Fast Food Oversaturation In Wareham?

If your doctor told you that you needed more cholesterol, you might want to get into the Fatmobile and bring the pod to East Wareham.

Sonic Drive-In, an Oklahoma-based restaurant chain that banks much green in the South, is slowly edging into Massachusetts. They have set their sites on Wareham, via the Patel family, owners of a bunch of Taunton-area convenience stores.

We had to go to Somerset to get these pics, but of course you know that I stopped for a salad on the way and didn't eat any artery-clogging fast food. We include the pictures for SE Massachusetts people who have never been to a Sonic. They're rare around here.

The same area of Wareham is also getting an Olive Garden.

As near as I can tell, the Sonic is going onto the property currently occupied by an oil-change shop, so your fries will have a Pennzoil taste to them. The Olive Garden is said to be going across the street from Barnacle Bill's.

How much is too much?

A lonely stretch of East Wareham is now host to a veritable takeout Mecca. You can get Burger King, Subway, McDonald's, D'Angelo's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Krua Thai, Pizza Boy, Rice Bowl and Dunkin Donuts. I'm not throwing Papa Gino's, Lindsay's or Bailey's into the mix, as you can't order from your car there. I'm pretty sure that the 99 only closed because the building floods in heavy rains.

It's the Cardiac Highway!

We're not Food Snobbing anyone. Stephen, one of our writers, hasn't cooked his own food since 2011 or so. However, about one hundred yards of East Wareham, a depressed region of a small town, now has every fast food place in the Northeast.

They could use a White Castle or a Carl Jr's/Hardee's, but there is only so much Cranberry Highway.

Buzzards Bay had a Burger King fail, which isn't easy. Other than the Hooters: Cape Cod and the Falmouth/Kingston Pizza Huts, it is the most high profile failure of a major fast food chain in the area.

You order off this screen, into the sort of speaker that you used to see at drive-in theaters. Someone skates out with it, and you get into the goods. I need both glasses and a taller car.

Jessica and I passed on the tater tots, as I ate them every day for 4 years in high school. I got the SuperSonic Bacon Double Cheeseburger (pictures below), which came with fries and a soda for about $10. The burger was a-ight, but the fries were Ore-Ida quality.

My meal had over 1500 calories and 2200 milligrams of sodium before I counted the milkshake (it had about 3000 calories with the milkshake... meanwhile, famine victims in refugee camps are happy to get 1200 calories a day), and the unknowable portion sizes makes it impossible to gauge how many calories I stole from Jessica's food. The recommended daily allowance for sodium is 3400 mg, but I consider that to be a piddling sum ascribed to a 105 pound woman. I'm a slim 240 man, so I should get to have twice as much sodium as mortals are allowed. I plan on buying a salt lick and just posting it up in my office somewhere.

I didn't get a pic of it, but when I took the bun and tomato off of the burger, it looked somewhat like William Dafoe.

Jessica got the Chicken Strips Sampler Platter, which was 3 whack strips, more Ore-Ida fries, and onion ring and some toast. That also ran ten bucks, and you can see it below somewhere.

Jessica's chicken did not look like a celebrity.

My man Hardcore Logo got the Chicken Strips Kids Meal, which came with a shake and some Justice League stickers. He didn't let me steal any of it.

The rollerskater (who was a guy) was friendly enough. He's out hustling for his dollar, so I'm not making fun of him. I have had worse jobs. He was the first fast food employee I have ever tipped, aside from the Dunkin' and Marylou's girls.

That's your restaurant review. I made my journalistic bones as a sportswriter. Stacey's French, but she also isn't writing this article. We did go from Cape Cod to Somerset for these pictures, so we deserve some credit.

They must have been out of the Brazilian Man rollerskating waitress neon signs, which is understandable.

Does the population of Wareham have enough kids who know how to roller skate to staff a Sonic these days? You may not want to go there until the girls get their skating legs under them, lest you get a milkshake to the face (doh!) like the cop in the Happy Days intro.

