceptionally amiable guy asked me how much I wanted, after a bit of ships in the night entirely on my part he said why don't you just fill up and come back. It's possible that this interaction was facilitated by our mutual lack of melanin but that did not seem to be the vibe. In fact on this particular journey the only trouble I encountered was with a similarly pale hotel security guard of the "you are all equally worthless" Ermey mold hassling me for having the temerity to use the pool at 2130 when it closed at 2200.
It’s funny. Last week, I went to my local BP since they had the cheapest gas at that point. But my BP Visa card, which was just taken over by the First National Bank of Omaha (same as Speedway cards), for some reason, wasn’t playing nice with the pumps, and for whatever reason, you have to use the card at the pump instead of the BP app in order to ensure that you get whatever discounts you have available. (Same with GREEDway!) Card gets stuck in the reader after the NFC thing fails to work, so I trudge towards the store.
The counter attendant, a pleasant woman of color, immediately asks what the issue was, and then asks for the pump number. As she walks back into the back room with the controls on the pumps in order to free my card, she apologizes six ways to Sunday, and states that they have been having no end of trouble with the card transition, and that they’re trying to resolve things! She even showed me a copy of the Email from corporate. I brought the card back in and had her tee up the fill (guessed $90), filled up with no issue, and she was genuinely happy when I saw on my receipt that I’d gotten all the discounts; she was whooping and hollering like I’d found the lost coin! 😉
I should have gotten her name and given an attaboy to the station manager.
Among the many despicable aspects of the "turning into your parents" series of insurance commercials is the one where apparently it is uncool to compliment an employee to his or her manager. That could make the difference between getting a raise or getting fired, but helping people is lame.
"...why OnlyFans always shows you a complete nude without holes in the rendering..."
there's a joke there but I'll leave it alone, just as you did.
Jack's next move if this substack thing doesn't work out?
Maybe people would pay me NOT to send photos
Jack, this prompted a few recollections:
I drove - in segments - from Chicago to Los Angles, and ultimately to Monterey for the PARSH Rennsport Reunion in 2018. I met a friend in Denver, and we did a fairly long haul from Denver to Las Vegas in one hit; we arrived at the Wynn valet with just enough time to make a 10 PM dinner reservation. Side note - I have never seen so many people eating A5 Wagyu in sweatpants.
Naturally, our departure from Sin City the next day was, ahem, delayed. The drive along I-15 was hellish, for a myriad of reasons. We were somewhere around Barstow when my buddy’s Turbo needed gas, so we stopped at a substantial truck stop / gas station off the Interstate - think Love’s / Pilot Flying J, it wasn’t an Arco. The parking lot was mostly gravel, and there were numerous occupants of said parking lot who were clearly on speed; naturally, I felt right at home given my humble, hardscrabble, hillbilly upbringing.
We finally made it to Malibu, where we had a beachfront Airbnb for a few nights. Another side note - it was probably a mile or two from The Malibu Kitchen, where you and I once had breakfast with a certain Fortunate Son. It was just before 9 PM on a Sunday night.
Apparently, there are precisely three places to find dinner at 9 PM on a Sunday night in Malibu:
1-Jack In The Box
2-NOBU
3-Mastro’s Ocean Club
(The Taco Bell inside the 76 station at the intersection of PCH and Sunset was, inexplicably, closed.)
We were driving tastefully on this jaunt, so we settled for Mastro’s (NOBU was booked).
The next morning, we were up and into the Malibu canyons before sunrise, and we’d had our fill by lunchtime. We spent the afternoon on our balcony overlooking the Pacific with a box of cigars and several bottles of wine. It was one of the best - and most carefree - days of my life.
————
On another trip to Los Angeles, I had dinner with a certain former journosaur-cum-PR flack at APL; APL references the initials of Adam Perry Lang, restauranteur / former Jeffrey Epstein personal chef. For some reason, APL is no longer in business.
APL’s menu (in)famously included a “Felony Knife,” which was priced at $950.01 to deter theft:
“Dead fucking serious,” he says. “If they steal it, it’s $950 because that’s the bare minimum for a felony in the state of California.”
Link: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/please-not-steal-adam-perry-152705445.html
————
The scourge of Arco has recently made its way to my neighborhood in Atlanta; there’s a palatial new Arco station that sells prepared food and also offers an extensive selection of wine. The bathrooms are unlocked. For now.
