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. 

Navigating the winter wonderland of the Queens Zoo

When the weather is bad, our family goes to the zoo. Our logic is this: Many of the indoor spaces will be overcrowded and the zoo will be sparsely populated. When you’ve lived in the city long enough, avoiding crowds is more important than avoiding pneumonia.

So this past weekend’s snowfall made our planned trip to Westchester unwise, but made a short drive to the zoo a piece of cake. The parking lot on 111^th Street that is a chaotic mess and a graveyard of public parking dreams during the summer had plenty of spaces. I pulled into a space right near the ramp we would need for our youngest daughter’s stroller.

One of the goals for this weekend was to help give my wife time alone at home to prepare our home for Christmas. I was on my own for several hours with three children all under four years of age, and found myself pushing a stroller through a moderate snowfall in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park on our way to the Queens Zoo. There was a small group of teenagers having a snowball fight when we got there, and one cyclist pedaled past us and shot me a strange look is if to be amazed he came across someone crazier than he was out in the snow.

While the children were equipped with proper hats and coats, one pair of mittens was inevitably quickly lost and our youngest got wet and hungry very fast. The snowfall was not bad. It was only one or two inches in the city and the snow did not stick to the streets very well. A few runs of a plow with some sand and salt made things OK. But cold kids make for cranky kids and herding three youngsters through the wet and cold is a chore with an additional distraction (snow) that is also a physical obstacle. The front wheels of the stroller would stop cutting through and spin in a sideways fashion, gathering reels of snow around themselves like some perverse cotton candy machine. Otherwise they would stop moving completely and I’d be essentially be operating the world’s most ineffective snow plow.

The Queens Zoo is a perfect place to bring kids because it’s relatively small compared with its larger and more famous counterpart The Bronx Zoo. It can be done thoroughly in a morning or afternoon. Arriving at the zoo after a snowfall revealed a hushed atmosphere covered in a gorgeous layer of fresh white powder that proved perfect for making snowballs. It was one of those days when you look around and can’t believe you are in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world. A few times you would hear the rush of the highway or the sounds of people playing in the park outside the zoo’s fence, but it was desolate and beautiful and well worth the soggy feat and cold hands.

The zoo posts the times of the sea lion feeding and I had to hustle to get us there in time. When we got to the sea lions, there was one other couple there. This couple were the only other non-zoo employees we saw during our entire stay. They huddled under an umbrella while two of my daughters climbed a snow-covered rock and declared it their mountain and the other sat on the wet ground to have a better vantage point to scream her undefined infant rage at the world. That’s right, normal couple at the zoo: my children are many times tougher than you and earned the grudging respect of the animal kingdom.

We had an up-close view of the sea lion feeding up close but cut it short because we were all hungry. The Sea Lion Café offered a warm, dry refuge and sold hot coco and coffee among its souvenirs and snacks. We took our time eating before we bundled up again, only go head to a restroom where it was necessary to take coats off again. We easily killed 20 minutes in the restroom, making sure everyone either used the toilet or had a diaper change. Then back out into the snow.

The girls enjoyed looking at the animals but probably enjoyed handling the snow and stomping on puddles more. Even though my wife had packed more than adequate snacks for us, “snow burgers” became a much sought-after treat, and there was no keeping my young charges from indulging in them, only trying to police the color and source of the snow (only white snow, not from the ground).  

We marveled at how close the sea lions and the bison came to us, and followed with a mad dash to get to a restroom again. By the time we finished there and thought about returning to glimpse more animals, security guards looked to be closing the zoo for the day. It was just as well, my girls were showing signs of fatigue and by the time I got them back to our van and buckled in, they slept soundly for two hours while I went on a coffee-fueled road trip from Corona to Flushing and Bayside.

I returned home with three tired children to a home in much better order. Mission accomplished. 

