I've shared fiction here before and it didn't go altogether too poorly, so I'm going to press my luck and do it again. This was written about a year ago, and I'm tired of trying to peddle it to lit magazines. Might as well share it here, know that it met a few eyeballs, and have done with it.
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.

Mine are:
Lush - Liquid Smooth, Brand New City, Eric
Retired from Sad, New Career in Business - Shame
Bury Me at Makeout Creek - First love/Late Spring, Carry Me Out
Puberty 2 - Dan the Dancer, Your Best American Girl, I Bet on Losing Dogs
Be the Cowboy - Geyser, Old Friend, Pink in the Night
Laurel Hell - Valentine Texas, Should’ve Been Me, That’s Our Lamp

I posted pics separately but imgur link is here: https://imgur.com/a/QJYSL7D. Am discovering I am not a reddit-whiz. Here is my trip report.
Quick summary: Basic route: went from HQ to China Hole, up Narrows Trail, right on Bear Mtn Road to County Line Rd., left on that then Right on Chaparral trail, then short right on Red Creek and left on Robison Creek, then Right down Orestimba Creek Road, Right at Hartman to Mississipi lake, South on Willow Ridge Road, right on willow ridge trail and back to HQ. I think total mileage about 45 miles with some detours and about 6,200 feet elevation gain. For Coe a lot of people, but still able to camp by myself every night. Weather was perfect: lows upper 40s highs b/w upper 60s and mid 70s. Bugs: minimal, bothered me about an hour total around sunset over 5 days, had a couple bites, didn’t use deet. Water – plentiful in China Hole area, available in Red Creek with good flow but I don’t know how long, not much in upper Robison creek but plenty lower down in creek, plentiful Orestimba creek. For me, Coe is usually too hot and dry after Memorial Day but I think this year may be an exception if anyone still wants to give it a shot while they wait for snow to melt in Sierra.
Extended description:
Thursday
From HQ to China Hole, up Narrows, past Miller field and Arnold Horse Camp, right on Bear Mountain Road, camped just above/North of Water Gulch right before Bear Mountain Road crosses East Fork Coyote to begin steep climb up Bear Mountain. I don’t know maybe about 8 or 9 miles all flat and downhill with of course some slower creek walking which I like.
There is a lot of flat space there. Water was flowing well and clear. Pro tips: don’t mash your finger with rock while putting in stakes. Don’t get both your hiking socks and camping socks wet. Not that I did that…I am much smarter than that.
Saw a couple people on way to China Hole, and two more b/w Los Cruzeros and Bear Mountain Road intersection. No one after that.
Friday
– Up up up Bear Mountain Road. Though steep I kinda liked it. Might have been worse going downhill ‘cause knees. Lots of what I think is mountain lion scat some disturbingly fresh. Lots and lots of pretty views. Didn’t see a soul. Just for kicks, took second right, first right after Bear Mopuntain peak Trail, on to first turn off for Bear Springs trail, thinking I’d see if I could find Spring. Gave up after about ¾ mile as seemed blocked by brush and didn’t want to poke around to find trail. I know people go frequently on bear spring to mississippi lake - maybe the second right at County Line road is better bear spring trail route - or maybe if I had poked around a bit I’d have found trail. I dunno.
- Then left on County Line road. You get to some barbed wire as is private property but look to your right and can easily step over and continue. Though feels weird/questionable to do this, I believe is completely legit as long as stay on trail to pass through the private property. Was feeling like a real explorer but then humbled by crossing path with high school group out for graduation trip. They were cheerful and was good to see them having fun.
-Then right on Chaparral Trail. I knew it’d be steep and was not a great trail but was worse than I expected, perhaps partly because was getting tired and it was getting hot. A real knee-buster in places. Often blocked by growth. Easy to lose trail (though I was tired and bombing down it so maybe if I was more careful would have been better). I lost it pretty badly at one point and got stuck doing some real bushwacking through shrubs to get back on it – scratching up my clothes and self a bit. Pro tip: don’t do this. Didn’t see anyone.
- At bottom of Chaparral trail, took right and found first shady spot by Red Creek. No one there. It is really pretty valley plain with a lot of flat spaces for camping. Very very nice. I was tired and it felt like mid-70s. I figured I was probably covered with ticks so stripped down put all my clothes save boxers in permeable bag (senchi bag) with rock in it to allow the creek to wash everything off. Then took washcloth bath in creek. Water flowing well though was not a ton. I don’t know maybe up to my ankles. While airdrying in sun in my boxers while creek washed my clothes, high school group came by again – awkward. Hung up my clothes to dry a bit (but not too much as wanted them a little moist to stay cool) and hung out enjoying the sun on my skin. Pro tip: if your skin hasn’t seen sun in I don’t know a year, uhm, don’t do this, you will get a burn. But again I would not do this. I am much smarter than that.
-High school group continued down red creek road and camped out of site/sound at intersection of Robison Creek trail. I walked around Red creek a bit but mostly just hung around then cowboy camped in bivy. Got a lot of dew and outer bag and borah bivy alarmingly wet but I was dry inside and worked out okay. Really pretty stars. Nice afternoon and evening.
- All in all was I don’t know maybe 8 or 10 miles for day
Saturday
-Went south on Red creek and in only .2 or so left on Robison Creek trail. High school group was camped there as well as another group of 3 or 4. Robison creek trail was somewhat encroached with grass but easy to follow and pretty and I was excited to be in Orestimba. After a couple miles or so you hit upper portions of Robison creek and trail follows creek northeast. At upper creek, not much water, I guess you could pull in an emergency but not really flowing and gnarly looking to me. Followed creek trail and as you went down flow got good. Lots of crossings. At intersection of Pinto creek is pretty field with lots of flat spots for camping. Would be nice to camp there one day. Saw party of 3 or 4 that had camped at beginning of Robison trail.

