Sinkhole de Mayo

Jacksonville's three Mexican joints are sure to be packed for tomorrow's Cinco de Mayo festivities tomorrow night. Insipid all-Americana joints like Applebee's and Texas Roadhouse will try to fill the void by hawking their fajita platters and exotic Margarita-esque concoctions (Strawberry-Jalapeno Margarita!! Prickly Pear-Pomegranate Margarita Jello shots!!!!)

But there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon from Jacksonville's unofficial (yet much more proactive and creative) Chamber of Commerce...




You just know that legions of young men will come armed with bags of tortilla chips, preparing to scoop guac out of a stripper's ass crack.


Oh, Driftwood... you never cease to amaze me. You always take it to the lowest common demoninator but at least you always manage to give it the old college try.

Dry Humpin' In The Dark

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music ~Agnes de Mille

Wonder how ol’ Agnes, an esteemed American ballerina and choreographer, would view Jacksonville’s indigenous dance, a down and dirty dry hump performed on a filthy dance floor? What the Polka is to the Poles, what the Lambada is to the Brazilians, the Fishin’ In The Dark is to the residents of Jacksonville.

The Fishin’ In The Dark caught me by surprise. I was ready to blow off some steam on a Friday night and agreed to join my friends at the Tarheel Opry House. Tucked around the corner from La Mirage titty bar on a deserted back road, the Tarheel shares a parking lot with Alexander’s, Jacksonville’s self-proclaimed “premiere” nightclub. In Jacksonville-ese, labeling a place premiere simply justifies a 20 buck entry fee and bisecting the club with a velvet rope as a meager attempt to create a VIP lounge. But I digress; that is for another blog post. I pulled my vehicle to the east end of the parking lot, amid the mud-splattered American model trucks and Jeeps adorned with cute little bumper stickers of Browning deer heads forming hearts.

After handing over my cover charge, I noticed an index card taped to the front desk proclaiming “Please leave your knives in your vehicle.” Charming. I half expected Patrick Swayze to be standing at the bar, arms crossed but ready to rip my throat out Roadhouse style if I stepped out of line. Instead, I spied several geriatric rent-a-cops ambling through the crowd, pausing to chat with pregnant women sucking down longnecks and smoking cigarettes (pre-smoking ban days here, obviously). Bellying up to the bar, my friends and I ordered a round of shots that was quickly vetoed by the steely blond iron maiden bartender. She didn’t have the ingredients required to make our sissy ass shots but promised whip up something good to get the night started.

Around midnight, they unfurled an American flag up on the stage and a fiddle player began his rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner”. Look, I am as much of a red-blooded, all-American patriot as the next guy, but I find it hard not to laugh at a bunch of drunk boots attempting to stand at the position of attention, thumbs aligning with pant seams, eyes straight ahead, after shooting Jager all night long. Especially when they start cheering “America! Fuck yeah!” in a seemingly un-ironic manner upon the close of the national anthem.

It was then that I heard the first chords of one of my favorite songs. “Fishin’ In The Dark” by the Nitty Gritty Dirty Band has always held a special place in my heart. It is a cheeky little ditty about a guy taking his girl fishing… except it isn’t really fishing that he is concerned with… at least in the traditional sense. I always appreciated the sly yet innocent double entendre of the lyrics. And it so happened that I had found a repeat dance partner that night who happened to be standing right by my side at the song’s start. A mutual nod confirmed that indeed we would be taking a turn on the dance floor to this song. We sauntered hand-in-hand to the dance floor, me preparing to do the traditional two-step this song demanded when…



HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!? I had been momentarily distracted by my dance partner’s blue-grey eyes that I hadn’t noticed a fucking orgy had broken out on the dance floor.

The two-step is just way too classy for Jacksonville. Men were sprawled out on the dance floor with women gyrating above them. Men were dry humping women. Sisters were doing in for themselves by gathering their friends and squatting in pairs four or five deep over one another. People were sixty-nining, throwing legs over shoulders and going to town. I fear that some would have a souvenir of that night nine months later. Seriously… there was straight up baby-making going on that dance floor that night. Those not participating in the debauchery were arming their cell phone cameras and whooping to their friends about how they couldn’t wait to upload the footage to Youtube when they got home. It looked like we had walked on to the set of Caligula. My dance partner and I nervously eyed each other, wondering if we should really go to third base within a mere twenty minutes of meeting each other. My friends, being no help at all, egged me on and flat out dared me.