Will this be enough for Sonic- who for some reason can't seem to come to some sort of spokesmanship agreement with the Sega hedgehog- to hold up on the Cranberry Highway against the heavyweights?

We'll goof on the Olive Garden in some future article where we have pictures of one. We consider going to an Olive Garden for Italian food to be akin to going to Red Lobster for seafood. It works if you don't have Italians around to call BS on it.

Olive Garden competing against Mezza Luna should be a devastating loss, but people like franchises. Don't count the OG out of it by any means.

Here's Jesse's dinner. I stole her onion rings before the picture could be taken... because I'm eeeeeevil.

Note that Sonic and Olive Garden are two more businesses who declined to move into (and perhaps revive) the Main Street area of Buzzards Bay. The only big names willing to dance with Buzzards Bay are Subway and Dunkin' Donuts, and we know that Dunkin' would set up in Aleppo if they were allowed.

How much fast food can one region consume? Will the added presence of Sonic be too much for BK or lil' Miss Wendy to bear? Wendy's in Wareham is sort of smelly, and Sonic may just walk them out behind the barn and put them out of their misery.

... or maybe Wareham needs more fast food? Does more fast food exist? Wahlburgers may be a bit high end. I'm not sure if Jack In The Box still exists. In-n-Out Burger or Phatburger (Fatburger?) may not make it here. I'm not sure if dropping a White Castle in Buzzards Bay or East Wareham works, especially for B Double. Chick Fil-A will help along people looking for a less gay-friendly chicken sandwich, but would you run the Bourne rotary for one?

Will the East Wareham economy survive if it is reduced to a bunch of people selling shoddy hamburgers to each other? If that happens, will employees eventually just be paid in hamburgers?

Will the very town of Wareham fracture along supper preference lines, with the higher-end West Ham and their Longhouses and Red Robins break away from their more ghetto McChicken-eating cousins in East Wareham?

Only time will tell.

Playing ring toss with onion rings makes the hardened arteries well worth it.

Heavy Fog This Morning

There's a Dense Fog Advisory for the South Coast, apparently at least to Bourne.

This is Buttermilk Bay in Bourne, MA.

Here's a mooring buoy at 20 yards, in case you're wondering how thick the fog is.

It should burn off by 9 AM or so.

Blizzard Watch For Coastal Massachusetts, Winter Storm Warning Inland

Cranberry County Magazine is actually part of a secret government experiment where we see if you can bankrupt a website by running the same headline every 5 days. OK, maybe the government isn't involved, but here we go again with another Blizzard!

Let's just hand this to the pros, shall we?

BLIZZARD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH
MONDAY EVENING...

* LOCATIONS...Cape Cod and Nantucket.

* ACCUMULATIONS...4 to 6 inches of snow.

* HAZARD TYPES...include moderate to heavy snow, as well as
blowing snow.

* TIMING...spotty light rain this morning becomes steadier and
heavier this afternoon, then transitioning to snow overnight
along with increasing winds by early Monday morning. It is
during these peak winds, that blizzard conditions are possible.

* WINDS...Northwest 35 to 45 mph with gusts up to 65 mph.

* VISIBILITIES...One quarter mile or less at times.

* IMPACTS...The combination of brief heavy snow and strong winds
may lead to dangerous driving conditions as well as scattered
power outages.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A Blizzard Watch means there is a potential for considerable
falling and/or blowing snow with sustained winds or frequent
gusts over 35 mph...with visibilities below one quarter mile...
for at least 3 hours. Whiteout conditions will be possible...
making travel very dangerous. Be prepared to alter any travel
plans.
**************************************************

Remember, folks.... a Blizzard doesn't necessarily mean that you re getting the Blizzard of '78 with 25 inches of snow. All you need is three hours of heavy snow and some high winds. Buffalo once had a blizzard where it didn't snow at all... the high winds just picked up all the fluffy snow sitting on frozen Lake Erie and blew it into Buffalo.