• Around intersection of Orestimba Creek Road and Robison Creek and trail, found a secluded portion of creek and took another bath and clothes washing. This time happily no high school group sauntered by while I was in boxers.
• Then took right on Orestimba Creek Road. About 2 miles to Rooster Comb Trail. Didn’t see anyone. It was okay - pretty but not especially so.
• Took Rooster Comb Trail. I think because I was getting tired and I was mentally disrespecting it because I had taken it before, it seemed eternal, and, being an idiot, I managed to lose the trail a bit which slowed me down. Though it has grass encroaching a lot, it is pretty, and if you pay better attention than I did I think you will not have trouble following.
• At bottom of Rooster Comb trail, stopped and refilled/drank water. Saw a big snake - 3 or 4 feet. Think it was a gopher snake as didn’t see rattle and head didn’t look super triangular but am not sure. This part of Orestimba Creek Road is a big plain, and there was a lot of clear flowing water. I have never seen it with so much water. It gave me a chuckle as I walked south on this part of Orestimba Creek Road down this wide valley on Saturday memorial day weekend and looked all around and didn’t see a single other solitary soul. But the high school group was about a mile further down Paradise Flat. Again though it was fun to see them having fun.
• I continued past Paradise flat, past intersection with Long Ridge Road, until got to intersection where if you go left you go to Mustang Pond. I took right and waded up Red Creek and quickly took first left at fork in about .2 mile where if you follow creek and creek walk push through some brush there are some nice flat spots about I don’t know .4 mile in. No one there. A little buggy and flow was disappointing but still water was okay. Had a real nice quiet evening. This time draped my poncho tarp over my bivy in case a lot of dew again. Didn’t make the slightest bit of difference. Outside of quilt still alarmingly wet but again comfortable/dry on inside.
• Not sure how far all this was maybe 9 to 12 miles.

Sunday

• Followed creek south to where it intersects with Orestimba Creek Road. Followed road south and took right on Hartman trail. It is very very steep but was easy to follow and quite pretty. I really like it though if going the other direction could be hard on knees. Saw 3 or 4 people so it seems at least on Memorial day weekend gets a lot of use.
• Stopped for lengthy hangout at Mississippi Lake where I saw two other parties. Dried out quilt. Not a lot of places with good easy water access. Lake is big and pretty but a lot of stuff in water – pre-strained with bandana over intake and it left bright green circle. If you are arriving to it tired, be prepared to walk another mile or so to find a spot. I’m more used to drinking from creeks and Sierra lakes; I guess this is just normal for non-alpine lakes. Thought about staying as this was where I told the rangers I would stay and looked like might rain, but it was only about 2:00 and I had not been far so decided to take my chances with finding a spot later on.
• So, went south on Willow Ridge. Didn’t see anyone on it. I liked it lots of pretty views. But lots of steep ups and downs and was much harder and more tiring than I expected. Threatened to rain the whole time but other than some sprinkles never did.
• Took right on Willow Ridge Trail. As usual, slightly overgrown/narrow in places, need to watch out for poison oak, steep, but okay. Saw 2 fellas coming up, also an e-bike rider flying up as if by magic. Also some beautiful wild turkeys.
• As came down Willow Ridge Trail toward bottom could see the eastern most campsite at Los Cruzeros (which is my favorite place to camp around there). Was thinking who knows maybe no one will be there. But no – four tents! I didn’t think even three would fit. Also a lot of people at other Los Cruzeros sites. Starting to think my “plan” (or rather vain hope) of “just finding some spot” on a holiday weekend close to the trailhead may have been ill-advised. Anyway, took a right thinking I’ll camp at Miller field. One party camped there. Started to camp near them as I was getting tired but I hate sharing camping so went a bit further and found a small mostly flat spot by myself with a really nice view up the valley a little further up just past around corner from Miller Field. Set up camp around 5 and happily didn’t see anyone all evening. Really pretty nice evening with creek babbling nearby.
• Not sure of mileage for this day but maybe 9 or 10 miles.

Monday

• Got up and went down the creek through the narrows took right at China Hole trail and quickly hoofed it back up to HQ and van. As usual, very pretty. Saw 2 or 3 pairs or groups of people on way back. Maybe 7 or 8 miles or so from where I had camped.