Related:
https://thecarousel.substack.com/p/theres-gonna-be-a-war-in-montana
Enjoyed this
I disagree with his conclusions. He is confusing the visible elements of Three Forks with the town itself. Addicts and wheelchair families are always going to be left behind. They didn't fall on hard times, their times are always hard. The motivated residents have adapted and gotten their sip of the milkshake too. While I too find much of the development around Bozeman and Big Sky to be in poor taste, the money is definitely flowing into the area, not out. Bigger pie, unevenly distributed.
I thought he had a lot of solid ideas but his Grey Tribe distaste for the poor was hard to read sometimes.
I found his characterization of Chick-fil-A customers as horrible, awful, evil, RACISTs who are raging at the dying of whiteness a little curious. I’m confident he - and many other concerned observers - lay on the ominous specter of disaffected rural white rage a bit thick.
As you know, I am among a small subset of Americans that has significant life experience in both Red and Blue America. Although I grew up in Appalachia, and still spend plenty of time in Appalachia, I don’t necessarily present as the humble, hardscrabble, hillbilly that I described myself as in my earlier comment. I have never experienced firsthand the degree of barely contained tribal fury that the author breathlessly relates…
I think it's wishful thinking. He is basically Winston Smith, saying that hope lies in the proles.
He failed (or neglected?) to continue his exposition to the point of who might triumph in said war.
I think he imagines himself becoming a general of a Meth Platoon, helping the Trumptards learn to appreciate art in between infantry actions against the 69th
Watts People's Irregulars.
Sherman, I, too fit that mold a bit.
I can fit into a business-degree-and-a-tie crowd. I generally did in Albuquerque. But my heart is really in the cornfields and with my blue collar guys.
No one makes an honest dollar sitting on his ass.
I grew up in a small town in Southern Appalachia that was Deliverance Country when I was a kid (the movie was filmed nearby, in fact); it’s now a bona fide “destination” that has experienced a growth tear over the past ~20 years. The downtown area was moribund until the mid 1990s, when it was inundated with antique shops, which have steadily given way to upscale boutiques and fine dining restaurants. Locals carp about growth, but there’s not the tension described in Montana. I should note that the growth generally comes courtesy of Atlanta and Florida, although there are New Yorkers and Californians arriving, as well.
After high school, I went to a top liberal arts college before working as an investment banker in Atlanta, Chicago, and Atlanta again. I spent ~4.5 years living and working in downtown Chicago, and there was a roughly equitable political split between guys I worked for or otherwise knew/know with eight figure and above net worths. I recall a guy that I worked for (in Chicago) railing against Trump in 2016; he has four luxurious houses and is probably worth at least $50MM. I suppose when you get to that rarefied echelon, you may prioritize other considerations above your personal financial position.
There are a lot of ideas put forward in his article and it takes a lot of unpacking. I think the concept of comparing impacts on a resort town (Big Sky), it’s nearest city (Bozeman), and “the next town over” (Three Forks) has merit when talking about growth, development and displacement in the Northern Rockies (for the purposes of my argument mountainous Idaho, Wyoming and Montana). In this case he cherry picked Three Forks (only known for being where Bozeman goes to find a gentleman’s club) rather than the more natural for comparison Belgrade, Manhattan, or Livingston to impale his thesis on the facts.
I found his invocation of the “soul” of Montana to be disingenuous. He seems to want to play on the romantic notions of the Costner/Duvall/Redford western oeuvre, but that never was, any more than the mafia was The Godfather (I think art influenced life regarding that much in the same way for both).
His further attempts to engender himself to the reader by sitting in judgement over the aesthetic merits of mountain modern/minecraft architecture and new clothing trends, it rings false if he feels the buildings are detracting from the appeal of the place, but gives no credit to Lululemon’s contributions to the area’s natural beauty. I do think a serious discussion of the Minecraftsman (clever) style vs. other forms of rapidly built housing, climate appropriateness, building codes, residual value, 15 year maintenance costs would be a great topic to explore.
All of that was simply a prelude to his complete misunderstanding of the historical relationship between the Northern Rockies and coastal capital, from the time they were all territories on.
I don’t want to do a line by line take down on his characterizations of the local people, but I found even his positive portrayals (the former Ranch food service employees) to be cringe. It also sounds like a shift in management priorities to Aramark style rather than anything to do with the “soul” of Montana. What does he think happened to those former employees? I have my theories. I would wager they left food service and are doing much more rewarding work in the region's new economic climate. If he wants to slap their backs, I would suggest he could hire some of them as fishing guides for a lot more an hour than they were waiting tables for, but that is me stereotyping. He might find some of them running their own restaurants serving unfrozen food for astronomical prices.