When in J-Vegas, do as the J-Vegans do. Don’t judge. I still blame the Iron Maiden bartender and those non-sissy shots.

The Bro Hug

I get it: you and the other members of your unit are a band of brothers. You have deployed together, endured long stretches of boredom and been in some fucked up situations that most Americans can never fathom. You are bonded for life.

Having said that, is it really necessary to wrap your arms around your brothers and loudly serenade them for an entire concert, only coming up for air when it is time to get another round of drinks?

The Bro Hug is a ritual that is alive and well in Jacksonville, particularly amongst the active duty military population. The bar scene most nights are rampant sausage fests (see Exhibit A above, taken at Hooligan's this past Friday night). Perhaps it is the lack of female companionship or the feelings of displacement after returning from a recent deployment that leads so many men to pound Jagermeister, throw their arms over another's shoulder and sing songs off key and at the top of their lungs before dissolving in to a simpering mess of "I fucking love you man!" Either get a girlfriend or get a room... enough of the Bro Hug.

Country Bumperstickerkins

What is it about military wives in J-Vegas and their damn bumper stickers? Ancient civilizations used tattoos to show belonging, rank and status. While the Desperate Housewives of Jacksonville feel that same urge to proclaim their allegiances, they are far too lazy to trifle with the ink and needles. Much easier just to slap a trite bumper sticker on the back of their vehicle in order to free up their days for Wal-Mart outings and tanning sessions.

All the preferred bumper stickers offer up a heaping serving of Semper Stupid motivation (especially considering that most of these wives are riding the coat tails of their beloved husbands) but what do they really tell you about the woman behind the wheel?

1) His Boots, Her Flops: A Perfect Pair

These girls are the new freshman class of Marine wives. Their brand new shiny husbands told them that they would begin their marriage in a quaint little hamlet by the sea named Jacksonville.

A quick glimpse in to her mind: "OMG! Isn't my hubs like sooooooo smoking hot?... especially when he is in his blues. LOL! Marines totally have the best uniform. So glad I didn't marry that kid who joined the Army. Can't wait for the next Marine Corps Ball. I am gonna look like freaking Cinderella. Totally going to start working out and get in shape so I can post the pics on Facebook and all the girls back home will be jealous. HATERZ!! Maybe I will start running on the beach. Yay beach! When hubs told me we were coming to Jacksonville, I was all OMG it is like right on the ocean. I can wear flip flops year round. Of course, Jacksonville isn't quite what I expected. There are a lot of pawn shops and some weird dude who does karate on street corners. Nobody wants to hire me at McDonald's cuz there are like 50 million other Marine wives around here. Maybe I will start throwing Passion Parties for all of my new friends... that will make some dollar$. If not.... well... I hear the Driftwood is hiring. LOL! Just kidding. My hubs would like totally kill me if I did that. Speaking of, isn't my husband sooooo hot?"

Where to find them: affixed to the bumpers and windows of Honda Civics, Volkswagen Jettas and Ford Mustangs parked at the mall (natch!), Chilli's, nail salons and the beach.

Honorable mention: His Boots, Her Heels, His Boots, Her Boots (hers being cowboy boots), I put the Ooh in his Oohrah!, I Heart My Jarhead, I Heart My Grunt and I Heart My Lance Corporal.

2) the stick families

The fairytale is over for these ladies. They have been through a deployment or two. Being a military wife is now all about the politics of the Family Readiness Group and picking up the husband's uniform from the cleaners before it closes. It is also serious baby making time. What good is having an ID card and all this free medical care if you don't pop out a kid... or ten?

A quick glimpse in to her mind: "Ughhh... why is he up so early? Oh right... he said something about duty last night but I could barely hear over the wails of Baby Susie. Poor thing is teething right now. Maybe he'll be quiet and not wake... oops. Too late. Toddler Billy just came in to the room and is jumping on the bed. Of course, my husband expects me to get up and take care of those heathens. First order of business is coffee... which he expects me to make, of course. So insensitive! I mean, I got up at the crack of dawn yesterday to feed the kids. Got the school-aged ones off on the bus then dropped the three youngest off at the neighbor's house. Spent three hours at Wal-Mart shopping for groceries and stuff. When was the last time he did anything like that? What the hell does he do all day long? Gawd, I hope I am not pregnant again. Should definitely look in to birth control next time I go to the doctor. Maybe I will invite mom down next time he goes to the field. She should really spend more time with her grandkids. This girl needs a night out on the town!"