Road tripping through Kerouac’s Queens

Taking a road trip sometimes happens on a whim on a random weekend day, not because I’m suddenly inspired with the desire to know the American road, but because our toddlers have fallen asleep in their car seats and the wife and I want them to nap for a while. So began our latest sojourn on the great American road, which kept us mostly around our borough of Queens, but that’s OK because as you might have surmised, Queens is secretly New York City’s greatest borough.

We left the Queens Botanical Garden in our neighborhood of Flushing and our twin girls were asleep before we reached the nearby highway. We headed to the Rockaways because it was the anniversary of the Easter Uprising in Ireland and the Rockaways have been a home to hardscrabble Irish for a long time, including one Queens native who wound up fighting in the Easter Uprising of 1916.

Our navigation system took us into Nassau County and we passed by Valley Stream State Park before getting off of the highway and driving through the villages of East Rockaway, Malvern, and Lawrence.

We didn’t end up in the Irish part of the Rockaways, and the housing projects that tower over the bungalow houses are not filled with Irish immigrants. We decided to start our journey home going through Broad Channel and my old neighborhood of Ozone Park.

We took Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge and cruised over Jamaica Bay. On one side of the bridge the skyline of Manhattan was prominent through the haze of sun and clouds. On our right and north was JFK Airport. Broad Channel is a small community that sits on the waterfront of Jamaica Bay. It’s a rare example of small town life within the five boroughs of New York City.

Cross Bay Boulevard brought us farther north, past the Jamaica Wildlife Refuge on both sides of the road and into Howard Beach and Ozone Park.

When I first came back to New York City, I worked at JFK Airport and lived in Ozone Park. I was very happy to learn that Jack Kerouac lived in Ozone Park for 12years. He’s celebrated a lot in Massachusetts where he is originally from and buried, and in Manhattan where he would give readings and where he wrote On the Road. But Kerouac wrote his first novel, The Town and the City, while living in Ozone Park.

There is a historic marker outside the house where Kerouac once lived. When I lived nearby, it was good to go to Glen Patrick’s Pub and gulp down drinks, hoping some literary magic might have survived and would rub off on me. That kind of sentimentality is crap, really, but it was good at the time to know that the inheritors of America’s great literary traditions came from working-class enclaves like Ozone Park and Howard Beach.

It was good to see reinforced the knowledge that real literary grit and work takes place not in the posh hipster enclaves and trendy bars or bookstores of Manhattan or (nowadays) Brooklyn. Kerouac didn’t haul his typewriter to a coffee shop so people could gawk at him write. He got his writing done in a cramped apartment a few feet away from Cross Bay Boulevard.

We took our girls into the Cross Bay Diner and had a late lunch while watching boats and seagulls come by on Hewett Creek. Fishing boats, a police boat, and even a large fishing boat called TheCapt. Mike, came by and served as a great distraction for the kids.

Howard Beach and Ozone Park have changed quite a bit since Kerouac lived there, and they’ve changed a lot since I moved away in the summer of 2001, but their working-class character survive and they remain great neighborhoods to live in. They will continue to inspire and bring more great artists to the world. 

How to Buy a Used Car

My woman and I set out several months ago and saw two deals fall through before finally finding success. I am sad to report that bait and switch is alive and well and the truth finds no purchase in the vocabulary of a used car dealer. The people you find employed as used car salesmen are those whose ethical lapses got them kicked out of pickpocket school.

It was hard work to not get ripped off, and we’ve only had our new vehicle for a few weeks so cross your fingers and stay tuned. But it has been a learning experience. Buying a used car will be easier if you follow these rules:

1.      Never accept bullshit prices. When you see a price listed and then see some small print about the price being the “Internet price” or the “financing price,” walk away. Do not do business with any car dealer that wants to tack on as much as 20% simply because you’re not willing to go into more debt and earn them a bigger commission because they’ve signed you up for financing.

2.      Take your vehicle to your own mechanic. If you don’t already have one, look one up on the Internet and call ahead of time and make an appointment to get whatever car you’re interested in checked out. Don’t trust any dealer that won’t let you take a vehicle to your own mechanic.

