Team Wet Dog

big neon hat, aka SOTB

I think this weekend may have been the first when Carrboro really started to feel like home, and a new life here really started to feel like my own.

We spent a bunch of the weekend actually doing things, and being around good groups of people. Between a Friday night poker game, good concert on Saturday and dessert/drinks at a friend's on Sunday, there was a lot going on. And on top of that I did some writing and finished reading the book I was working through.

If all those sound relatively normal, that's the point. Back in D.C., that would have been Standard Weekend No. 27,198. But here in Carrboro, finally, it just means the place may be starting to feel a little like home.

As for the giant neon sombrero you see, if you've been there then you certainly recognize it as South of the Border - the crazy, silly, tacky, disturbing, ugly and wonderful t-shirt-shop-meets-theme-park-meets-rest-area just inside South Carolina.

I can't help but loving SOTB. It's crass commercialism at its finest, a completely artificial place just off Interstate 95 that has steadily expanded and become so absurd that it threatens to collapse under it's own bright colors.

And, being from South Carolina, sometimes you have to look pretty hard to find something to love in the state. This is as good a thing as any thing.

— Robert

(11/12/07) 
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