As much as I enjoy smoking cigars on the beach or a seaside porch when visiting the Outer Banks of North Carolina, it can sometimes be a challenge. Wind, blowing sand, and the occasional rain shower — especially common in the early fall when we usually visit — often put a damper on the smoking time.

That’s why I was especially glad to discover the OBX Cigar Lounge this year. Tucked inside Tap That OBX, which is also home to Shut the Barn Door Coffee (open mornings only), the lounge opened after our last visit in 2022. I’d been eager to check it out, and during this trip I managed to stop by twice.

On my first visit, I found the staff relaxing with cigars on the porch out front. After several days of outdoor smoking, I was ready for a more “civilized” setting. Mark, a knowledgeable and welcoming guide, walked me through the well-stocked humidor, where I picked a cigar to enjoy on the spot along with a few extras to take home.

The Tap That OBX bar in the front of the building wasn’t open yet — the three businesses keep different but slightly overlapping hours — but the cigar lounge staff are able to serve simple pours of beer or bourbon before the bar officially opens. I went with a local craft beer, Jimmy Buffett Ruined My Life from Swells’a Brewing to accompany a tasty Micallef Black cigar.

The lounge itself is intimate, with seven plush leather chairs. Despite the small footprint, the space feels bright and comfortable. White walls help open it up, and the air-handling system is impressive: a Rabbit Air purifier on the wall, a large air cleaning unit overhead, and a small but powerful air conditioner. Even later that day, when six of us were smoking at once, the air remained surprisingly clear.

The company was just as enjoyable as the atmosphere. That first afternoon I found myself chatting with visitors from Pennsylvania and Virginia, one of the lounge’s owners, and Mark, who stayed busy helping walk-in customers. The conversations were lively, friendly, and welcoming.

On a rainy afternoon later in the week, I returned for another visit and was greeted in the humidor by Rocco. I settled in with a small pour of 1792 Small Batch Bourbon with a Padrón 1964. The afternoon was spent swapping stories with fellow patrons, including another of the owners, Phil, who shared some fascinating insights about cigars and people in the industry.

Billed — accurately — as “the only cigar lounge on the Outer Banks,” OBX Cigar Lounge turned out to be exactly the kind of oasis every cigar smoker hopes to discover: inviting seating, friendly company, a well-curated humidor, and the option to pair it all with a good pour. I never need much convincing to plan a trip back to the Outer Banks, and the lounge has secured its place as a must-visit stop on every future visit.

Cheers!

Trip: 54
Nights: 183-184

It's a solid 4 hour drive from RVA to Floyd VA. The forecast was for a complete rain out on Saturday. We came anyway as this was a visit the town camping trip, not a hiking and exploring trip. As I start this on my phone at 3:30PM I'm sitting outside at Buffalo Mountain Brewing enjoy an Irish Red Ale. It hasn't rained all day, although I do think the weather will keep us in the camper tonight. There is a guy doing acoustic rock standards on mandolin at the brewery.

We are camping at Hippie Hollow, which is a Hipcamp. It lives up to its name. The campground is a couple of acres right on the creek. The owner lives on site in an RV and he has 4 or 5 sites for rent. He does have a nice bathroom with a shower in a portable trailer, with a permanent bath house under construction. He mentioned that he was in RVA a couple of weeks ago for the Widespread Panic concert. I've got 50A service and water, camping about 2 miles from town. And about 1 mile from this brewery.

Live music is the reason to visit Floyd. It's a literal 1 stoplight town, but within 1 block of that stoplight last night there were at least 6 live music opportunities. Americana jam sessions on the street are a thing here. There were 3 last night all within 50 yards of each other, guitar, stand up bass, mandolin, fiddle, and washboard players coming in and out of the groups as they played. The artists market had live music too. 2 small "clubs" had touring bands and a cover charge. The population of Floyd at the 2020 census was 440 people. That is one live music act for every 80 people. And I'm told last night was a little slow. Can any place in the world match that live music per capital ratio?

We got in around 3:30 PM on Friday and after setting up camp headed "downtown." We wandering the 1 block each direction from the stoplight checking out some stores and galleries and stopping to enjoy the jam sessions. After dinner at the local Mexican place we enjoyed some more street music before heading back to camp before it got dark. It was raining by 8 PM so Friday night was a play cards and drink beer in the camper while streaming the Red Sox radio feed kind of night. The good guys locked up a playoff spot on a walk off hit and I stifled my desire to celebrate loudly as there was a tent in the neighboring campsite. But I did celebrate, silently.