3.      Utility uber alles! Pick the vehicle that will give you the most use. Pay no attention to what it looks like or what your friends are driving and pick what makes the most sense to what your needs or and how you live your life. Unless you plan on invading a desert country or being a douchebag in an ugly vehicle, you will have no use for a Humvee. Likewise, you can’t fit a dead deer in the trunk of Prius. Think about how you live your life and what you do every day or every time you drive? I know people who didn’t buy a car because it didn’t have any cup holders. It was sleek and sporty, but sleek and sporty does you little good if you’re spilling hot coffee on your genitals every day.

4.      Research everything. There is no excuse not to be super informed on your car purchase. You can find out detailed information online on any vehicle worth buying and read lots of customer reviews. One truck I almost bought had two active recalls on it. Since the recalls would be serviced for free, it was even more inexcusable that the dealer hadn’t done that before putting the vehicle up for sale. Know this kind of thing. Spend the money on Carfax, and don’t trust the dealers to provide you with that. It is nice for dealers to do that, but at least one dealership I considered buying from had been accused of providing false Carfax reports.

5.      Go with your gut. Does the car dealer give you the creeps? Is there something that just doesn’t seem right about everything? If the sales people or their manager (they love the tactic of getting a pushy manager involved and playing good dealer/bad dealer with you) act as if they’re trying to rush the sale, something is wrong and you should probably walk away from it.

6.      Resist the bait and switch. The first dealership we visited pulled a blatant bait and switch. When the salesmen realized that we were interested in cheap vehicles and were planning to pay in cash, they sent us to random, far-away corners of the lot looking for a van they advertised at an inexpensive price. The story we got was that the vehicle was probably not there anymore. “We sell hundreds of cars every week.” They continued to play ignorance as to the location of the van listed for $4,995 until one of the salesman walked by it as we were walking with him and quoted us the wrong price on it. “This is a Toyota Sienna but it’s $8,000,” he said. We noticed that it was the very van they had advertised on the Internet for $4,995! We pointed that out for him and began looking over the van. He walked away. We put a deposit down on the van. It ended up being a piece of shit that we didn’t buy (see #2), but we made them make good on their ad.

7.      Test drive everything, three times if you need to. Don’t buy from any person or place that won’t let you do test drives. Those are either scam places or auction houses selling to dealerships. A test drive is a no-brainer. The only thing a dealership should want from you before you do a test drive is to see your driver’s license. One dealership said that we could only test drive vehicles if we put a deposit on it first. No dice. This was the same dealership that listed a truck on the Internet for $2,000 less than they did on their lot. The dealer said that once we gave them a deposit on it, “Then we know we can do business.” We walked away after saying a pleasant goodbye.

8.      Pay cash. Don’t get bogged down in financing unless you have to. There are many car dealerships that really don’t want to deal with people paying cash. I watched many a hopeful salesman deflate on the spot and write me off in their minds when I mentioned we were paying cash. Salesman will try to sell you something above your price range and they’ll say how easy financing will be and how glorious your life will be with an expensive car with the magical power of financing. Fuck ‘em. You don’t want to get involved with the dealerships that are relying too much on commissions from financing. The more they want to focus on financing, the less effort they put into giving a shit about cars.

9.       Ignore time pressure. One of the sleazy dealerships had signs several places telling customers to remember that, “The car you looked at today is one that someone may have put a deposit on yesterday…” and the tactics of the manager and salesman were in the same vein. Ignore those time pressures and understand it’s a bad sign that should make you think twice about buying from the dealer. The person trying to rush a sale is the person who doesn’t want you to get a good look at the vehicle or the terms of sale. 

10.  Join AAA. I seemed to break down a lot more when I was too poor to spend the money on an annual AAA membership. Even if you never use it ever, it’s worth it just to avoid the jinx of not having it.

At the end of the day, we drove away with a used 2003 Ford F150. It is big and it is hard to park, but it’s what suits us and we love it.