After all that, if we need to invoke the “soul” of Montana again, perhaps in his mind to protect it, let us talk about these newcomers. This author frames it as a coastal liberal vs. Trumpian local kind of way, which is shitty. Without over analyzing the existing political conflicts prior to this most recent invasion, lets look at this breed of person who has a “In this house…” yard sign, the opposite of the MAGA sign.
We know what this means in NY and CA. But what does it mean when since moving to the Northern Rockies, they have made friends here. What does it mean when that sign shares a yard with a SxS? Or there is a nascent gun collection well secured in the home? It means that whatever influence these newcomers have on the “soul” of Montana, the soul of Montana is working equally to influence them.
TTAG used to talk about bringing new people with you to the range. This is the intersection where this is happening. These are people who are open and willing to be persuaded, eventually, but still with the valuable perspective they gained living on the coasts. They just are not going to be persuaded by a no-talent ass-clown looking down his nose at the world like the author of that post.
I love reading your stories about traveling through America. You don’t condescend, and you appreciate what you see. As a native New Yorker who is now an Idaho stakeholder by way of a decade in Columbus, your background perspective is very easy for me to understand. I also think at your best you engage people who think differently persuasively. So more of you in the discourse, less of that asshat.
The sip of the PE/FIRE milkshake was never intended to be for these people, probably purposely so, out of contempt if nothing else. Should the subservient among them wish to clean condos and wait tables, masked, for the cloud people, all the better. Investment in a factory or farming infrastructure would help most of them. To rein in 'PE' and to invest in that form, both in rural and urban areas, elicits memories of the bald pasta and funny mustache men, and we can't be having that.
I emailed this to a friend and Montana native. His reply, paraphrased, was that 'my grandfather said we were so poor we didn't notice the depression'.
Personally, I'm not rural and have never lived so but I get the impression the author moved away from the poor badwhites and has tried as hard as possible to separate himself from them to better blend in with the cloud people for professional or personal reasons.
The money has flowed in, but I'd counter that it's not the 'good money'. The 'starter pack' meme he posted hits the target. If I was a native, I'd see these people as carpetbagging locusts, working to turn my state into precisely the shithole they left, and to wear my home as a skinsuit. And then want to triple-s them. In Minecraft.
Give the transplants two good cold Montana winters and half of them will end up leaving. Given the likelihood of a significant recession that fiber optic umbilical cord that made the great migration possible will be cut for many of them. NYC and Bay Area salaries in Bozeman are not long term sustainable.
I did like the authors description of, "pickup trucks becoming the war machines of an American Taliban"! Never though of myself that way, but it's prolly true!
I have a topical if not personal question with regards to "I slipped a Boker Applegate-Fairbairn into my waistband..."
What's the reason you don't carry a firearm? You have talked about gun ownership in the past, have good working knowledge of them, and often travel to places where such a thing might be necessary.
Just wondering.
As an on-again, off-again resident of said state and a fan of the appendix carry, I can assure you that's it's quite simple to check said paperweight and unpack it as the naked rump of the "Welcome to the Golden State" sign shrinks in your rear-view mirror.
Oh, it's because I have no desire to hurt anyone with a firearm... ever again.
That's a loaded statement. Badum-kss.
Our host asked what we'd like to read next. If legally possible I have long been curious what the story was.
I'm in the middle of doing something that should make it possible to tell the story soon.
Here in Texas (and some places in the South), we have Buc-ees. Somehow, this bucks the trend of bathroom and security issues. Granted, they are located along major highways, but one of their selling points is “Cleanest bathrooms in Texas!”
This is true; we love our Buc’s. That said, we’re moving from one of the big 4 cities--Texas consists of Austin-San Antonio-DFW-Houston and the rest of the state--to a rural town and county both named after Confederate generals. Cannot get there quickly enough. Big cities have now stripped any hyperbole from Dick and Gibson novels.
That last sentence is platinum. Thank you.
I first visited SF about ten years ago and fell in love with it. It had the artsy, creative slightly anarchic lefty alternative vibe that appealed to me. Plus the size and architecture were perfect.
When I last went in 2019 it was a completely different place - like you say something out of a Gibson novel. Tent cities on every street. The wealth disparity there now is frightening.