Saturday morning we slept in until 8, expecting it to be raining. It wasn't raining, and as I looked at the radar I realized the forecast was off and it would not be a rain out today. It was about 2 hours later when the forecast updated. Score one for the humans over AI.

So we spent the late morning and early afternoon on Saturday continuing to explore Floyd. We walked into just about every shop and gallery and had pleasant conversations with every shop owner we encountered. You don't get to browse quietly in Floyd. You at least have to chat with somebody as the price of entering the store. After a late lunch at the local diner we visited the local historical society museum and then went over to the brewery. Rain chased us inside from our front porch spot at the brewery around 4 PM. Once the storm passed we went to Food Lion as neither of us wanted to eat out again, and we had planned on dinner out Saturday night, so we had nothing to prepare for dinner. The rain started again just as we got back to the camper, and it was still raining when I went to sleep shortly after midnight.

On Sunday we went to the local park about a mile from the campground and spent a little over an hour with the local bird population. We identified 26 species, nobody was a rarity or particularly special. But that is fine with me. I'm perfectly happy walking around the woods for an hour with the Robins and Cardinals. #AllBirdsAreSpecial After that we packed up the camper and had an uneventful drive home.

I can't believe I've been in VA since 1998 and that was my first extended visit to Floyd. I did stop in to meet a friend for about an hour a few years back. Floyd is my kind of people. It reminds me of Davis, WV in that it's an enclave of sanity in an area that is mostly in favor of the shit happening in the country right now. I suspect there are more of these oasis' in VA and WV, and now I want to find them.

So we decided that this week is 80s movie week in at the ODonnellWeb World Headquarters. My impressions of movies I have not seen in at least a few years below.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Holds up better than I expected it would. The gratuitous nudity and drug use would probably not be happening in a movie targeted at teens in 2021, but the iconic scenes and lines mostly still stick their landings. Mr. Hand is still hilarious, and statutory rape is still statutory rape. I will say that scene was not particularly unrealistic though. 20 something year old dudes working the high schools was absolutely a thing. The movie is obviously played for laughs, but the emotions the characters were dealing with were feelings any 16-year-old in 1982 was painfully familiar with.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

There comes a point in a man’s life when he is rewatching Ferris Bueller for the umpteenth time, and he finally recognizes an unescapable truth.

Ferris is the asshole.

That moment for me was years ago and in a way, that freedom makes watching the movie even more fun. As a ridiculous 90 minutes of teenage escapism, the movie holds up very well, especially if you ignore the huge plot holes that you probably missed at age 16. Like, how did Sloan know the nurse was coming for her in class? It’s obvious later in the movie she wasn’t in on the plan that day, and how the hell did Ferris pay for that day? He doesn’t have a job and his parents clearly aren’t giving him a $100/week allowance. What high school in 1986 had a computer system that was accessible via modem? Also, how did his sister not recognize Mr. Rooney in her kitchen, and how did the cops not find his wallet on the floor to substantiate Jeannie’s story about an intruder?

It’s still a great movie though.

Pretty in Pink

Today is my wife’s birthday, and she picked the movie. I had no choice.

Pretty in Pink is not one of those flicks that I have rewatched a dozen times since the 80s. Honestly, I barely remembered the plot and in many ways was seeing it for the first time. It certainly does not hold up as well as Ferris Bueller. First, the whole rich kids / poor kids thing just feels so forced. Maybe it’s because I grew up in DoD schools where that dynamic didn’t really exist. In my memory of the 80s, and cute girl was a cute girl and nobody was going to stop talking to their best friend because they were dating a cute girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

Second, the poor kids are wearing way more interesting clothes and listening to way more interesting music. Maybe that is how it really worked in the 80s? I was a jeans and concert t-shirt metal head. I have little experience with either group, but it just seemed to me the “poor” kids were way more interesting. It didn’t feel like the movie was trying to make that point.

Third, Duckie is basically stalking Andi.

Fourth. Andi lives on the wrong side of the tracks in Chicago. Shouldn’t there be at least of a couple of kids of color in her class? I mean, come on. It’s freaking Chicago.

