Thread by @Chris_arnade

Not sure you can begin a South Carolina walk with a more South Carolina-y scene (Palmetto tree sadly fallen & out of picture)

Cliche #2

Still smells of dank tobacco from dank blunts

Gonna invade North Carolina with a granite phalanx

The Bull! Only slightly rebranded since I was a teen trying to get drunk for cheap

😶

Is there like a Mason-Dixon Line for water towers vs reservoirs?

Fallen in line of duty

Cotton fields, train tracks, power line, water tower. just waiting to be turned into bad song

Perfecting Lives Tabernacle

Old Labor union? Or some fraternal order of whatever. Or both?

At least the sidewalk crew tried. Better than most places I been

Damn fly over America and their, uh, bespoke breweries making over hopped IPAs

Long been My fav street sign. Probably because of the distress bolts shooting out from truck

Finding the Black community in a southern town (Florence is 60% black) means finding what side of the train tracks is lower & easily flooded

Mr Patel, owner of the store, thought I was taking pictures to sue and claim ownership of the store. Which he says has happened before 😔

Retired pumps sitting around shooting the shit all day

Southern game: clothes line or cross?

Deep in Biden country

Deep in Biden Country 2

Part 3

Think it is conveniently forgotten by elite activist in both parties just how religious working class Blacks are

Southern Cliche alert!

Metaphor alert!

Hard to see in pic (but easy to smell in real life) but local railroad workers having their lunch break with homemade bbq

Took a lot of weird effort to get this pic, which didn’t really come out, & I have nothing clever to say about. But I put in the effort damn it. Not going to waste

Dude running home to do cannibalism

Absolutely Great mural. Straight into my, uh, lungs

History! To be all educated-y

More history!

Want that welcome mat

Ps: everyone in Black part of Florence seems to be a Cowboys fan? Any historical reason?

Man does the neighborhood ever quickly change once you cross the tracks out of the “traditional Black neighborhood”

Ok. Battery dying, huge rainstorm approaching. Gonna have to stop posting & make my way home early. Enjoy!

Lot nicer (& extremely friendly) town than it seems from interstate exits

Just hard working journalist documenting overlooked wheel country

Metaphor alert!

Not sure what this architectural style is, but it feels very small southern town 60s

So bland it’s art

Sherwin Williams logo, when you really look at it, is kinda gross

Yard blow ups been taken to a whole new level

Forget Wawa vs Sheetz, when there is Cruizers

This is a good logo. Take note Sherwin Williams

So. Because of rain & battery dying I ordered ahead at the closest place, a Starbucks. When I got there lobby was closed, &!they had run out of large cups

But the manager felt bad for wet me, let me in (not enough employees showed up today), & gave me two medium coffees! Yeah!

I talk up McDonald’s a lot on here, but I have had nothing but great experiences with Starbucks. Employees are universally sweet, helpful, & go out of way to do their best

Ps: the absurdity of four employees working their asses off while wearing masks in an otherwise completely empty store (drive through only)

Sitting out rain trying to think what to write about Florence. Obvious is friendliness, especially in Black neighborhoods. That isn’t very deep though.

I guess, like in Buffalo & Indianapolis, what strikes me is how livable it is, especially compared to the elites image of it

Also. Just how a diverse city of “normies” being normal is so weird & confusing to the Front row.

How very very little that Front row gets right about these places. That is My continued frustration

Ps: the thing about using labels like normies, or fly-overs, or whatever, is how it always ends up being a stigmatizing or condescending term.

Because that is how it is almost always used by the Front row.

There is no term you can use that doesn’t become that

Enough punditing. Back to regular schedule silliness & pics

A+ logo.

You know the song…

I'm at the Huddle house (what?)
I'm at the Amoco (what?)
I'm at the combination Huddle House and Amoco.

Also. Is there a worse second fiddle than Huddle House to Waffle House.

The dreary corner is less dreary with a dreary Palm tree.

30-ish yrs ago me & my wife got stuck in Florence because of a snow storm & we went to the food lion & when we got back to our room there was a 20-20 (or dateline) episode about hidden footage of mislabeled meat at Food Lion

I think this is the same one we shopped at 30 yrs ago!

Cotton looks very cotton-y

Scrubby!!!!!

America stills makes things. Lots

You know the song

I am at the victory temple….

This is a church. Not an office park, or an accounting firm, but a church

At my most cynical I think American economy runs on an endless cycle of making $’s getting people addicted, then more $’s treating their addictions, then getting them addicted again..

And so on and so on.

I hope there Xmas party is dry

Never know what you will find while walking

Thanks everyone. Rain cut it down to 10 miles. Somewhere I dropped $60 bucks out of my pocket. Hope whoever finds it enjoys it.

Hope it was gutter man.

Time to dry off, write, then go get the $5 32 ounce draft Dos Equis

PS: Please subscribe to my Substack where I write up these walks into more thoughtful (hopefully) essays

intellectualinting.substack.com