​

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Element 79 Gold Corp. (CSE:ELEM) (OTC:ELMGF) (FSE: 7YS) ("Element 79 Gold", the "Company") announces that, further to its November 17, 2022 release, the Company has entered into an Asset Purchase Agreement (the "Agreement") for the sale of two properties from its Battle Mountain Portfolio located in the gold mining district of northeastern Nevada, US to a subsidiary of Centra Mining Ltd. ("Centra").
Under the terms of the Agreement, Centra has agreed to purchase all of Element79 Gold's interests and obligations in relation to the Long Peak Project ("Long Peak") and the Stargo Project ("Stargo") in exchange for a total consideration of CAD 1,000,000 payable by the issuance of an aggregate of 2,500,000 common shares of Centra at a deemed price of CAD 0.40 per share (the “Payment Shares”). The transaction is expected to close on or before June 30, 2023, and is subject to regulatory approval.
"The sale of Long Peak and Stargo to Centra marks another milestone in Element79's journey for the strategic development of its high-grade gold assets," commented James Tworek, CEO of Element79. "Centra realizes that these projects have great exploration potential along with the rest of their portfolio and it will be exciting to see what their near-term development plans are. We are excited to maintain our exposure to the very promising development potential of these properties through our equity participation in Centra."
Tworek added, “We have been working at the sale of the non-core assets in the Battle Mountain for over a year now, and it feels great to confirm that we have one package of properties now signed up and pending their closing date. This achievement further helps to highlight the currently-unrealized value of the individual properties in the Battle Mountain portfolio, helping to re-envision a benchmark for corporate valuation and enabling us to unlock additional value from our extensive portfolio of prospective properties while increasing Element79 Gold’s focus, energy and capital flows on developing its flagship Maverick Springs and both defining a resource at and bringing production online at Lucero in 2024.”
Element79 Gold’s Battle Mountain Portfolio
The Battle Mountain Portfolio was originally comprised of 15 separate projects totaling over 44,478 acres across 2,203 unpatented claims in five counties: Elko County, Eureka County, Humboldt County, Lander County, and Nye County. Most of the Battle Mountain Portfolio is located within the Battle Mountain Trend, with several projects close to globally reputable gold deposits including Nevada Gold's Cortez Mine.
The Battle Mountain Portfolio is comprised primarily of early-stage projects. While drilling has been completed at some projects, such as Elder Creek (155 holes) and Clover (104 holes), many have only surface sampling and geophysical surveys completed. Of particular note are the Long Peak, Elephant, Elder Creek, North Mill Creek, Clipper, Pipeline South, West Cortez, and Walti Projects, which are interpreted to lie along the northwest trending fault that hosts the high-grade Pipeline deposit, which is included in Nevada Gold's Cortez Mine.
​
https://preview.redd.it/16hl3jca0n3b1.png?width=392&format=png&auto=webp&s=f2e99b8500d5f1eec03049c74edd8255912d3805
The Long Peak Project
Long Peak is comprised of 34 unpatented claims located near Copper Basin and the Copper Canyon Mine in Lander County, Nevada. Long Peak hosts significant historic prospects, warranting further exploration at Long Peak.
The Stargo Project
Stargo is comprised of 337 unpatented claims located south of the Battle Mountain Trend in Nye County, Nevada. The large claim block contains attractive host rocks, tertiary age intrusives, and appropriate aged structural preparation to represent an attractive area for exploration target development.
About Element79 Gold
Element79 Gold is a mining company focused on gold, silver and associated metals and committed to maximizing shareholder value through responsible mining practices and sustainable development of its projects. Element79 Gold's main focus is on two core properties: developing its previously-producing, high-grade gold and silver mine, the Lucero project located in Arequipa, Peru, with the intent to bring it back into production in the near term; and its flagship Maverick Springs Project located in the famous gold mining district of northeastern Nevada, USA, between the Elko and White Pine Counties. Maverick Springs hosts a 43-101-compliant, pit-constrained mineral resource estimate reflecting an inferred resource of 3.71 million ounces of gold equivalent "AuEq" at a grade of 0.92 g/t AuEq (0.34 g/t Au and 43.4 g/t Ag) with an effective date of October 19, 2022. The acquisition of the Maverick Springs Project also included a portfolio of 15 properties along the Battle Mountain trend in Nevada, which are non-core to its primary business focus. In British Columbia, Element79 Gold has executed a Letter of Intent and funded a drilling program to acquire a private company that holds the option to 100% interest of the Snowbird High-Grade Gold Project, which consists of 10 mineral claims located in Central British Columbia, approximately 20km west of Fort St. James. The Company also has an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Dale Property, 90 unpatented mining claims located approximately 100 km southwest of Timmins, Ontario, Canada in the Timmins Mining Division, Dale Township. The Company is analyzing the non-core Nevada projects, The Dale Property and Snowbird Property for further merit of exploration, sale or spin-out.
For more information about the Company, please visit www.element79.gold
Contact Information
For corporate matters, please contact:
James C. Tworek, Chief Executive Officer E-mail: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
For investor relations inquiries, please contact:
Investor Relations Department
Phone: +1 (613) 879-9387
E-mail: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