As with airports, there is something about the long distances between major cities that engenders a bit more high-trust interaction.
The only glory hole I have seen in real life was a rest stop in bat country on the way to Vegas. If that is not a high trust interaction I don't know what is.
Fresh out of college, my wife and I took our first jobs in North Houston. The first time my patents came down from Colorado to visit and check out the Taste of Texas steakhouse we told them about, they stopped at Buc-ees - also on our recommendation.
After they pulled up, they witnessed what had to be a pimp absolutely wailing on one of "his girls."
Once the shock of what they were seeing wore off, my mom joined several other patrons in running inside for help while my dad and a couple friendly Texans somewhat hesitantly started in the pimp's direction to intervene.
After a full-force kick in the face, the girl managed to crawl under someone's vehicle, and sensing the ground shrinking around him, the pimp got in his ride and sped off.
My mom is still traumatized any time she sees that cartoon beaver on bumper stickers and hats, but she admits that the bathrooms were pretty dang clean.
Taste Of Texas is one of my favorite places EVER.
Big fan of Buc-ee's. I live in-between Houston and Galveston. Multiple Buc-ees in this area. About 2 years ago, some urban people (you know what I mean) took to driving to various Buc-ees locations and walking into the foyer area (big foyers with displays, to allow double doors for AC help) and proceeded to swipe Yeti coolers. They hit multiple stores before word got out. And yet, all the Buc-ees I see still have the foyers stocked with expensive gear. Local law enforcement were all over it, though. Apparently in Florida you don't fuck with the mouse, and in Texas you don't fuck with the beaver. For what it's worth.
I have the stellar, local options of Wawa, Rutters, and Sheetz stores so I know that I'm truly blessed. However, Buc-ees are a without a doubt a special treat when I'm in TX!
Here, in the Tulsa area, we have a Mr. Bass maybe a 1/4 mile from my house. Locally owned, open 24/7/365. Beer sales til 2:30am. Need snacks, fishing gear, live fishing bait, kerosene, propane, ice, cigs, lottery tickets, ice cream, fountain drinks etc, it's all there.
They also still sell all 3 grades of gasoline ethanol free, with their own dedicated hoses.
Same gas station as my story above they had real gas. Tempting, but at a $1 more per I couldn't justify filling up the appliance I was driving.
Appliances no, even the Egoboost drinks E88 from the Casey's, when I'm around one.
But the MG gets the good shit. Besides, it's got a 5-gallon tank!
We are right by the lake, so there are a lot of people filling their boats up. A lot of those boats are older and can't handle ethanol. I assume that's the rationale behind all the non-ethanol Gas choices.
Up here in da UP they call it recreational gas.
We got a new Circle K about 10 minutes away from my house with "E0" 90 Octane. All my old carb bikes get it. My Suburban gets the 30 year old gas that I drain from the 40 year old project bikes I pick up lol
The only weapons laws in the US that are more confusing and inconsistent than those for firearms are the laws governing knives.
Yeah. And if you put something like a Microtech or Benchmade OTF auto in your checked baggage they'll just steal it.
Talk about low trust interactions.
The interactions that be require using a knife or checking your luggage? /s
Dealing with any government employee or official.
Is ARCO is the worst of the lot, I submit Stewart's as the best of the regional gas/c stores.
We always used to buy the $2.97(?) six packs of Stewarts Mountain Brew on motorcycle tours in the Adirondacks in college. Was saddened when I just looked it up and saw that it's discontinued as of 2018. Not that it was a particularly good beer, it was just very cheap and I associate it with riding our old UJMs on beautiful roads and camping out by the lakes out there.
IIRC Mountain Brew itself was brewed for Stewarts by Genesee so it may very well have BEEN Genesee all along. I'll be honest I never thought it ever was anything that special (and I'm even more ambivalent about Genesee if I'm honest) but it was purely a nostalgia thing to remember being a broke college student on my $950 '78 GS1000 buying a $3 six pack.
https://nypost.com/2022/07/30/spam-goes-on-lockdown-due-to-inflation/?utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=SocialFlow Where does locking up canned meats fit in the scale?
'“Someone is stealing this because they need it,” agreed Delia Kemph, a 28-year-old teacher.'
This viewpoint is acceptable coming from a child but not from an adult. Using perceived need as justification for theft is the lever by which society will collapse. During the Great Depression? Yeah, maybe. Right now, when everyone south of Goldman Sachs has the HELP WANTED signs out? I don't think so.
