We came down in February of 2023 over the Super Bowl to explore Savannah and try her out. All everyone could talk about was the St Patrick’s Day Parade that was going to happen a month later. I want to say that over 1M people packed all of the squares and it was a large time. This year they are expecting over 1.5M people and it is also the 200th Savannah St. Patrick’s Day Parade so this is going to be fun.
The parade steps off not too far from our house so I expect for Horner and I to waddle down to Gwinnett Street and see them off. We also can get our fix of bag pipes so if you see either of us downtown on Congress street wearing cotton in our ears is because it was too loud.
More to come but here are the pictures.
First Lets see what the weather will be like.
Low of 58 on Saturday is what I am talking about !
We live near the start so it will be easy for us to get out of bed, make a bloody Mary and then walk over.
There will be Absolutely No Reason to wear these back into the house. I will deposit these in the dumpster upon returning home.
Sadly Geranium’s hat won’t fit her. Thanks a lot Temu!
I needed $10.00 more on my order to get free shipping of the Kilts that Horner and I are going to wear so I got us some beads to give away.
Down on Jones Street
Pinkie’s is ready!
Oh look McDonough’s decided not to fix the green awning but hung with care those cheap Guinness Beer flag streamers instead. I can only imagine what this place will smell like on the Monday following the Parade Saturday and Sunday the actual holiday. I may not walk down Drayton for a couple days after. Incidentally – McDonough’s has a solid bar menu and the staff is great.
I see you Gwinnett Street!
The Savannah IG be pretty funny
Not sure what it was (these folks were pretty hammered but there was some type of a green dress charity fun) and downtown was full of green people 1 week early.
Some looked good, some….keep drinking Erin Go Bro!
More Bunting here than in Hells Kitchen
Hard to see but the Fountain is spraying green water. I may try to get the pick at night.
You can see the swan shooting green here
There could be a lot of good pictures next week or this may be my last post for a couple week because I am suffering from a real bad case of MPH.
Talk about becoming a spoiled New Yorker. One thing that I miss about New York is my beloved Astor Wine and Spirit Booze Delivery. Go online, not speak to anyone, place your order and you could pick the delivery day you wanted. This was key because sometimes I did not want Jose (Mon – Thurs) doorman to know how much I was ordering. So, I would sometimes have it delivered on Friday (Joseph would work the lobby on Friday) and he wouldn’t think to much about the 2 large boxes getting dropped off. Then, we always had the Saturday delivery option.
That was when Luciano would accept the order and then drop it off at our door so it wouldn’t be in the lobby collecting stares. By the way you got free delivery with a $150 dollar minimum order. Don’t go there Judge Judy. I have seen some of you walking out of Busters with a college kid loaded up like a pack mule.
We don’t have that type of service here and it sucks. We can get wine and beer delivered but it is a hard NO on booze delivery. This bugs me because we would really would like to use Costco more. That is where we order our Summer Seltzers and Geranium’s maintenance wine. You know what I am talking about right? Maintenance wine is the booze that keeps momma happy when it is post work time. Sadly Costco is too far of an Uber back and forth and that would mess with our bottle refund ponzi scheme.
Que the Seinfield JFK golf club episode where Kramer and Newman steal a mail truck to return bottles for deposit.
So at least once a week I will make a 13 minute jaunt over to our local package store with my old lady cart and speak to the Ganem Family. I am frequenting a family run store and sure the prices may be a tad more but I am always welcomed by someone when I hit the door. They are good people.
Here is what that walk looks like.
Some of you have asked what distances are like here. I can make this easy peasie on foot and it is a beautiful walk.
You can tell that we are serious about our air conditioning down here. Those boys are busy during those Non-R months and September.
I love the houses on my walk. Mind you they rent for 3K for a two bedroom but they don’t have a pool so what is the point in that?
So much character with these houses. I love this one.
Super Nice Lady who lives here and is always saying hello. She also has one of those Neighborhood Libraries out front of her house and I drop off some old books of mine that I have collected. She has my “Don’t Stop The Carnival” that I love.
I love this house. The owner dresses the house each month and they go all out. And look, we keep our Skeletons on the porch year round!
During October it is all done in Pink. And she is a Banana Fan too!
No wonder I am taking allergy medicine in early February. It is this crap that helps keeping me stuffy.
It is a neat street
It does not matter what day of the week I am walking by this church but I find that the pastor is always loading stuff into the church, by himself. I have offered numerous time to help but he always says he is fine.
I have also walked by this joint on a Sunday and it is a rocking and a rolling. The pastor has invited me to attend services numerous times.