The coast has more NWS stuff to deal with... and you know they're serious, because they're going CAPS LOCK:

COASTAL FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY MORNING THROUGH MONDAY
AFTERNOON...

* LOCATION...SALISBURY TO ROCKPORT, NORTH SIDE OF CAPE COD FROM SANDWICH TO
EASTHAM, AND NANTUCKET.

* TIDAL DEPARTURE...1 TO 2 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE IS POSSIBLE SALISBURY TO
ROCKPORT, AND 2 TO 3 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE IS POSSIBLE ALONG THE NORTH SIDE
OF CAPE COD AND THE NANTUCKET HARBOR AREA.

* TIMING...WITHIN A COUPLE OF HOURS OF THE MONDAY EARLY AFTERNOON HIGH TIDE.

* COASTAL FLOOD IMPACTS...MINOR TO MODERATE COASTAL FLOODING IS POSSIBLE
SALISBURY TO ROCKPORT INCLUDING THE PLUM ISLAND AREA AS WELL AS NANTUCKET
HARBOR. MODERATE WITH POCKETS OF MODERATE TO MAJOR COASTAL FLOODING IS
POSSIBLE FROM SANDWICH TO EASTHAM WHERE DAMAGE TO THE MOST VULNERABLE
STRUCTURES ALONG THE IMMEDIATE SHORE AS WELL AS SHORELINE ROAD WASHOUTS ARE
POSSIBLE DUE TO THE COMBINATION OF STORM SURGE AND LARGE BREAKING WAVES.
INUNDATION OF 1 TO 3 FEET IN LOW SPOTS IS POSSIBLE.

* SHORELINE IMPACTS...LARGE WAVES OF 15 TO 20 FEET JUST OFFSHORE WILL LIKELY
CAUSE SIGNIFICANT EROSION OF OCEAN EXPOSED SHORELINES ALONG EASTERN
MASSACHUSETTS. THE EROSION ALONG THE NORTH SIDE OF CAPE COD FROM SANDWICH TO
EASTHAM, THE OCEAN SIDE OF CAPE COD FROM TRURO TO CHATHAM, AND THE EAST SIDE
OF NANTUCKET MAY BE SEVERE IN PLACES.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A COASTAL FLOOD WATCH MEANS THAT POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR MODERATE OR MAJOR COASTAL
FLOODING. MODERATE COASTAL FLOODING PRODUCES WIDESPREAD FLOODING OF VULNERABLE
SHORE ROADS AND/OR BASEMENTS DUE TO THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM TIDE AND/OR WAVE
ACTION. NUMEROUS ROAD CLOSURES ARE NEEDED. LIVES MAY BE AT RISK FOR PEOPLE WHO
PUT THEMSELVES IN HARMS WAY. ISOLATED STRUCTURAL DAMAGE MAY BE POSSIBLE.

MAJOR COASTAL FLOODING IS CONSIDERED SEVERE ENOUGH TO CAUSE AT LEAST SCATTERED
STRUCTURAL DAMAGE ALONG WITH WIDESPREAD FLOODING OF VULNERABLE SHORE ROADS
AND/OR BASEMENTS. SOME VULNERABLE HOMES WILL BE SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.
NUMEROUS ROADS ARE IMPASSABLE...SOME WITH WASHOUTS SEVERE ENOUGH TO BE LIFE-
THREATENING IF ONE ATTEMPTED TO CROSS ON FOOT OR BY VEHICLE. SOME NEIGHBORHOODS
WILL BE ISOLATED. EVACUATION OF SOME NEIGHBORHOODS MAY BE NECESSARY.
********************************************************
Please note and know that the greatest danger here is for people on north-facing coastlines. This means you:

Hull

Scituate Neck

Fourth Cilff

Brant Rock

Gurnet Point

Manomet

Sandwich

Barnstable Harbor

Dennis

Brewster

Provincetown

Here is a list of Tide Charts that you probably want to have a look at before tomorrow's entertainment.
***************************************************

The rest of you (meaning the inland and South Coast parts of our reading area, you get:

WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 7 PM EST MONDAY...

