Stopping by Buc-ee’s at 3 a.m.

It was the early hours of a Sunday morning, and I was traveling with my band, Blackout Shoppers. We had played the Anarchy at the Arcade Festival at Super Rad Arcade Bar in Lynchburg, Virginia, and shared the stage with some amazing bands. It was great fun, but we had a long drive home and wanted to make it to a hotel to get some sleep.

Cruising along, I saw the sign of a beaver looming large over the highway, a bright beacon of road trip joy.

“Have any of you guys been to a Buc-ee’s yet?” I asked the rest of the band.

They had not.

“That changes tonight.”

I had visited a Buc-ee’s in South Carolina on a road trip to Georgia and back with my daughters. The chain has built a reputation as a bastion of largesse and Americana; I was not disappointed. We bought stuffed toys of Buc-ee the Beaver, the institution’s mascot, for my girls’ younger cousins, bought gas, and helped ourselves to a bag from a floor-to-ceiling wall of beef jerky. I made a point to stop by again on our return journey to New York.

My comrades wanted to buy beer, but as it was past midnight—technically Sunday morning—and would run afoul of Virginia’s blue laws, they were denied. I have not had any alcohol since early 2010, but I still hate these blue laws with a passion. My friends took it in stride; they still had beer and bourbon waiting for them in the truck.

We experienced the super clean Buc-ee’s bathrooms, which stand alone and set the standard for public restrooms; the rest of America has a long way to catch up.

At 3 a.m., Buc-ee’s is not the crowded madhouse during daylight hours. There is a camaraderie among people who are awake in those strange pre-dawn hours. Some are up early for work or in the middle of an overnight shift, others are on their way to a hotel after playing a crazy hardcore punk and metal show. There was a skeleton crew manning the place, but Buc-ee’s still ran with attentive precision. It lived up to the hype for my bandmates.

While Buc-ee’s has the bulk of its locations in Texas and has expanded into the Southeast, the chain may have plans for the Northeast. While traveling in Connecticut last summer, I saw a Buc-ee’s billboard on I-95 that informed drivers that the nearest Buc-ee’s was 700+ miles in the opposite direction. Would the company spend money on a billboard over one of the busiest highways in the country just to troll Northeasterners over not having Buc-ee’s? I contacted Buc-ee’s through its website to inquire of such designs. I have yet to hear back.

On my previous trips, I did not try the establishment’s famous brisket sandwich. In the spirit of early morning road trip adventure and punk rock excess, I splurged and emerged with another coffee and a brisket sandwich.

We stood outside, close to the bronze statue of Buc-ee the Beaver, a form of pagan idolatry befitting our gluttony in the early hours of the morning. I tore off pieces of my brisket sandwich and shared this feast with my bandmates. It was delicious. 

Second acts are American lives

 

“There are no second acts in American lives.”

—      F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald scholars are rightly irked that the line about no second acts in American lives is often quoted by itself and attributed to “The Last Tycoon.” The line was first used in a 1932 essay titled “My Lost City,” which documents the resilience of New York in the aftermath of the stock market collapse that helped launch the Great Depression.

The original Fitzgerald quote from “My Lost City” is:

“I once thought that there were not second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York’s boom days.”

Fitzgerald’s own life contradicted the idea that there are no opportunities for renewal in America.

He was preparing to dominate his own life’s second act when he died at the age of 44. And true to his 1932 essay, New York has shown its resilience multiple times and survived more crises and disasters in the decades since 1929.

Fitzgerald is one of the giants of American literature. While his writing celebrates the Jazz Age and the promise of American prosperity, it also pulls back the curtain on the dark side of the American dream. His most celebrated work, “The Great Gatsby,” is a great example of the ability to make a new life for yourself, but also the pitfalls and dangers of the heedless pursuit and indulgences of wealth.

Jay Gatsby’s material success is undermined by his need to be something he is not. He cannot accept that the material rewards of his life are not the trappings of noble lineage. In America, we don’t care who your father was. We care about what you can do now, not what someone in your family tree did 100 years ago. That’s the essence of the American experiment—be judged by what you do and where you are going, not where you came from.

America was founded on the premise of second acts. From New England’s pilgrims to the hardscrabble pioneers who settled the American West, our country is one big series of second acts and new beginnings. Second acts are as American as a bald eagle eating apple pie.

I find encouragement in this as I look for a new job. I have been out of work for several months and have cast a much wider net than in previous searches. I no longer feel the need to go back to the same industry or seek the same salary. I’m old enough that I can be honest with myself about the things I would like to do and prioritize things that will lead me to enjoy the everyday more than how things read on a resume. This is well beyond my second act, and I’ve lost count of the new beginnings I’ve had to carve out. But that’s no matter. It is never too late to start again or become something new.