The Call of the American Road

After nearly 15 years of living without a car, it came time to join most of America in owning an automobile again. I faced the prospect of being a car owner with excitement and apprehension. My past experiences as a car owner were all bad. 

The last vehicle I owned was a 1977 Plymouth Voyager van that I gladly gave away to a charity before driving a U-Haul back to New York. My van was a big, 15-passenger van that was puke-mustard yellow with a beige white stripe. If you looked at the van at the right angle, you could faintly decipher the old lettering on the side from a church that had owned it. I bought it from a redneck in the back woods of rural North Georgia who was shirtless and drinking beer at two o’clock in the afternoon. 

           

            It was so large that it was often mistaken for the large taxi vans that were popular in Athens, Georgia at the time. I remember driving down Broad Street at night after the bars closed and crowds of drunken college students trying to hail me. It was embarrassing.

I was not born into the standard American car culture, growing up mostly in a city. When I first moved to the suburbs, I found it strange that there were no sidewalks. Sidewalks came with civilization, just like paved roads and running water. But car culture rules the suburbs, and I adjusted quickly. I got myself a car at the first opportunity. I was a teenager and there is nothing lamer for a teenager than to be dependent on their parents for a ride (although it remains perfectly acceptable to rely on parents for food, clothing, education, life itself).

My first car was a 1987 Plymouth Horizon. It broke down a lot. A minor accident had damaged the front end and one of the headlights wobbled, making my car look like it had a lazy eye at night. It eventually was destroyed when the engine caught fire.

            When I moved back to New York, I relished the idea of being free from the obligations and troubles of owning an automobile. No more calling tow trucks, no more sitting in traffic or wondering nervously about strange sounds coming from the engine. After years of endless automotive headaches, I yearned to be part of the cosmopolitan class that was free from the shackles that were auto ownership. And I could get as drunk as I wanted to because someone else was always driving me home.

           

            But things change and now I find myself living in Queens  with a woman who has not only been accustomed to owning a car while living in New York City, she also has a space in our building’s parking lot that she waited five years for and intends to keep. It was time for us to have our own. The last of my family left the city several years ago, and asking people to pick you up from the train station gets old when you’re pushing 40.

            I also found myself wanting more of the unbounded freedom that comes with an automobile. One time, on a business trip, I picked up a shitty rental car from the airport in Palm Springs, Calif. and set out to find my even shittier motel. Despite the circumstances, it felt great to be behind the wheel of a car again after so much time away. The rap song ‘California Love’ came on the radio and I felt like I was the coolest pimp in the universe.

America, a large and vast country, is filled with the spirit of travel and adventure that we can tap most easily via the automobile. Sure, one can ride the rails and see a good bit of America that way, but a car gives you the power of self determination and destiny that Americans habitually crave. The auto took the place of the pioneer’s wagon as a vehicle of continental exploration and conquest.

            It’s true we’ve become a nation of sloths who would drive ourselves to the bathroom if we could, but it’s also true that this freedom of movement made possible by cars became part of our national character long before our disabling gluttony. For better or worse, the car is part of the American way of life.

            The car fits right in with the American spirit of individuality and self reliance. Every time you need to use public transportation, you’re rolling the dice on a thousand variables. People get sick on the bus, busses get stuck in traffic, people get hit by trains, signal malfunctions stop trains between stations. Taking public transportation puts a terrible amount of trust in the general public to help you get to work on time. Your best advantage is that most of the other people around you are on the same quest. If you’re someone who must work nights and weekends, you’re screwed.

            Admittedly, in large cities, public transportation makes sense. I will gladly endure the hell of New York’s subway rush hour to avoid the hell of parking in Manhattan. I’ll let a million homeless people sneeze on me before I risk getting a car towed and having to pay hundreds of dollars in tickets and fees. But the Byzantine parking laws of New York are not representative of the U.S. as a whole. And, as much as I love New York, I must admit that one needs to frequently leave New York City in order to maintain one’s sanity.

See you on the road.