Gas money

There's the one gas station in town that always has ludicrously higher gas prices than all the other surrounding stations. Like $.20 more per gallon than one a block away. It's on a very busy street, not right off the highway or before a toll area or in a secluded spot. It never ceases to baffle me that it stays in business doling out gas for so much more than their competitors. And there are cars that stop there! Who are these people? Even if you saw the sign and assumed that all gas prices must have jumped that high, wouldn't you at least drive to the next pump--again, a block away--to verify that prices had indeed skyrocketed since the last time you checked? I can only conclude that this location somehow magically aligns with the exact spot where people run out of gas and can coast in on fumes. Either that or the store is a drug-dealing front and the high prices keep everyone away who isn't there for "gas."

That reminds me of my favorite store that only could have been a front for drug-dealing. In Brooklyn, there were a lot of them. Of course, I had no concrete proof, but what else is the guy doing running a severely understocked 24-hour convenience store? In any case, this place was a shoe store. Except they only had one wall of shoes, displaying only the right shoe. Each shoe had its own little shelf, and each was shrink-wrapped. The clerk sat in the back of the store, behind a plexiglass window. Of course, this store was open 24-hours, too. Eventually, they got rid of the shoes and switched to calling cards. They must have had people coming in actually trying to buy shoes.

Aside from feeling a little sad that I'm missing the 4th of July Nathan's Hot Dog competition this year, I'm feeling pretty happy about not being in New York right now. You know how much I miss the heat and humidity? Ha ha ha. The temperature's creeping up here, but it's still nice and cool once the sun goes down, with nary a hint of ocean in the air. I think this is what they call "spring."