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.

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.

Podcast Interview with Jessica Clary

This is the first podcast for The Convenient Truth. Within, I interview Jessica Clary, Assistant Student Media Director for SCAD, and family member of the Jordan Oil Company. The Jordan Oil Company owns all Hot Spot convenience stores. Jessica shares the interesting experiences she's had over the years relating to the convenience store industry. The podcast runs around 24 minutes.

Chevron

Memories of my first year at SCAD come to mind whenever I visit this gas station. The Chevron on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Oglethorpe Avenue is the place for dorm-trapped, car-less freshman to forage for "food" when the unappetizing Cafe SCAD is closed as usual.

When I was a photography major living at Weston House, I spent a lot of late nights at Bergen Hall. Only two establishments offered something to eat on the path between Weston and Bergen. Chevron and Carlito's Mexican Restaurant. Since I was spending all of my money on archival fiber paper and medium format film, it couldn't always be "taco night."

The Chevron is a standard gas station store. It's cramped and doesn't offer anything very interesting or unusual aside from maybe Bawls Energy Drink, a highly caffeinated Sprite-style beverage that comes in a blue glass bottle. This was a hit with the freshman crowd pulling all-nighters. Everything else is average. Day-old "hunk-a-pizza" slices under heat lamps, every salty snack you shouldn't be eating, and often a long line due to lottery ticket sales. Not much going on, until you step outside.

A convenient set of deck tables and chairs are arranged outside the storefront where some classic late-night Savannah characters like to hang out. That one guy you thought was going to rob you yesterday, a bag lady curbing her methadone craving with some circus peanuts, three old men mumbling at every woman in a ten foot radius.

However, there are some nice people outside the Chevron as well. One night my girlfriend and I saw a golden retriever running free a few blocks from the Chevron on Oglethorpe Ave. We both tried to calm it down and keep it from running in traffic, and it ended up hiding in the bushes in the median outside Oglethorpe House. We stopped a SCAD Security SUV and asked if he would help, only to hear "I don't touch no wild dog." We decided there wasn't much we could do until we got the number for the Humane Society or Save-a-Life, so we headed back to the dorm. We saw a dog barking inside a parked truck while we crossed the Chevron parking lot. The trucker came out and noticed we were looking at his dog. We told him about the dog running loose, and he called his girlfriend who happened to be a volunteer with the Humane Society. So yes, I can say something good did come out of this particular store.

The Chevron is still apparently the place to go for emergency food and/or cigarettes during 11 a.m. class breaks, so I suppose it lives up to its name as a convenience store. If not for its convenient location near Crites and Bergen Halls, I say don't bother coming to this place. Unless you've lost your dog.

Google Map