* LOCATIONS...include Northern Connecticut, Northern Rhode
Island, and Southeast Massachusetts.

* ACCUMULATIONS...4 to 8 inches of snow.

* HAZARD TYPES...include moderate to heavy snow, as well as
blowing snow.

* TIMING...spotty light snow early this morning will give way to
steady snow later this morning and then heavy at times this
afternoon. Snow may mix with sleet at times later this afternoon
and possibly mixed with freezing drizzle tonight before turning
back to snow Monday morning.

* WINDS...North 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 40 mph.

* VISIBILITIES...One quarter mile or less at times.

* IMPACTS...The combination of sleet and snow will lead to
hazardous driving conditions at times. There is also the low
risk for isolated power outages.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A Winter Storm Warning is issued when an average snowfall of
6 inches or more is expected within a 12 hour period...or for
8 inches or more in a 24 hour period. Travel will be slow at best
on well treated surfaces...and quite difficult on untreated
surfaces. Only travel in an emergency. If you must travel...keep
an extra flashlight...food...and water in your vehicle in case of
an emergency.
********************************

There's even a HIGH WIND WATCH for the next few days, and a SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT about this morning's snow.

*****************************************************
This NWS chart shows a lot of stuff,but the first three numbers after the town name equal 1) Best Case Scenario, 2) Most Likely Scenario, and 3) Worst Case Scenario

Location At least Likely Potential for >=0.1" >=1" >=2" >=4" >=6" >=8" >=12" >=18"
Boston, MA 6 14 16 100% 100% 100% 100% 93% 79% 35% 0%
Edgartown, MA <1 3 4 92% 77% 43% 10% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Greenfield, MA 10 12 15 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 46% 0%
Hartford, CT 3 4 10 100% 100% 99% 83% 48% 27% 0% 0%
Hyannis, MA <1 4 6 93% 83% 67% 34% 12% 0% 0% 0%
Nantucket, MA 2 4 5 100% 100% 88% 23% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Newport, RI 0 1 5 77% 56% 42% 21% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Plympton, MA 1 6 11 95% 89% 83% 60% 41% 27% 1% 0%
Providence, RI 2 6 11 100% 98% 93% 78% 48% 33% 4% 0%
Springfield, MA 5 8 12 100% 100% 100% 99% 83% 49% 10% 0%
Taunton, MA 2 7 11 99% 96% 89% 75% 46% 31% 3% 0%
Westerly, RI 0 2 5 81% 63% 43% 18% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Worcester, MA 8 12 16 100% 100% 100% 100% 99% 88% 42% 0%

*******************************************************************

This is a dangerous storm, and it looks like fun for both commutes Monday.
It may start of as rain, but don't fall for that. It'll switch over soon enough, and the roads will be treacherous.

I'm considering going in to work 24 hours early and just hanging around. I barely made it over the Bourne Bridge in my junker Dodge during the blizzard last week. I had to resort to Tacking, a sailing method that involves repeatedly aiming your bow in different directions to do the seemingly-impossible move of sailing into the wind. I don't know Why it worked, only That it worked.

This feat was more impressive because:

1) I wasn't in a sailboat.

2) Tacking isn't designed to move Uphill.

3) Even if it was, I wasn't on water. Well, technically I was, but you know what I mean.

4) Cars, which aren't designed to cut through the surface of an ocean, don't have bows.

5) I don't know how to sail.

6) "I was on a 25 yard wide suspended plank looking at a 200 foot fall into a coastal river in February" was my worst case scenario.

7) My second worst case scenario was to just roll back down the bridge, in the wrong lane, then try to do an Elwood Blues-style sudden spin where I ended up in the heading-onto-the-mainland lane instead of my original heading-on-Cape lane. The fact that my rear window was completely snowed over was very far down on the list of things I was worried about with this move.

8) I was going to instantly shift my focus onto move #7 once I started sliding backwards down the bridge, without a second thought.