If I can't find work in my field by winter, I'm going to go to Sheetz and make sandwiches for $22 an hour. I'm not above that work and neither is anyone else. If you'd rather steal than do that, you're acting out of something other than need.
I wonder if they’re seeing a trend of people stealing canned food or if they just lock up everything over a certain dollar amount and inflation has pushed spam and tuna into that territory. But you’re right, so many of society’s problems would be solved if more people understood there is dignity on work, even work that may be “beneath” you.
A lot of the problem here in the UK is people do work, but the minimum wage + any government welfare they may receive (which is extremely hard to get) isn't enough because of spiralling inflation, our ridiculous rent and house prices and childcare costs. Plus energy bills, which have doubled in the last year.
There is work out there, because of the labor shortages caused by Brexit, but companies have yet to catch on to the idea they need to raise wages now they can't count on European immigrants working for minimum.
The raw stupidity of eurocrats thinking they could sanction Vlad and still get cheap fuel...
I don’t think the UK gets much gas from Russia, but was absolutely the right thing to do and I think most Europeans would happily eat the cost. The UKs problem is blatant profiteering because our energy suppliers are privatised (part of the great Conservative nationalisation of the eighties and nineties that ensured all their mates got to own all the infrastructure and got insanely rich).
Warning, link to lefty Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/28/an-insult-soaring-profits-at-shell-and-centrica-cause-outrage?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
The difficulty is that it's a regional market so rising prices in Europe mean rising prices in the UK as well. We will have to agree to disagree on the validity of sanctions. From my perspective it's a coward's way to make war on a country... but even if you think that Russia should be punished for the Ukraine thing it seems to me that the sanctions are doing more harm to Europe than to Russia. Come December, when everyone in Germany and Poland is enjoying in-home temperatures of a rationed 15 deg. C and the ruble is worth 2x what it was in 2020, we will see how righteous they feel... I am probably on the wrong side of history here, but I think Russia has as much right to invade Ukraine as the US does to conduct law enforcement in Mexico and South America, which is to say "more than you'd think, but maybe less than what's being done."
yup. in the same city that locks down spam. chinese ladies patrol for 5 cent deposit bottles and cans. they leave every garbage pile neater than they found it. they're clean, never beg and say thank you if you give them your empty. it's a question of values.
It's not just the coasts. When I've gone to Nashville for the summer NAMM show, I've noticed that all the small items in the drug stores are locked up and the grocery stores play recordings telling patrons to watch their purses etc in their carts. I live within walking distance of the Detroit city limits and I've never experienced anything like that around here. Yeah, gas stations have bulletproof glazing but almost everything for sale except for cigarettes and lottery tickets are there for the picking.
I live in one of the safest semi-urban places in the country. The supermarkets lock up baby formula going back ~10+ years because organized Russian gangs steal it. There was a story in the New Yorker about it years ago when a former FBI agent became the head of Target's loss prevention. Which reminds me, is there a way to get in touch with Jack directly? I wanted to pitch an idea.
I'll email you when I get home tonight.
Many parallels between Nashville and the description of Bozeman in the linked article above. Awash in transplants, clashing architecture having no respect for history, loss of dialect, hipster corporate retail and restaurants . . . It speaks to the power of low taxes and low(er) cost real estate.
Hello from the other side of that retail counter.
I manage a small town hardware store located (inside a grocery store) halfway (20ish minutes) between two of IL's less reputable cities.
The amount of stuff we have to lock up, and the dollars we have dedicated to LP is absurd -- and it's not due to the locals. Every few months word gets out on the street -- go 20 minutes, the have good shit and low security. The staff, the regulars, we all see the absurdity of it. Local PD cracks down, but there is only so much one can do.
Ironically, the liquor department can leave $100 bottles of high-end bourbon on an endcap, but it's always the Hennessy and Crown Royal that get stolen...
We tend to lose power tools, knives, and the like. Oh---and the meet department loses steak.
I'm surprised they have the willpower to go twenty minutes for free stuff. That's like halfway to having a job or something!
They go where their drug dealer sends them. Usually in a "dump" car. H
Society swings left then right. I've read that in the '70s and '80s, parents in New York city would give their kids $20 to carry in case they were mugged. $20, they reasoned, was enough to prevent violence and was a small price to pay for a child's safety. History tells us that the city was a shithole then, with busted budgets, trash in the streets and rampant violence. It was in 1985 that "subway vigilante" Bernard Getz shot four attempted muggers, but by that point things had been bad for a long time.
