23-24 Season

Seriously debating driving to campus to go to Publix today.

 

Treat yo self!

 

Yep. My Dad claimed he and his brother had a Sam & Andy's as a treat when they were there.

Alot of classic places have gone by the wayside over the years.

 

There should be a state of Tennessee Constitutional amendment enacted requiring that the UT/strip district for the rest of time must always have at least one family with Greek roots running a steamed deli until 4am. We Vols must do whatever it takes to keep Gus's afloat. Last of a dying breed that establisment is in that part of Knox. (I know there's still a Sam and Andy's, but its out of the way whenever you are in town and find yourself being on campus).

 

My buddy who has family in Knoxville, says the Sam & Andy's is out in West Knoxville. The sammiches are still awesome, but the atmosphere is obviously different. He got me a stone coaster with "Sam & Andy" logo on it.

Over here in Charlotte, NC area, a bunch of the family-owned Greek restaurants are mostly meat & 3, southern homestyle. The really good ones all have their own plot of land and they grow the fresh vegetables they use.

 

There’s actually 3 Sam & Andy’s in Knoxville. One is in Fountain City, one is the location in Farragut that has been there for 30+ years and then there’s a new one that may or may not be open yet in a new shopping center in front of Bex Hill subdivision on Ebenezer Rd.

At one point, the S&A Farragut had an IG post that said the were all separately owned and the Farragut location was independent of the other two. Then, a few months later, on the same account, they clarified to say that the owners of all 3 are brothers and they run them together. Sounds like there was some family stuff going on that got sorted out.

Anyway, the Fountain City location is a little different than the Farragut location and is not as good, IMO. The Farragut location is the closest to the old location that used to be on the Strip and is absolutely worth a trip when in town. Their atmosphere, and most importantly their griddle, haven’t changed on bit in 30 years. Just pay attention to their hours as they change occasionally and bring cash!

 

Thanks. It is the Farragut location, we knew about and he has gone to because his family was out that way. Did not know about the other 2.

EDIT: We did get lost in the Ebenezer Rd area one night after a ball game many, many, many years ago looking for a friend's house. My extremely drunk buddy could only tell his wife, our DD, Ebenezer and Weigels. We never found the house.

 

I worked at the beach summer after finishing undergrad and before starting grad school. One night we’re out at Pandoras (RIP) in Grayton Beach and one of my roommates gets very drunk and somehow gets left behind when our large group leaves to continue drinking at a group of girls house who were also working there for the summer. A random group sees him sitting Indian style in the gravel parking lot after close with a dead phone and no options, too drunk to communicate well. They drive back to their condo in Destin (which is where we also lived) and ask him where he’s staying or where they need to take him.

He tells them Joe’s Crab Shack. They’re confused and tell him the crab shack is closed. In his drunken stupor he cannot manage to elaborate and just repeats over and over, take me to Joe’s Crab Shack. Frustrated, they finally relent. We lived a block away so he managed to walk home without incident. In some fairness to him, I’m not sure I ever knew the name of the street we lived on, you can pretty much navigate Destin off landmarks alone with so few roads.

Thank god we had some distant connection with the folks that rescued him. He couldn’t tell us how he got home, we only figured it out like a month later through a mutual friend who’d heard the story.

 

Everybody should have a drunk and lost story.

 

Sophomore year of college about 8 of us had a spur of the moment idea to drive down from Knoxville to NOLA so we could party Saturday night during Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street and return home the next day (we spent more time in a car traveling there and back then we actually did in downtown NOLA itself). A night that included us witnessing a literal shooting and a buddy of ours having his unlocked iPhone pick pocketed. Only for the perpetrator to find the nudes his ex-small town HS girlfriend had sent him over the years and post them all on his Facebook and Twitter account with her literally tagged in them (most yikes story ever lol. What an awful thing to do to two random strangers. Literally their entire hometown/families/church/HS classmates ect saw these pics). My phone ultimately died and I somehow got separated from my pack and could not for the life of me find anyone or anything. I was in NOLA for the first time in a very altered state of mind amongst a sea of drunken humanity. After hours of drunkenly and frustratingly walking up and down the entirety of Bourbon I somehow miraculously found our parking garage we put our vehicle in over night and ended up “sleeping” by the car on the pavement of the parking garage until one by one everyone showed back up there by mid next morning.

Mardi Gras on Saturday night on Bourbon Street: been there, done that. Incredible, hilarious, terrifying memories that trip was. But not something I’d do again. Bourbon Street is a tad too simultaneously scary and awesome.

 

I don’t do drunk very well. I go straight to puking. It’s pretty easy for me to not go there.

 

I lost count and track of how much I had last year in downtown Portland and had trouble remembering how to get back to my hotel. I was out with a group from work, but I was the only one in the hotel where I was staying. Seemingly right before everyone split for the night, someone thought it would be a good idea to do a round of shots, then another, and I think a third. I started out walking back to the hotel pretty intoxicated, By the time I was a couple of blocks and a turn away, I was pretty hopeless. I knew I was close and knew I was lost. Being an old man, I didn't think about Uber at that point. I walked around the block twice before realizing I was on the opposite side of the hotel from where I had been entering. Before I got there, I legit got scared that I wasn't going to make it back. It sucked. Stupid me, but I learned that a lot of folks in my greater organization are kinda buttholes that night. This past year when we all met as a group for dinner, I carried my happy butt back to the hotel and watched television instead of bar hopping with that crowd. Not to confuse, I'm not blaming them for getting me drunk. I just discovered while drinking with them that a lot of them are just kind of lousy people.

 

That's how people, particularly men, go mysteriously missing. Some show up dead in a body of water.

 

Buddy system is your friend, especially when getting shit-faced.

At least that has been my experience.

 

Yep, you never want to wonder off alone drunk.

 

Better to just not be drunk.

 

I figured that out around 25

 

Yeah but when you wake up in the morning, that’s the best you’re going to feel all day.

 

The Michigan State exhibition game is going to be a fundraiser for Maui.

 

I slowly arrived at the same conclusion too at 24/25. Between attending an SEC school while being in a fraternity and then living in downtown Nashville with extra money to burn the majority of my early 20s upon joining the workforce, I got that lifestyle out of my system. Unless it’s a wedding, NYE, Christmas, July 4th, or a football gameday I hardly ever touch booze nowadays. Not worth it. Hangovers are the worst and keep getting exponentially worse the older I get.