Where to find them: haphazardly slapped on Toyota Camrys, Ford Explorers and Kia Sedonas parked at Wal-Mart, Ci Ci's Pizza and the Naval Hospital OB/GYN.

Honorable mention: There are actually several different varieties of this type of sticker. The most Moto is the family swathed in camouflage but other popular options are a pair of flip flops or Browning deer heads for each member of the household. Some mix it up by showing each person's unique personality with soccer players, cowboys and even scrapbookers. Bonus points for including the pets... just don't forget the goldfish and hamster!

Or you could do this:

Still haven't figured out if this was a joke or if they really did name their kids Smith and Wesson. Anything is possible in J-Vegas...

3) Marine Wife, Toughest Job In The Corps

We have now reached the Varsity of Marine wives. Or should I say Marine Wives, since this kind feels that Wife is an occupation and should be capitalized.

A quick glimpse in to her mind: "My husband's success can be attributed to ME! I have made sacrifices. I was never able to have a career because we were always moving around so I became a Marine Wife. Look at that little princess married to the Boot over there. Babies! They just don't understand how hard the Marine Corps really is. And that frazzled woman with the five kids who hasn't even bothered to run a brush through her hair. Ha.. amateur! My life has been tough. I never actually raised my hand and took an oath or had to stand in the yellow footprints or went three weeks without a shower but Marine Wife is a tough job. I went to Jane Wayne PT once with my husband a few years ago and thought it was super fun and pretty easy. I even got up earlier than my husband did just so I could apply make-up. Sure, he does PT every morning but I power walk with the neighbor while pushing a stroller. That is hard core. I have never had to eat an MRE... well except that one time many years ago when my husband dared me to. It wasn't bad... especially washed down with a bottle of white zinfandel. So I totally understand all that he does to be a Marine but he has no clue how tough it is to be a Marine Wife. I am a member of an elite sisterhood. The Few, The Proud, The Marine WIFE!!!"

Where to find them: proudly displayed on Volvos, Lincoln Navigators and PT Cruisers. This kind is rarely spotted off Camp Lejeune and New River but, if forced in to town, they can be seen at Target, Wines and Wares and the USO.

Honorable mention: Anything that reminds you that HER husband and HER children's father defends your freedom, you communist bastard! Bonus points for a license plate frame that says the same.

4) Half My Heart Is In Iraq/Afghanistan/Haiti

Yikes! This one is the trickiest of them all. What probably started out as a sincere sentiment of longing for one's better half has now turned in to the equivalent of rolling out the welcome mat for extracurricular activities while the husband is deployed. That was a nice way of saying these girls are skanks.

A quick glimpse in to her mind: "So bored now that husband is gone. I can't believe he dragged me to this hell hole and then waltzed off to some foreign country. He is probably having the time of his life. This place sucks! I hate him! That's why I put on my finest tube top and my new sparkly lipgloss and am sitting on this barstool. I need to feel loved again. He didn't even call me today. Bastard! There are like fifty guys here totally checking me out. He doesn't even realize what he is missing. The guy next to me is buying me a shot every ten minutes and I can't even get one stinking phone call. Whatever! Shot Guy is way hotter anyways."

Where to find them: Hooligan's, Sharpshooters, The Tarheel, Alexander's, The O House, House of Rock, Priscilla McCall's and Victoria's Secret. No specific type of car.

** Big thanks to the mobile Viva J-Vegas Team for helping me gather pictures of all of these bumper stickers. I couldn't have done it without you guys.

Erin Go Bragh(less) in Jax

Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day. Since Emerald Isle and Wilmington already had their parades this weekend and the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce has left its residents high and dry once again, most people will just end up hitting the bars and getting shitfaced while wearing green I'm Not Irish But Fuck Me Anyways t-shirts. Sensing this void, Jacksonville's premiere gentleman's club, The Driftwood, is offering up one of its most creative events to date.