Sixteen Candles, which is way more problematic with racism, at least sort of felt like it wasn’t taking itself seriously. Pretty in Pink absolutely wants to be a serious movie, and it’s not a particularly good one.

Real Genius

Val Kilmer, in his first comedic role. Released in 1985 at the height of Reagan’s Star Wars shenanigans, it features idealistic college kids taking on the defense-industrial complex (which has always included higher ed) when they realize the laser they just perfected is actually a secret government weapon. It’s got a good 80s soundtrack, and it’s a generally wholesome PG rated farce featuring college hi jinks, and the world's largest Jiffy Pop. It holds up reasonably well. Also, my wife insists she had never seen it prior to tonight. How is that possible?

Risky Business

Thursday night at trivia we learned that my son has never seen Risky Business. That made the final movie choice for the week easy. This movie is such an 80s period piece. Actually now that I think about it, there is a pretty straight line from Joel to Bud Fox in Wall Street a few years later.

Teenagers obsessed with getting into the right college to make a lot of money. Teens obsessed with the Porsche. Teens obsessed with sex. Okay, that one probably isn’t so 80s centric. It’s almost a weird art film attempt at a teen coming of age comedy. As I joked last night, you can literally see Joel become the stereotype Tom Cruise character as the movie progresses.

The WTF line gets all the attention, but for me the line of the movie is delivered by the always great Curtis Armstrong, “I don’t believe this! I’ve got a Trig midterm tomorrow, and I’m being chased by Guido the killer pimp.”

It’s still entertaining, and of course Risky Business would never get made today. But the re-watchability of it is not on par with Fast Times or Ferris.

And that’s a wrap on 80s movie week in our family room. I’m thinking of doing something similar with 80s music - going back and revisiting the classic 80s metal albums to see how well they hold up today.

My very first forays onto the Internet were clicking around Gopher Space via a gateway in a dial-up BBS that I frequented. THis would have been 1991 or 92, I think. So last wek, when I ran into this article about the simple joys of browsing Gopher sites I knew what I needed to do.

And I did it.

You'll need Lynx or some sort of browser plug-in to surf around Gopher space, and you should absolutely do it. There is a surprisingly active community of people maintaining Gopher blogs, or phlogs. You can go here as a starting point.

Have fun.

I'm proudly Antifa. As was my grandfather who was injured in a Kamikaze attack on the USS Santee on October 25, 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

If you aren't anti-fascist you are pro-fascist. That is not an opinion, that is literally how the concepts of pro and anti work.

It's fall migration season! We went birding both mornings this weekend. We got 46 species this morning, including some really nice warblers such as Wilson's, Prothonotary, Hooded, and a bunch more. The eBird list is at https://ebird.org/checklist/S273359482.. The trees are still full of leaves and warblers never sit still, making them very hard to photograph, so no photos. My camera does not do well auto-focusing a bird in the leaves. I did get some nice butterfly shots this morning though.

I also did my fall yard maintenance this week, pulling a big pile of weeds by hand and mowing, raking, over seeding and fertilizing. I mixed in some clover seed in the backyard. I also built a pine bark island under the bird feeders, since nothing desirable grows under them anyway.

If you are looking to get away from big tech the Rebel Tech Alliance has lists of alternatives to the usual suspects.

Someone in Tasmania has been traveling the country making 360 degree photos of the amazing scenery, and they've shared it all online.

I Tried Every To Do app and Ended Up with a.txt file is a blog post that delivers exactly what you would expect based on the title.

This guide to replacing the stock apps on an Android phone with FOSS options is great place to start if that sort of thing appeals to you. I've already done the biggies, mail and calendar, by using K9 and Etar respectively. But there is more I can do, and I plan to do it.

This blog post argues that if we want to see forums and communities on the open web that rival Facebook, etc. then we need to do the hard work of building those communities ourselves.

The Death of the Corporate Job makes a compelling argument that many corporate jobs are mostly performance art. A lot of people learned during COVID working from home that they could do their job in 3 hours a day. But now that are back in the office trying to look busy 10 hours a day. So they attend meetings where no decisions are made and create PowerPoint decks about the meeting that nobody will read. The more industrious are working on their side project between BS corporate meetings.

And finally, via my buddy Ryan, a list of notable rocks from Wikipedia.

And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.