In the 90s, under William Bratton and Rudy Giulliani, the city got organized and started policing again. The policy was called "broken windows" and focused on the idea that that if you enforce the small rules it will affect the overall life in the city. It seems to have worked as by the early 2000s New York City was supposed to have been an OK place to live again, but there are people who feel that policing was too rough and too focused on people of color. They may have a point, I don't know, but whatever happened crime rates decreased.
It makes me think that many of the problems we are seeing in urban areas today could be handled if there was no tolerance for bullshit. When people are soft hearted and reluctant to enforce rules bullshit thrives - and Seattle, where I was raised, is a good example. Seattleites are nice people, they usually try to help people and the result has been an influx of homeless people. The city has become a dangerous place to be. Homeless camps have sprouted up in various areas, some sponsored by local churches, etc, and now even once quiet neighborhoods are having issues. The typical, nice Seattleites are at a loss for what to do.
Their current mayor of choice seems, like her constituents, unwilling to lower the hammer and I keep wondering when Seattleites will get finally tired of this shit, realize they have to get hard, and start voting the other way. I am convinced it will happen and the region will swing from soft touches and easy marks to "get out of my face" and "I have no tolerance for your bullshit." It will be a good thing, but how much will the average person have to suffer before the majority figure it out?
My understanding of the entire homelessness problem is probably not complete but I see three main groups: people with mental problems, druggies, and the homeless by choice. Each group requires different solutions. I think we, as a society should help the people with legit mental issues - I am not so sure what that help might look like, but we should. Drugs should be legal and as long as you don't become a problem you can do what you feel but, should a drug user become a problem, there should be consequences for crimes and some sort of infrastructure to help wean them off of drugs. If they can't be or choose not to be weaned, then we start looking at other options - maybe permanent hospitalization or prison. And for those people for whom homelessness is a lifestyle choice, the goal would be to make it so miserable on them that they would make better choices.
Right now, small-town America benefits from two things. One, they don't have the infrastructure to deal with permanent homeless populations of any real size - no large soup kitchens, no large shelters, and not enough people to make panhandling worthwhile - so large numbers of homeless are not attracted to those places. And two, small-town America has an abundance of people who are willing to call others out on their bullshit - the down home version of "broken windows" so maybe there really is something to that after all...
NYC (somewhat) kid here....used to carry $20 in my sock for this purpose. Gross bill after a couple days, but nevertheless, still do it whenever I'm in the city. Manhattanites think I'm being ridiculous, but having the pleasure of going to school in the other boroughs, can confirm that it's necessary. The way women walk around in a city drunk, is mind-boggling too.
i see twenty something girls in short skirts teetering drunk on heels entering my building every weekend after midnight. most take uber but some walk from the subway alone. my first thought is, where are their parents? no one was this dumb when i was their age.
my kid still carries the $20 but i told her it was for emergencies (the frequent mugging hasn't returned to downtown yet). she mostly uses her debit card. the other day she told me she owed the nail salon $8 bucks because her card maxed out. i gave her a hard time for not having the emergency $20. i then made sure she went back the next day to pay them, apologize and leave an extra large tip.
Also, don't go to gas stations after sundown if you can avoid it.
I looked tonight at my local gas station/convenience store. Restrooms unlocked and clean, all food items were unlocked and unguarded. The only thing that was locked up was the cigarettes/tobacco. Ice was in a cooler outside the side door and completely unsupervised. I guess suburban Utah must be a pretty high-trust community. I did read a local news story this week about a bridal shop in downtown Salt Lake City that had to close/move to the suburbs because the local “unhomed” individuals kept coming in and harassing/assaulting the employees.
Eh, even in the worst parts of the UK (usually the poorest parts of any given city) you never have to pre-pay for gas, and ours is much more expensive than yours. Because we're such a small country, we really don't have regional chains (of anything). It's all big multinationals (and supermarkets) who supply gas. Shell, Texaco, BP. So they tend to be kept to a certain standard (although I expect they're franchises).
Weirdly nothing is ever locked up here. Tobacco products are always behind the counter (and now have to be kept in a closed cupboard). Hard liquor (usually in supermarkets) will have some kind of anti-theft device on the cap which is removed when you pay. If it's your standard liquor store, have at it.
And we're having just as much of a standard of living crisis as you guys and it's getting worse.
Some aspects of this are downstream from culture and diversity, i think.