Notorious Homophobes and Christian Values expounders Chick-fil-A were an unknown quantity to me when I first visited Virginia in 1999. I had never seen their “Eet mor Chikin” signs nor even ventured inside one of them; and I may never ever if things continue on path. I’ll remember Virginia for it’s temperate November, it’s hard to find liquor store and sinking me back into the morass of comics that I had abandoned not 2 years earlier.
When you think of Virginia; you might think of hillbillies and rednecks. You’d be right. Someone burned a cross on a Virginia Beach yard the day we arrived.
What a first impression; at least they had Simpsons on at a reasonable time and the hotel wasn’t too bad. It sucked having to share a room but it didn’t suck as bad as having to drive every damn place since walking is apparenly a sissy european thing to do in some places.
What I hadn’t expected from Virgina Beach and Hampton was the focus on Crabs. It was Crab this and Seafood that; far from the Collard Greens and Grits I had expected. Now, I’ll confess that I preferred eating at chains while in Virginia; because at least you knew what you were getting into. Those “Local” guys really ran from Gross to Repellent and back again. So the Chick-Fil-A intrigued me; a chain I had never heard of selling something I loved, fried breaded chicken.
The locals swore by it as a “good” place; but we always ended up at a Mexican place when a local took us out. This was intriging; but the Mexican places were great so I’m not going to complain (also the Japanese place we went to was good too, I had my first saki there)
I digress; we ended up spending a Month and a half in Virginia for “Training” and I saw the Chick-Fil-A sign about 50 times or so; but never went inside. I sometimes smelled the food from there when someone from the office would bring it in; but never ever got some down me. One day I was resigned to check it out; and as we drove into the strip mall where it was I saw “Toys R us” which meant we had to go there instead. It was just about Christmas and some Toy Shopping would do me well.
I wandered the aisle; eager to see what a US Toys R Us would have (pretty much what you have in any chain store, the same thing everywhere) but they also had comics; fairly recent back issues bagged up 3-6 in a bag for cheap as hell.
Uh.
I spent 50 bucks on comics and had a giant stack of them when we left the store. I don’t even remember if I ate that night. I probably did.
Oh and Chick-Fil-A; they can just go to hell.