Element 79 Gold Corp. (CSE:ELEM) (OTC:ELMGF) (FSE: 7YS) ("Element 79 Gold", the "Company") announces that, further to its November 17, 2022 release, the Company has entered into an Asset Purchase Agreement (the "Agreement") for the sale of two properties from its Battle Mountain Portfolio located in the gold mining district of northeastern Nevada, US to a subsidiary of Centra Mining Ltd. ("Centra"). Under the terms of the Agreement, Centra has agreed to purchase all of Element79 Gold's interests and obligations in relation to the Long Peak Project ("Long Peak") and the Stargo Project ("Stargo") in exchange for a total consideration of CAD 1,000,000 payable by the issuance of an aggregate of 2,500,000 common shares of Centra at a deemed price of CAD 0.40 per share (the “Payment Shares”). The transaction is expected to close on or before June 30, 2023, and is subject to regulatory approval. "The sale of Long Peak and Stargo to Centra marks another milestone in Element79's journey for the strategic development of its high-grade gold assets," commented James Tworek, CEO of Element79. "Centra realizes that these projects have great exploration potential along with the rest of their portfolio and it will be exciting to see what their near-term development plans are. We are excited to maintain our exposure to the very promising development potential of these properties through our equity participation in Centra." Tworek added, “We have been working at the sale of the non-core assets in the Battle Mountain for over a year now, and it feels great to confirm that we have one package of properties now signed up and pending their closing date. This achievement further helps to highlight the currently-unrealized value of the individual properties in the Battle Mountain portfolio, helping to re-envision a benchmark for corporate valuation and enabling us to unlock additional value from our extensive portfolio of prospective properties while increasing Element79 Gold’s focus, energy and capital flows on developing its flagship Maverick Springs and both defining a resource at and bringing production online at Lucero in 2024.” Element79 Gold’s Battle Mountain Portfolio The Battle Mountain Portfolio was originally comprised of 15 separate projects totaling over 44,478 acres across 2,203 unpatented claims in five counties: Elko County, Eureka County, Humboldt County, Lander County, and Nye County. Most of the Battle Mountain Portfolio is located within the Battle Mountain Trend, with several projects close to globally reputable gold deposits including Nevada Gold's Cortez Mine. The Battle Mountain Portfolio is comprised primarily of early-stage projects. While drilling has been completed at some projects, such as Elder Creek (155 holes) and Clover (104 holes), many have only surface sampling and geophysical surveys completed. Of particular note are the Long Peak, Elephant, Elder Creek, North Mill Creek, Clipper, Pipeline South, West Cortez, and Walti Projects, which are interpreted to lie along the northwest trending fault that hosts the high-grade Pipeline deposit, which is included in Nevada Gold's Cortez Mine. PennyCatalysts - Element79 Gold Announces Execution of Agreement with Centra Mining Ltd. for Sale of Properties from Battle Mountain Portfolio in Nevada (CSE: ELEM, OTC: ELMGF) The Long Peak Project Long Peak is comprised of 34 unpatented claims located near Copper Basin and the Copper Canyon Mine in Lander County, Nevada. Long Peak hosts significant historic prospects, warranting further exploration at Long Peak. The Stargo Project Stargo is comprised of 337 unpatented claims located south of the Battle Mountain Trend in Nye County, Nevada. The large claim block contains attractive host rocks, tertiary age intrusives, and appropriate aged structural preparation to represent an attractive area for exploration target development. About Element79 Gold Element79 Gold is a mining company focused on gold, silver and associated metals and committed to maximizing shareholder value through responsible mining practices and sustainable development of its projects. Element79 Gold's main focus is on two core properties: developing its previously-producing, high-grade gold and silver mine, the Lucero project located in Arequipa, Peru, with the intent to bring it back into production in the near term; and its flagship Maverick Springs Project located in the famous gold mining district of northeastern Nevada, USA, between the Elko and White Pine Counties. Maverick Springs hosts a 43-101-compliant, pit-constrained mineral resource estimate reflecting an inferred resource of 3.71 million ounces of gold equivalent "AuEq" at a grade of 0.92 g/t AuEq (0.34 g/t Au and 43.4 g/t Ag) with an effective date of October 19, 2022. The acquisition of the Maverick Springs Project also included a portfolio of 15 properties along the Battle Mountain trend in Nevada, which are non-core to its primary business focus. In British Columbia, Element79 Gold has executed a Letter of Intent and funded a drilling program to acquire a private company that holds the option to 100% interest of the Snowbird High-Grade Gold Project, which consists of 10 mineral claims located in Central British Columbia, approximately 20km west of Fort St. James. The Company also has an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Dale Property, 90 unpatented mining claims located approximately 100 km southwest of Timmins, Ontario, Canada in the Timmins Mining Division, Dale Township. The Company is analyzing the non-core Nevada projects, The Dale Property and Snowbird Property for further merit of exploration, sale or spin-out. For more information about the Company, please visit www.element79.gold Contact Information For corporate matters, please contact: James C. Tworek, Chief Executive Officer E-mail: [email protected] For investor relations inquiries, please contact: Investor Relations Department Phone: +1 (613) 879-9387 E-mail: [email protected]

Hey everyone, I'm from the Diggeridoos @ VT. We're a multidisciplinary engineering design team at Tech. We are currently looking to recruit students for our marketing, electronics, software, and logistics team. The team's goal is to design and build a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) from scratch and compete in the Not-a-Boring Competition (https://www.boringcompany.com/competition). If you're just sitting around and want to get involved in something fun, definitely reach out to me. Also, when I say "recruiting", I don't mean we're looking at resumes and taking interviews. No prior experience is necessary. The team competed in Las Vegas, NV in 2021 and Bastrop, TX this past spring and plan to be competing again Feb 2024. Just DM me if you're interested. We tried recruiting on this sub last year and found some great ppl