This year, as the United States celebrates the 250^th anniversary of its founding, remember that our country was born from one of the bravest second acts in world history.

And remember that second acts are rewarding to the extent that they allow you to be who you really are, and not what others expect of you. Part of having a successful second act in life means not caring about what others think. Your life exists to make you and your loved ones happy.

Here’s to second acts in American lives—one of the things that makes America great.

Snowbound NYC feels the filth of winter

 

The Northeastern U.S. has become accustomed to mild winters over the last decade. Prior to the latest snow blizzard that pummeled much of the country, online newsreels were commemorating the 30^th anniversary of the blizzard of 1996. Now we have a new milestone to mark in the history of the five boroughs’ struggles with snow.

The Northeastern U.S. had weeks of below-freezing temperatures immediately following an exceptionally large snowstorm. The usual melt that happens in the days after a storm hasn’t happened. I can’t remember any time in my life that so much snow sat around for so long afterwards.

While the roads may be cleared in theory, large snowbanks have turned two-lane streets into one-lane streets. Slippery snow and ice patches make driving in the city more dangerous than usual.

The sidewalks and crosswalks are in an even more dismal state. Plows push large quantities of snow into icy walls that solidify into chunky walls of hard-packed ice and snow.

The city’s Department of Sanitation continued to plow the same roads and did little or nothing about freeing up sidewalks, bus stops, and crosswalks. I recently stood behind a plow wall at a bus stop and watched a snow plow drop loads of salt on an already dry road while piles of filthy, frozen snow sat nearby untouched.

Even with the understanding that this was an unprecedented storm, the city’s response rates poorly. Long stretches of sidewalk, including those abutting public parks and city-run spaces, remain largely inaccessible weeks later, thin paths cut by the feet of harried pedestrians the only things working to clear any walking space.

Snow makes New York City look beautiful for about three hours. Snow in NYC quickly turns into a mosaic of street and sidewalk filth, collecting dog urine, car exhaust, and the varied effluvium that regularly pulses across our sidewalks and curbs. After several weeks, the hardened snowbanks sport a spattering of grotesque shame, rife with collected bacteria.

New York’s sidewalks and crosswalks, already a crowded place of give-and-take silent negotiations of movement, have become more challenging to navigate. Having a good pair of waterproof boots is paying big dividends, and I am trudging through frozen sidewalk tundra like an over-the-hill urban sherpa.

Warmer temperatures in the weeks ahead promise relief through melting snow, but city authorities should take stock of this storm and improve their response. In the meantime, New Yorkers are waiting for the Great Snow Melt of 2026.

Tear down these (excessive) paywalls

I attempted to watch Super Bowl LX on television this past Sunday. As I pay for several subscription services, I assumed that one of them would be able to show me the game, which was broadcast on a national network that one would be able to watch for free if you had a traditional or cable television.

As a Jets fan, I have absolutely no reason to watch postseason football, but I wanted to watch the Super Bowl to see the halftime show, which generated pointless and contrived garbage controversy, and to see if the game or commercials might be entertaining.

Last year, I was able to stream the Super Bowl so my daughters could catch a glimpse of Taylor Swift in the stands. I didn’t have to subscribe to anything new or pay a fee to see the game, and it worked out well. My girls got to see Taylor Swift and the game was interesting to watch by Super Bowl standards.

But it was not to be. I tried every service I could find that offered live streaming of the super bowl, but all I was able to access without a subscription were live feeds of people watching the game at a bar or in some kind of lounge area, or video-game approximations of the action on the field. Neither was the game.

To get the Super Bowl score during the game on The New York Times website, I’m blocked and told I need to upgrade my subscription to include The Athletic, a premium service because apparently the bespoke genius of The New York Times has found a way to give us the score of a football game that is premium and better than the masses of hoi polloi who long ago figured out how to do this.

This was especially sad to see The New York Times sink to these depths. The Times is one of the first websites I ever had a subscription to. Back when it was free, I signed up online and got a cool username and password for the Times website that still works to this day. It was a rite of passage in entering the digital age, and I was proud to begin my journey of consuming news online with the newspaper of record.

I gladly stained my hands and arms reading vociferously since my father introduced me to the Gray Lady when I was in middle school. Now I’m just another mark that the Times thinks it can squeeze for an extra subscription to get the score of a football game. ESPN’s web site had the score of the game without going through a paywall, but I would have just as soon given that web traffic to the Times.

I had to enjoy the Super Bowl vicariously through the news and social media posts of friends and family. As a large, national event, it goes against the populist American ethos for the Super Bowl to be shuttered behind multiple pay walls. I felt betrayed by the providers I already pay handsomely for access to the digital world, even if I was probably the better for it.