We are returning home today after wasting two days in the Essex/Deep River/Chester area, a bastion of whiteness if there ever was one: I don’t think I saw any black people here during our entire stay.
Last night I thought we might go to the Black Seal for some bar grub at 7pm, before calling it an evening.
Unfortunately the place was full of screeching children, so I did an about-face the moment I walked in.
I was a drinker in my salad days. I favored Irish taverns, of the darkly-lit, seedy Manhattan dive bar variety. The seedier, the better.
This has led to me to 4 simple rules any innkeeper worth his salt should always honor:
1) no children in the bar, ever
2) bartkeeps should always be men, preferably older, brogue a given — never eye-candy bimbettes or inked dykes with a superiority complex.
3) All regulars should be rewarded with the heavy pour
4) the buyback tradition should also be honored
This Black Seal saloon is not a serious bar. The joint closes at 9pm; the upstairs floor apparently serves as a motel of sorts. Any questions?
So we walked down the street to get a pizza pie from a place owned by Hungarians.
We decided to eat in our luxurious hotel room, the one with a fine view of a parking lot. This pizza, plus 2 cans of soda, set us back 40 dollars.
40 dollars for a pizza with 3 toppings and 2 sodas!
Unfortunately we were not able to watch TV as we ate in our hotel room — which had not been cleaned that day while we were out earlier — because our hotel room at the Gris did not actually have a TV or radio — despite it costing $400 a night.
It did, however, offer a five view of a traitorous “Back the Blue, until The Coup” flag — a description coined by my wife, ostensibly.
For that kind of money you would have thought there would have been maid service, that we would get fresh rolls of TP, another small bottle of shampoo to go with the microscopic one that was here when we arrived… but no.
What the Gris is really good at is taking advantage of its proximity to the polluted Connecticut river by grossly overcharging for everything such as the dinner for two we had there the previous night — which I though was mediocre — that set us back $160, to bookend the $40 we spent that morning for 2 servings of 1 pancake and 1 sausage patty and 1 glass of Ojay at the Whistlestop diner or cafe or whatever it calls itself. No doubt the thimbleful of real maple syrup is what broke the bank.
CT is, sadly still very much of a rip off state (I should know, as we owned a place in Greenwich for 5 years).
At least the closet Zionist, turncoat Joe Lieberman and his beloved lobbyist wife, Hadassah, are no longer part of the political establishment in this overpriced, overtaxed, tick-infested state.
So, no, we will not up sticks from Florida to come live in a state with not much to offer except for real estate scams and over priced tourist trap fare.
Great place to own a sailboat though. Thing is I don’t, and never will.
They once brought elephant tusks here to be turned into piano keys — hence the name of nearby Ivoryton — decimating immense herds of African pachyderms in the process.
What’s left here nowadays is their revenge. Even dead, elephants never forget.
Leaving Amerika 