Not sure why Google Maps doesn't have this already.
I'm building a mobile app (like this chrome extension I built) that takes my multi-stop route on Google Maps and rearranges it to give the fastest, most efficient route (TSP Problem). It basically tells me what stops I should go to in what order to ensure that I’m spending the least amount of time and gas on the road.
With over 13k users on the extension, everyone has been telling me to build this into an app so I plan on launching this summer, please let me know what features you would like to see! You can join the waitlist here: App Waitlist:)
https://preview.redd.it/5tomgd0g9m3b1.png?width=1118&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0d90af2d56809650df3e961e0c596e94ae9cbd1

Possibly the sincerest moment of the season is happening near the creek – a gosling is nibbling up dried blossoms and seeds that blew out of nearby trees and plants, then gathered in the seam between panels of sidewalk concrete. The gosling, whose body is the size of a coconut at this point, waddles in a line across the walk, eating up the tasty flora in quick little bites as it goes. I wonder about the nutritional value of the stuff but then, right, it’s competing with grass, so maybe the reasons don’t need to be that deep. The gosling knows the routine, finishes the sidewalk in under a minute, then goes back to the grass. Because the blossoms and seeds keep coming, this gosling has probably learned to work the sidewalk several times per day, figures out the optimal meal schedule, develops a discriminating pallet, a reputation for good taste.
Unlikely? Spring dines out on unlikely! The roasting temperatures – consistently in the 90s for days now, days to come – is interrupted this afternoon by an extraordinary peal of thunder that sounds like the contents of a container ship spilled onto the ground from a great height. I rush outside to get a better look, and oh my, the heat has fallen by 20 degrees, and the cloud cover looks like it wants to explain itself, and a bolt of lightning unites earth and sky for a fraction of a second, intensifies, disappears. Rain follows, and though the storm was not quite a downpour, the downspout next to where I was standing poured continuously into the grass. The storm was odd in how well lit it was – one of those storms where a sunny day is still playing out on two sides of it. Twenty minutes later, the storm was gone, and the temperatures returned to the 90s.
Above the chem annex, swallows chase each other in twos and threes. Blinking wing beats lead to these sturdy glides that remind me of kids coasting on bikes. The way they wheel through the air implies a point in space they are each looking for but never find, and as they modulate the nearness and farness of curves in space, I am witnessing the interior life of swallows, which finds an ecstasy in the stillness of the body as it sails through the air, regards the bodies beside it. Each set of flight paths adds the next image of grace to the day, and I wonder if the whole day is made of bodies like this in motion – figures appearing above the rooftops, along sidewalks, streaking through the air at the speed of a spark.

Album w timestamp: https://imgur.com/a/eCrRv7o
Getting out of the hobby and leaving my U80A as my only board.
Lamy is built with lubed epsilons + GMK Noel and staebies, Owlab Spring built with lubed Gift switches and FR4 plate, no keycaps, Solder PCB and owlstabs, Osume keycaps are brand new still sealed. Lamy and GMK Noel both have original packaging, just not pictured.

Pricing:

Lamy without Keycaps $750 ($1010 CAD), $900 ($1210 CAD) with GMK Noel
Owlabs Spring asking $500 ($670 CAD)
Osume Sakura Keycaps w Novelty set asking $120 ($160 CAD)
Giant V5 Switches (70) $35 ($45 CAD) <- PENDING SALE
TX Stabs asking $10 ($13 CAD)
GMK Noel asking $250 ($335 CAD) LOCAL ONLY <- PENDING SALE
Located in Toronto so will prefer and prioritize local sales first and foremost. With that said I will ship to anywhere in the world at your expense, with full shipping insurance as well. Local buyers interested in buying everything can have it for 2k CAD.
If interested please dm me, thank you for your interest!

Hey everyone, my fiancé and I will be visiting the Tetons/Yellowstone in mid September and I am looking for advice/recommendations on where to stay while in Jackson for the first 4 nights. We ideally would like to stay in town, however, if there is a nicer place/better value locally we wouldn't be opposed to it. Only real requirement is staying around/under $500/night which seems to give a few nice options. Ones we have considered are the Parkway Inn (great reviews and on the "cheaper" side), Snow King resort, the Virginian , the Alpine House, Elk Country Inn (unfortunately above budget because the only room left is a suite but still considering), Spring Creek Ranch (outside of town). I originally was going to book the Ranch Inn for its excellent pricing and central location but I see mixed reviews as of late and it appears to be closing down soon. While this will mostly be just a place to sleep at the end of the day, I'd rather pay a few hundred more to have a better experience and this one worries me. If anyone has any input or experience with any of these, or obviously additional recommendations, we'd greatly appreciate it! We already booked 3 nights inside Yellowstone for the end of the trip, but need a home base for the Tetons. Looking to book within the next week and having a hard time picking! Thanks in advance!