It didn't come to that, as Tacking worked. It still took me 5 minutes at 6000 RPMs to get to the top of the Bourne Bridge.

We'll be in the Bourne and Plymouth for this storm. I'm very tempted to hide myself in my sister's house on Duxbury Beach for the high tides, but I have a graveyard shift back in Bourne on Monday night. I'm not trying to repeat 1-8.

In about two days, look for some variation of "You know you're from Massachusetts when someone says 'I wrecked my car in the blizzard,' you say 'Yesterday?" and they say "No, last Thursday" meme to start showing up.

January 2017 Nor'easter Pictures, Videos

A powerful nor'easter hit Massachusetts this week. We missed last night's tide, but we got all up in this morning's offerings.

We mostly worked Duxbury Beach, but we did manage to snap-shot Green Harbor. The tide, normally a 9 foot nothing, got big ups from the storm surge.

I was using a thirty dollar Wal-Mart phone camera and a badly battered laptop, while shooting in the teeth of a nor'easter. The laptop served as the video host, and you will probably be able to tell that I usually have someone else do the filming.

This wasn't a bad storm, maybe a B minus. No structural damage that I could see, although some beach erosion surely went down by the dunes.

I grew up on this beach, and watched a lot of gulls in my time. The smarter ones hunker down somewhere leeward, but sometimes one of them gets bored enough or hungry enough and works the surf. Joe Deady II on the camera for this one.

My old front yard, just after the porch there. It was great fun and easy work repairing that law every spring. We used to have a cobblestone patio, too... cobblestones that my father either bought or "acquired" from some road in Boston. They were very fun to re-arrange every time the ocean did something like this, and I'm a masochist.

The main problem residents here will have is that the ocean splashed a few million gallons of salt water over the wall and onto a great many lawns. You can see it happening between the stairs.

My 35 mph photography is improving, but it is a slow process.

The legendary public stairs of Duxbury Beach, home to much 1980s teen debauchery.

I had to get off of Ocean Road North before it lived up to the name. That took me through this puddle of seawater. I was pretty much that U-Boat Commander joke from the Tom Cruise pimp movie.

Joe Deady made it outside before I did, but I made up for it later with intensity.

Libby Carr gets into the mix with a bit of second story work over some Hummock Lane flooding. Hummock Lane is named after "Rouse's Hummock," which is what Cable Hill was called either A) before they put the trans-Atlantic cable in, B) when Rouse lived there, C) both, or D) neither.

The guy who owns the house with the flooded lawn worked at a golf course when I lived there. No matter what sort of maelstrom befell Duxbury Beach that winter, you could drop a 30 foot putt on it by summer. My yard, by contrast, looked like what grows over a shallow grave after a while if the killer is particularly good at choosing spots that the cops don't look in.

This is what Duxbury's Great Salt Marsh looks like with a spring full moon tide. Unfortunately, this was a mid-cycle 9 foot tide. Any water you can see in this picture is storm surge. I'm at the beach, shooting towards Duxbury Proper.

This is when I decided that moving my car from the driveway of the house I was shooting at would be a good idea.

As bad as this may look, A) it didn't get any, uhm, badder, and B) this is getting off very, very easily. as a full moon tide when this storm hit would have probably wrecked some homes.

You never ever let Ol' Glory get slapped around by a nor'easter. A wind sock would have made my job easier, but that's not this guy's problem.

They say that a waves don't get  more than 5 feet off this beach in all but extreme conditions, and we were in that neighborhood today. They had a rough tide the night before, and were very lucky that those waves weren't rolling into houses on a full moon tide.

You can tell that I shot this one instead of Joe... because it's blurry as heck. The surf covers up for a lot of my errors.

"I'z unda yoor howz.... shootin' at yer ocean."

I got up on the seawall for a few, but it was camera suicide until the tide eased back some.

Even the porch was a rough go.

I got in where I fit in.

Hummock Lane, with Cable Hill/Rouse's Hummock in the background. A newly located Cape Cod Bay, now a street pool, is in the foreground.