If  creative = tacky + ridiculous

I must give credit where credit is due. The Driftwood (affectionately referred to as the Dirtwood) knows its clientele all too well. It is a grubby little hole in the wall on Hwy 24, just outside the main gate of Camp Lejeune and one short Tarheel Taxi ride away from the barracks. In a town where the men vastly outnumber the women, sex sells. If a guy can't get laid, looking at the boobs of an 18 year old girl who followed her Marine from Iowa only to get cast aside... well... that's almost as good as getting laid. Looks like tomorrow's festivities go a step further by catering to Jacksonville's love of all things UFC. In the few waking moments that Jacksonville's male population aged 18-29 isn't thinking about sex, it is entertaining homoerotic fantasies of pummeling another man in the octagon. Way to keep the bar raised high, Dirtwood!

I went to the Dirtwood once many eons ago. A group of us were sitting at a table just to the left of the main stage, running through buckets of beer. A young girl whose retainer gleamed when the strobe light display hit it just right was performing acrobatics on the pole. I noticed a slight swelling of her abdomen. "No way", I thought to myself, "maybe she just has a beer gut". I leaned over to my friend Laura, who came along for this excursion for her husband's birthday that we were celebrating. "Psssst...is she....?", I whispered. "Oh yeah. I am guessing about 5 or 6 months along" was her bored response.

Jesus! Not interested in seeing an on-stage miscarriage from the teenager still precariously twirling from the pole, I polished off my beer and hit the door, never to return again.

Guess who won't be at the Dirtwood tomorrow?

The Ville That Puts the Action In Jackson

Welcome to Jacksonville, NC, a lovely little slice of heaven near the coast of North Carolina (although the flashing lights of the local Pawn and Gun, the snarl of traffic on Western Blvd. resulting from drivers from all 50 states bringing their bad habits with them and the signs beckoning you in to the dark recesses of a bar for midget wrestling may often lead to confusion that you have stumbled in to one of Dante's circles of hell instead).

Poor Jacksonville. It is saddled with several unflattering nicknames: J-ville, JAX, J-Actionville, and this writer's personal favorite, J-Vegas. Try Googling it and see how often it gets mistaken for its much larger cousin of the same name in Florida. This inferiority reeks from every pore of the town like a science nerd on his first date. Jacksonville is an oversexed teen aged boy with an identity crisis.

It has its local population, emphatically claiming it as OUR TOWN DAMMIT!!! There are the old land rich Southern families who attempt Southern gentility by hitting the links at the country club and throwing their daughters in to the cotillion circuit. Do a 180 degree turn and find the trailer park trash walking around Wal-Mart in their finest blaze orange and munching on pork rinds. The bond that bridges the socio-economic gap of both sides? The commonly held (mis)belief that Jacksonville would be a successful commercial fishing town even without nearby Camp Lejeune and New River Air Station. They don't need the military for anything.... except on the 1st and 15th of the month, when payday funds hit.

You can't talk about Jacksonville, NC without mentioning Camp Lejeune and New River. Tens of thousands of Marines and sailors, many of them bringing spouses. Not sure if it is something in the water or due to the free military medical, but they are baby making factories. Car dealers around here make bank selling mini-vans and SUVs just so families can load up their biologically produced fire teams in them.

Then there are the single Marines. Several years ago, Cosmopolitan magazine listed Jacksonville, NC and some podunk fishing outpost in Alaska as the two best places to find a husband. A quick peek at Wiki confirms that Jacksonville, NC boasts an almost 2:1 ratio in favor of the ladies. Median age is 22.9. Picture poor Cosmo readers making a pilgrimage to this town only to discover bars packed with heavily tattooed jarheads who charmingly chant "No balls!" to bait women in to shooting Jagerbombs, dry hump their legs and then offer them a chance to do the barracks walk of shame in the next morning's harsh light while he high-fives his buddies. And they say chivalry is dead.

Not to say Jacksonville is all bad. There are some really nice people here. It is close to the beach which makes it pretty boss in my book. Dig deep and there are actually quite a few fun and unique things to do. We even have a hometown hero who ninja kicks on the corner of Western Blvd. and Hwy 17, never failing to brighten my day (Radio!) This blog won't be all negative. I will try to point out the good with the bad... but mostly the arcane, ridiculous and annoying. Jacksonville has plenty to offer on all sides of the spectrum.

Many dear readers may be wondering just who the hell I am. Well... I live in Jacksonville. That's enough. It doesn't matter if I am male or female, military or townie, married or single. I am aiming for anonymity (mostly due to the death threats I hope to receive when I start skewering the chicks with the "Half my heart is in..." bumper stickers).

Feel free to comment and leave me critiques, encouragment, tips and even death threats. Until then... Viva J-Vegas!