We're now in that sweet spot after A-Day and before Summer OVs/Camp Season where it makes sense to take note and reflect. Remember that camp season likely changes this board dramatically and we'll see a good # of decision (both to Alabama and elsewhere) throughout June and early July.
Rankings Note: Every comic is someone's first so here's how to read/interpret/understand the rankings listed below: Commits and Top Targets will show their 247 Composite Rank, their On3 Composite, and their Comp² Ranking, which is just the raw average of the 2 composite ranks, rounded down. This overview will just reflect the pre-summer top targets/names to know and not the full list. Summer camp season will drastically change this list (new big board in July/August)
# of 4/5* change each year but I like a little consistency so here's generally how I arbitrarily split it, based on the average year-over-year data:
5*: #1-#32
4*: #33-#350
3*: #351-#2000
​
QB (1 Needed/1 Commited)
Overview: Barring something crazy, a team's QB will be the most important player on the field 9 times out of 10. Bama's looked around for a potential 2nd option but is pretty content with their 5* QB of the Future already commited

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 5* Julian Sayin	Carlsbad in Carlsbad, CA (SoCal)	247: #11 , On3: #14, Comp2: #12	One of the most "ready" prospects in the 2024 class, Julian is very skilled at every facet of QB play - might not be the highest ceiling from an NFL perspective but very likely the highest floor. Julian commited to Alabama somewhat out of the blue but has been locked in since and the Tide's primary leader on offense in this class. This is your QB of the Future.

RB (1-2 Needed/0 Commited)
Overview: Alabama has good RB depth heading into 2023 but could very likely lose both Jase and Roydell at the end of the year so 2 RBs again this cycle feels right. It's doubtful it'll have the star power of the Haynes/Young duo from '23 but I would not sleep on the 2024 targets.

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Top Targets
1. 4* Kevin Riley	Tuscaloosa County in Northport, AL (Tuscaloosa area)	247: #97, On3: #102, Comp2: #99	A homegrown talent, Riley does it all, running with great balance, breaks contact and gets going in a hurry. Top 3 of Bama, Auburn, UGA - this should end up being an Iron Bowl battle that Alabama wins, though it does appear Riley might take his time. If Alabama pushes hard, he could be a summer commit.
2. 4* Daniel Hill	Meridian in Meridian, MS (E MS)	247: #196, On3: #194, Comp2: #195	One of the more unique RB prospects, Daniel Hill is a big bodied guy but plays a ton of receiver as well - not a comparison but could have a Najee Harris-esque roll. Alabama is battling South Carolina here, with the Cocks having some buzz after an early Bama lean. Bama is not done here but might need to press harder.
3. 4* Nate Frazier	Mater Dei in Santa Ana, CA (SoCal)	247: #76, On3: #74, Comp2: #75	One of the nation's top RB prospects with some of the best long speed, Nate Frazier will push for #1 back status in 2024. Frazier is pretty wide open currently, being highly desired by both the local west coast school and the SEC powerhouses. I'd have trouble projecting him anywhere yet but it would be really cool if it was Alabama.

WR (2-4 Needed/2 Commited)
Overview: Alabama has taken 10 non-transfer WRs over the past 2 cycles so while I think they'll take a normal # in 2024, I'd lean more towards 3 than 4 total, unless a 'best available' type wants in

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 5* Perry Thompson	Foley in Foley, AL (Mobile area)	247: #27, On3: #29, Comp2: #28	A taller receiver, Perry thrives with straight-line speed and a suprising ability to weave through space - Thompson earned his offer last season in camp routing up 2023 5* DBs. As a high-ranking prospect, Perry is somewhat keeping his options open and will likely take visits but has repeatedly reaffirmed his commit - Alabama's steady pursuit should allow them to hold on.
2. 4* Rico Scott	Bishop McDevitt in Harrisburg, PA (Cent PA)	247: #372, On3: #289, Comp2: #330	A real smooth operator - plays RB and WR and is at his best going up the field. A bit of a suprise to some, Bama had seen him previously in camp and then watched his fall progress and saw what they needed to pull the trigger. I think we'll finish in the top 150-170
Top Targets
1. 4* Amari Jefferson	Baylor School in Chattanooga, TN	247: #270, On3: #288, Comp2: #279	My favorite realistic WR addition - his vertical and lateral speed POP off the screen, looks like a top 75 guy. Currently a Tennessee baseball commit, football is his likely future, as Alabama and Georgia battle it out. This will be a tough battle but one I very much hope the Tide wins.
2. 4* Aeryn Hampton	Carthage in Carthage, TX (E TX)	247: #116, On3: #126, Comp2: #121	More fast than quick, Aeryn runs like a RB, weaving through traffic and hitting the jets. Aeryn has been up-front about his love for Alabama and has narrowed his list to Bama and Texas, his former commitment. Aeryn has the green light to commit but seems like a guy who could go back and forth so unclear where this ends up.
3. 4* Cam Coleman	Central in Phenix City, AL (E AL)	247: #54, On3: #25, Comp2: #38	This guy's the real deal - big bodied but with slot speed and one of the best high-pointers in the class. Alabama's been trying to get him on campus and he's been uninterested, so the communication has been laid back. Cam and Perry Thompson kinda fill the same role so it's not a huge concern but Auburn is leading here and would give Hugh Freeze a real weapon.