RAIN TOTALS AT NOON

North Weymouth, 3.5"
Sandwich 3.24"
East Mashpee 2.75"
Falmouth 2.52"
Duxbury 2.0"

...'been raining since, too.

Rain is actually what washes the salt water out of the lawns, if you're lucky. It's all sand once you go down far enough, and sand drains well.

You can almost see Green Harbor in the background. Green Hahbahhhh... obscured by the mists of the storm.

WIND GUSTS

Wellfleet 59 mph
Minot 40 mph
Cuttyhunk 44 mph
Plum Island 62 mph

Duxbury Beach, summer 1978, after the Blizzard. The house I was doing most of my shooting from is a much larger version of the 4th house from the right. I grew up in #2 from the right.

We made our way south for the tail end of the storm, and got some Sagamore work in.

We got to Saggy well after high tide, so don't think that we don't represent hard down this way.

Sagamore benefits greatly from the presence of Cape Cod, which keeps it from the heaviest of the storm surf.

You could still get knocked off a rock two hours after high tide. Bourne representin'...

We went to the White Cliffs in Cedarville (Plymouth), but the party was pretty much over by then.

Who Still Has Christmas Lights Up?

I do a lot of driving around, and it spawns many of my stories here. That is the case today, as we ponder when exactly it becomes strange that you still have the Christmas lights up.

I got these pictures in a 3 sq mile area of Plymouth and Bourne. I'm sure that this article could have 50 pictures if I felt like wasting a night plowing through Suburbia with my camera. I took every single picture after Martin Luther King Day.

Before we even discuss this, I want it on the record that I'm not making fun of these people. To the contrary, I admire them. They are holiday honey badgers... they go where they want to, and they don't give a uffffffff. When you and I have let go of Christmas 2016, they are still plugging in the lights for another night of 2017 holiday cheer.

We took a peek at who had the Christmas lights up early, and "prior to Veterans Day" seems to be the Mendoza Line for "when roaming journalists with nothing to write about might take notice of your property." Likewise, the holiday for Dr. King- a man of peace, who somehow still paid a soldier's debt- is a pretty good cutoff point for "that same journalist is now outside your house, aiming a camera."

Sorry about the blurry pics. I keep odd hours, much like a werewolf, and I'm a large and menacing person to see stopping his car in your yard and getting out. I'm actually a fun and goofy guy, but you won't know that when you see me doing my thing in your yard out of nowhere at 5 AM. Anyhow, I just snap-shotted this picture, hence the Blurry.

Even if you like a nice Veterans Day to Jesus Day to MLK Day light show, MLK Day was Monday. I'm publishing this on Wednesday. Leaving the lights up until Groundhog Day (and we're closer to that than we are to Christmas) makes it more likely that he sees his shadow, and having them up on Valentine's Day makes it more likely that you'll be sleeping on the couch.

Part of it is the holiday weekend. With an extra day off, you really should have created some time to get out there and yank the lights down. Your next holiday is President's Day, and that is some time away, player.

In case you're wondering, the Twelve Days Of Christmas are generally thought to begin with Christmas and end on January 5th. January 5th is also known as Tomorrow Minus Two Weeks. If you put the lights up during Veterans Day weekend and leave them up until a week from Friday, you'll have done the Twelve Weeks Of Christmas. I do have some votes for the Epiphany, which is January 8th.

Many people on Cape Cod and other coastal regions use string lights on their decks and porches all year, but this tends to be more secular and less holiday-driven. There are those who say that those lights are there to help beach-walkers find their way home, especially if they have been drinking.

Another secular thing claimed by Cape Cod are the Christmas-looking red and green exterior lights.... which are actually some sort of nautical thing telling you which way you're supposed to drive around a channel buoy or something.

One of my pictures comes from a construction company near the Cedarville Marylou's. The house picture is from Plymouth Road, in Bourne. I'll be watching each property, as they are on the coffee run route from my house. One of them is going to cave in first and take their Christmas lights down.

Nothing other than just who that will be interests me right now.