Memories of the Turner Sub Shop sister store

When I started life at SCAD in the Fall of 2005 I lived in the dorms like everyone else. As a requirement of living in the dorms, you had to have a meal plan. These meal plans came with "dining dollars."

What are dining dollars, you might ask. Well, here's SCAD's definition.

Dining Dollars are a declining balance account included in the meal plan as a convenient way for students to purchase snacks or grocery items or treat a friend to lunch at SCAD.

I'll address the second part of that quote first. Nobody wants to treat their friends to lunch at SCAD. Nobody wants to treat themselves to lunch at SCAD. The food in the cafeterias is absolute Sodexho garbage. You may be thinking, "hey, maybe the food quality has gone up since when you moved out of the dorms two years ago." It hasn't. Along with other Student Media leaders, I was "treated" to free breakfast at Cafe SCAD a couple of weeks ago in return for meeting with Dr. Phil Alletto, VP of Student Services at SCAD. The food was no different. After two years of complaint-filing from most students (I assume), there still wasn't any cold soy milk. The scrambled "eggs" gave me an instant stomach ache.

But this is about convenience stores, right? So, students are forced to convert their USD into "dining dollars" when they're forced to purchase their meal plan. I only have one visual example of what you can buy with those dining dollars.



That's right, $4.69 for a single box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. This same product goes for just over a dollar at the local Kroger. Not only that, this product is useless to residents of the dorms. There isn't a single stove within the entire Turner/Weston/Dyson/Annex dorm complex surrounding this convenience store. There is nowhere for customers of this store to cook this box of macaroni. This image sums up my entire review of the Turner convenience store. I have no more to say.

Chu's

My girlfriend and I were eating at Madras Chetinaad, the best Indian restaurant in Savannah. The general consensus in our relationship is that Indian food is the best in the world. As such, we overeat at this restaurant. Never fail, one of us always leaves with a stomach ache. If I had an endless supply of naan and masala sauce, I doubt I would ever stop dunking and eating it. It would be like a voluntary case of the first victim in Se7en. Yeah, gluttony guy.

A few nights ago I saw an opportunity through the window next to our booth at Madras -- Chu's Market on Eisenhower Drive. Erin and I made a pact to eat until one of us was sick (it was bound to happen anyway) so we'd have an excuse to go to Chu's. Gotta work hard for your blog, right? Long, delicious story short -- we waddled across the parking lot divider to Chu's.

Chu's was on lockdown. My girlfriend and I both went straight for the restrooms in the back. Both were locked. This is terrifying. As if walking across the parking lot wasn't hard enough, now we have to find the keys to the bathroom? We headed for the front counter, only then noticing the bulletproof shield. The entire counter was a massive, clear and impenetrable box. We asked for the keys from the cashier and heard her muffled response through the glass, "They're on the counter." All this security for nothing? Whatever, we hit the bathrooms.

These bathrooms weren't very clean. Wet floors, smelled bad, soggy toilet paper strewn about. Whatever, we were just glad it was over.

The store offered some interesting products. The cooler had your standard sodas and beers, but way down on the bottom shelf were some "juices." The first were individual Mondo bottles -- those small plastic Kool-Aid knockoffs with the twist-off top. I hadn't seen this crap since third grade. Next to the Mondo were those little plastic cubes of colored "drink," like they serve in the cafeteria on the show Oz. Only 39 cents to drink like you're in a state penitentiary.

The "coffee corner," right next to the "candy corner" (both signified by buzzing neon signs) was easily the most unique spot in the store. The back wall behind the three coffee makers presented a giant hand-painted mural of a Mexican town, complete with una escuela, una biblioteca y un supermercado. This thing was like a fourth grade class project. Muy bien. The tie-in? There was a tiny metal cart filled with some Mexican bakery goods -- basically a bunch of greasy pound cakes wrapped in plastic. Exotic.

I awkwardly bought a pack of Fruit Stripe from the lady behind the two-inch thick glass wall. Heads up, Fruit Stripe gum still loses its flavor after an honest ten seconds. Next time I'm at Madras I'll stick with their bathroom.

Washington, D.C.

I recently visited the capitol of our fine country for a four-day student media conference. I spent a lot of time walking around in the rain looking for something to do with my friend and fellow conference-goer Chase. We ended up wandering around in four different convenience stores in the downtown D.C. area -- a Mexican corner store, a 7-Eleven, a Rite Aid, and a CVS.

Mexican corner store
On the day of our arrival, we anticipated a jacuzzi at the hotel we were staying at on SCAD's dollar, the Hilton Washington. As such, our first trip on foot through downtown involved buying some cigars at a convenience store -- because that's what you do in a hot tub, smoke cigars. The first one we found was exclusively Mexican. Mexican flags hung from the ceiling. The place was separated into three rooms.

The first room was filled with standard junk food, gum and toiletries. The second room had two glass display cases and a large magazine wall. The first glass case contained over a hundred unique low-grade Mexican films in VHS format. Most of them were about love affairs. The second glass case was filled with plenty of overpriced glass pipes -- strictly for tobacco use.

The third room cost a dollar to enter. It wasn't really a room, but a section of the back of the store surrounded by bed sheets hanging from clotheslines. We could see between the sheets. You guessed it, full of porn. I wonder how many people are willing to pay a dollar cover to look at what are most likely low-budget Mexican porn VHS tapes in the back of a rotten convenience store.

7-Eleven
We didn't buy cigars at the Mexican place. We didn't buy anything there. We left swiftly and silently. A 7-Eleven was across the street and I hadn't seen one of those in years, so we walked in. Upon entering I slipped in a puddle of Slurpee machine runoff and almost cracked my skull on the linoleum floor next to the Tasty Kake rack. This store was tiny -- only two short aisles and a small counter cramped with two cashiers. They didn't stock cigars, not even White Owls. We settled on Black & Milds to represent the 912. A cop skipped us in line. This place was beat.

Rite Aid
We ended up at this place at least three separate times during the trip due to its location (one block from the hotel). It was like any other pharmacy style convenience store, except a lot larger. Their selection of inexpensive (read: crappy) cigars was astounding, but we weren't willing to spend any more money on novelty tobacco. They had some great magazines. There was a large back basement room, mostly containing women's beauty products, that we didn't bother entering. It was uneventful, much like --

CVS
After seeing an advanced screening of The Darjeeling Limited one night, Chase and I really needed some cigarettes. Despite most of what this entire post insinuates, neither of us are really "smokers." Just, when you see a film with a cigarette in almost every scene, and you've got 20 city blocks to walk in the cold back to the hotel, some things must be done. We walked for about five blocks from the E Street Cinema without finding a single convenience store -- strange because whenever we didn't need to find one, there was always one in sight.

The CVS was a lucky find. Despite it being even larger than the aforementioned Rite Aid, it took us a while to realize that it was really a CVS store and not an ad for one on the side of a corner apartment building. It took even longer to find the entrance. This was the first time I had been carded for cigarettes in a few years. My pack of Camel Lights ran about three dollars more than they do in Savannah. It was worth it. This place was uneventful as well.


The D.C. trip was a good one. As far as convenience stores go, the city offered some interesting stuff, but what was I expecting out of chains like Rite Aid and CVS?

Oh, and for those of you wondering, the Hilton didn't have a jacuzzi. We smoked the Black & Milds anyway.