TE (1-2 Needed/0 Commited)
Overview: I think *how* Tommy Rees constructed/called his ND offenses is a bit overblown in how his Bama offenses will look (you play with the talent you have) but Bama has been trying to find their Kyle Pitts/Brock Bowers/Michael Mayer for years now - really since OJ Howard/Irv Smith with a brief detour into Jahleel Billingsley. Alabama would like multiple bodies here if available but would really like a least one really good on in 2024

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Top Targets
1. 4* Caleb Odom	Carrollton in Carrollton, GA (W GA)	247: #85, On3: #69, Comp2: #77	A true mismatch nightmare, Odom is a true receiving threat TE, big bodied with room to grow but a little slender currently. Caleb is kinda wide open at the moment but this feels like one where Bama should start to push, with UGA snagging two of their targets in Jaden Reddell and Colton Heinrich

OL (4-5 Needed/0 Commited)
Overview: Alabama brought in a big OL class in 2023, which is already living up to expectations behind the scenes. They'll try to repeat the process in 2024, as they continue to re-tool their OL room

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Top Targets
1. 4* OT Daniel Calhoun	Walton in Marietta, GA (Atlanta Metro)	247: #86, On3: #106, Comp2: #96	A mammoth of a prospect, Calhoun has the look of a SEC lineman, able to play on the left or right side of the offensive line. Top 3 of Bama, UGA, and Texas but suprise suprise, this looks like another Bama/UGA battle. Feel better about Bama in this one but it's close and OVs will be big.
2. 4* IOL Casey Poe	Lindale in Lindale, TX (E TX)	247: #142, On3: #134, Comp2: #138	One of the most coveted interior prospects, Poe boasts both a mean streak as well as the ability to move the center, making him about as A1 as you can get for an interior OL prospect. Top 3 currently would be Alabama, Oklahoma, and UGA. Will be a tough battle but Alabama is the perceived leader heading into visits. Bama REALLY wants him.
3. 4* OL Jordan Seaton	IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL (Originally from Washington DC)	247: #41, On3: #42, Comp2: #41	Big, athletic frame who could end up playing inside or out - Seaton prefers OT but somecurrently leaning towards IOL. Ohio State was and is very involved but Bama/UGA feel like the primary players since making the move to IMG. I believe he visited for the A-Day game and it certainly seems like Bama will be an option until the end here.
4. 4* OT Marques Easley	Kankakee in Kankakee, IL (NE IL)	247: #263, On3: #240, Comp2: #251	A longer and leaner tackle prospect, Bama and UGA are again involved with Tennessee being the 3rd team in the mix, as well as the possible leader. Despite the Vols' early lead, this one can really go any direction after visits.
5. 4* OT Weston Davis	Beaumont United in Beaumont, TX (SE TX)	247: #180, On3: #124, Comp2: #152	A basketball-first prospect with high-upside as an OT, Davis has some interest in Bama but local programs like Texas A&M are getting some good recent buzz. Think it'll be paramount for Weston to camp.

DL (3-4 Needed/1 Commited)
Overview: Another unit Alabama's been trying to step-up, talent is a necessity in 2024

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 4* DE Jeremiah Beamon	Parker in Birmingham, AL	247: #103, On3: #98, Comp2: #100	Alabama's most recent commitment, Jeremiah is a FORCE rushing the passer, a little undersized with plenty of room to grow before a potential reneissance. If that sounds like Quinnen Williams, it's because that's the comp he's been getting. Many thought he'd be a sooner or later kinda commit and he went ahead and stopped messing around.
Top Targets
1. 5* DE Eddrick Houston	Buford in Buford, GA (Atlanta Metro)	247: #15, On3: #15, Comp2: #15	High upside, athleticism, and flexibility - bit of a tweener for the Saban defense who could slim down to an Anfernee Jennings role and add some weight to try and emulate Jonathan Allen. Another prospect that I think comes down to Bama and UGA, I feel better about Bama's chances here than with Eddrick's Buford teammate, KJ Bolden.
2. 4* DT Terrance Hibler	Holmes County Central in Lexington, MS (Cent MS)	247: #281, On3: #368, Comp2: #324	A bit undersized, Terrance makes up for it with violence, punch, and pure 'want-to'. Alabama has made a great early impression, alongside local Miss State, and the Tide are in a great spot if they choose to push here.
3. 3* DE Utah Commit Isaia Faga	Central in Phenix City, AL (E AL)	247: #733, On3: #676, Comp2: #704	Alabama has seen some recent success with Pacific Island players but it's rare to have one so local. Isaia excels at getting through traffic and getting into the backfield. Isaia's uncle is the Utah DL coach, leading to the early commitment, but Alabama is interested in seeing him camp and who knows where it could go from there.

EDGE (1-2 Needed/1 Commited)
Overview: The highest star rating per capita, talent is hardly a problem here but we'd love to have more.

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 4* Cayden Jones	Christ School in Arden, NC (W NC)	247: #147, On3: #171, Comp2: #159	Alabama has been looking more and more at hybrid LB types who could end up on the EDGE or off-ball (Jihaad Campell, Qua Russaw) - Cayden Jones is another, playing a ton off-ball and walking down to the edge and will likely project into a Terrell Lewis/Dallas Turner - type role. Since last year, Cayden had been up-front about wanting the green light to commit and jumped on it when he got the chance.
Top Targets
1. 5* Dylan Stewart	Friendship Collegiate Academy in Washington DC	247: #10, On3: #9, Comp2: #9	Maybe the top pure Edge guy, Dylan reminds me of Keon Keeley from last cycle; similar build, bend and length. Visits to Alabama, Ohio State, Miami, South Carolina and UGA have put all 5 in contention, similar to Keeley. I'd give the Gamecocks and Hurricanes the edge going into the summer but Alabama is RIGHT there and another visit to campus could flip the script.
2. 4* Jordan Ross	Vestavia Hills in Birmingham, AL	247: #38, On3: #33, Comp2: #35	A high-end Edge, Jordan flashes natural talent that can only grow with development. A little undersized, Alabama has told him to gain weight and camp prior to a serious pursuit, giving UGA and Tennessee an early lead. This could change quickly this summer, as Jordan finds his way onto campus.
3. 5* Colin Simmons	Duncanville in Duncanville, TX (DFW Metro)	247: #4, On3: #3, Comp2: #3	One of the Nation's top athletes, Simmons effortlessly flies around off the edge. LSU and Texas are battling it out thus far but Alabama will continue to work here.

LB (2-3 Needed/1 Commited)
Overview: There's somewhat of a logjam of older player at the LB position so I would expect attrition after 2023, which will need to be replaced by incoming players.

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 4* Sterling Dixon	Mobile Christian School in Mobile, AL	247: #188, On3: #164, Comp2: #176	Similar to Cayden Jones, Sterling is another hybrid type - beginning as an edge type with some off-ball experience, Sterling will transition to ILB this offseason for Mobile Christian and then at Alabama. A long-time commit, Sterling will take some visits but there's not a huge concern there.
Top Targets
1. 5* UGA Commit Demarcus Riddick	Chilton County in Clanton, AL (Cent AL)	247: #25, On3: #38, Comp2: #31	Demarcus is an excellent example of a modern LB and exactly what Alabama wants from the position: excellent weaving through traffic, sideline-to-sideline movement and can shade down to rush the passer. An early UGA commit, the strength of that commitment has wavered significantly and while there's still some work to do, the feeling is he could very likely flip to Alabama over the summer.
2. 5* Justin Williams	Oak Ridge in Conroe, TX (Houston area)	247: #13, On3: #12, Comp2: #12	Similarly archetypal LB prospect: a bit slight at the moment, he makes up for it with WR-level speed and burst, making him a real weapon against a high-powered offense. Oregon, Alabama, and UGA are the likely top 3 - Bama made a good impression this spring but needs to get him back on campus ASAP - feels like UGA could swoop in here if Riddick flips.
3. 4* Bradley Shaw	Hoover in Hoover, AL (Birmingham area)	247: #176, On3: #139, Comp2: #157	More of a traditional ILB, football IQ and sure tackling give him a Shaun Dion Hamilton feel. Alabama, Auburn, and UGA are the top 3 schools and this feels like Iron Bowl battle, where Alabama will win or lose based on how they push to reel him in.

DB (4-5 Needed/1 commited)
Overview: You gotta take a solid # of DBs every cycle but CB is one of the most important/most needed positions in 2024 after losses to the transfer portal.

Name	H.S.	Rank	Notes
Commits
1. 5* CB Jaylen Mbakwe	Clay-Chalkville in Pinson, AL (Birmingham area)	247: #19, On3: #17, Comp2: #18	A legitimate two-way player, Mbakwe, like Kool-Aid before him, could have been a 5* WR as well as DB but prefers defense. Jaylen is the defensive leader of the class and will be pretty instrumental in how the defensive class comes together.
Top Targets
1. 5* CB Charles Lester III	Riverview in Sarasota, FL (Cent FL)	247: #16, On3: #19, Comp2: #17	An all-around athlete with the ability to play multiple DB positions, CL3 could be commited or off the board at any moment. There's a clear interest in Alabama on his end but the Tide have yet to really push, leaving the door wide open for FSU. He OVs on June 3rd so it's likely that we'll have a better idea of where Bama goes after that.
2. 4* CB Jameer Grimsley	Tampa Catholic in Tampa, FL	247: #230, On3: #195, Comp2: #212	Somewhat of the prototypical Saban corner, with a long and lean build and a wingspan for days. Jameer has seen his recruitment skyrocket this spring and schools like Bama, FSU, and Penn State are pushing. Bama's got a great shot for this prospect who should continue to rise.
3. 4* S UGA Commit Peyton Woodward	St. John Bosco in Bellflower, CA (SoCal)	247: #69, On3: #70, Comp2: #69	Peyton shows good play speed and flows to the target in run defense; a good balanced safety. Peyton has not been shy about letting other programs try to flip him from the Dawgs and his family is full of Alabama fans, making the Tide a very possible flip option.
4. 4* CB Zabien Brown	Mater Dei in Santa Ana, CA (SoCal)	247: #57, On3: #56 , Comp2: #56	Zabien is a physical pass defender who excels at getting in passing lanes and making plays on the ball - not a specimen but a true competitor. As a Mater Dei kid, the axiom has been USC most often has first right of refusal so we'll see how the summer visits go and if Bama can/will make a push here.
5. 5* S KJ Bolden	Buford in Buford, GA (Atlanta Metro)	247: #8, On3: #5, Comp2: #6	Likely the top DB in the 2024 class, KJ is how they come; a true 5* safety. UGA has a healthy lead thus far but Bama (alongside others) will have a chance to fight back during summer OVs
6. 5* CB UGA Commit Ellis Robinson IV	IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL (Originally from CT)	247: #5, On3: #7, Comp2: #6	One of the stickiest DBs in the class, Ellis was the other 5* CB alongside Alabama freshman Desmond Ricks at IMG in 2023. Alabama led early but UGA got the momentum and the commitment. It's likely Ellis will take visits, including a potential OV to Alabama, but I would not predict a flip to Alabama at this time or in the future.