FYI – These (they don’t call them mass, it is called a service) sessions can go long…..like 2 to 3 hours long.
Ok, I will say it – If I attended, I would be the only white face in the congregation. That doesn’t bother me one bit.
My Reasoning – I see the parishioners (probably not what they call themselves) walking in and they are dressed to the nines. I acknowledge that this is a very special day for their spiritual growth. I don’t need to be showing up as an interloper. I have been to Al Green’s Church and know what feels like.
Full Disclosure – I may have thrown a couple bucks into an envelope and put it in the mailbox. Pastor needs a better cart to carry the water up the ramp.
Let me say it loud enough for those of you in the back – WE HAVE A FUCKING GUN PROBLEM HERE IN THE UNITED STATES.
Ok, I am off of my soapbox. Here is my trusty steed. I did notice that her tires are going bald and her suspension is starting to ‘flex’. Lawd help me if she fails on a trip back when I have a Wine and Booze order from the Gaynems.
Hey Abo – I may need you to bring me a Whole Foods Old Lady Cart on your next trip.
Next week we are getting ready for St. Patrick’s Week. (Notice I said week and not just day) They are dying the Forsythe Park Fountain green at Noon on Friday.
St. Patrick’s Week is going to be off the hook. They are going to Green this sucker and I am all for it.
Have a good week and be nice to people…..even if you don’t look like them.
Happy Fat Tuesday to all of my friends who celebrate Mardi Gras. Get home safe and make sure you boil your shoes in bleach because they probably need it. We had a great weekend and had some friends up to stop over on their way to see grandbabies. Yesterday I got the house in order and managed to smoke a couple of sticks in-between rain storms on Monday.
Sucks to be a New Yorkers today. I was wearing flip flops and shorts.
“What are you doing at the ballpark Carbunkle? You get a job shooting the T-shirt cannon in between innings?” Sadly they won’t let do that job but I may possibly be the Mustard Bottle running around the bases for the condiment race. More to come.
Hey @SavannahBananas how about some dog merch?
Why not slam some Miller High Life Ponies
This is Kiaylo (Troy’s newest youngest sibling) and loves to come up and say hello to us.
Troy Troy is chill and likes to hang while the dogs frolic
Oh by the way averaging 15K steps and on occasional 40 flights does take its toil on your shit.
My poor folding shopping cart, still kicking after all those years.
This week we have my Godchild coming into town to tour SCAD. Geranium and I are kind of secretly hoping that she comes here. We really got to be so close with Abo and consider her part of our family. That and I think she wants to major in Theme Park Design.
Boy do I get that a lot of those questions when I tell people that we don’t own a car. Then they look at me with a puzzled look when I tell them that Geranium hasn’t driven a car in over eight and a half years. Let me explain.
When we were living in Manhattan there was absolutely no reason to own a car. Hell it cost as much as 1K a month to keep it in a garage pre-panarama so we used public transportation, cabs or we walked. We found out that delivery service in New York was KEY when it came to getting groceries, booze, and everyday necessities. Sure, I would get my old lady cart out and make a quick trip to Fairways grocery to get items those items that I wanted to personally pick. But do you think that I am schlepping a five pound watermelon up and down the 68th street – Hunter College subway steps?
Yeah I really didn’t miss having to mess with a car. Obviously there were times that having a car would have been easier than say taking an Amtrak to Philly or Jones Beach but is it worth it? So when we moved to Savannah we made the conscious decision to move to a part of town that was close to everything that we wanted. We are about a 30 minute walk from River Street or I can take the free bus service and can get downtown in 15 minutes. If I was feeling bougie or it was raining I could always take a $7.00 uber.
Running errands and shopping does make for planning and logistics. I have found a nice liquor store in Midtown that is right across from a great grocery store. Also in the same shopping center is a barber shop and even a couple of bars so I can knock a couple of things off the list with consolidated uber trips. Same goes for when I need to visit Target I can also knock off a trip to Home Depot if I need anything there. Trips to the airport run about $30.00 with tip and although I have not ventured there in a while the outlet mall is nearby.
Dry Cleaning is picked up and delivered by Mr. Reggie on Tuesdays. There is a Kroger that is 10 minutes away and Johnnie Ganems Package store is a block from there. Instacart, Shipt and dealing directly with restaurants for food delivery is how we round out the other needs and wants. Let me be completely honest, I am very relieved that I will never have to worry about getting ‘the big ticket’ when leaving one of the Congress street bars by letting someone drive me home or worrying about leaving a car downtown.
Geranium and I decided that if we were spending $350.00 an average in a month on Ubers then we would look into getting a car. So last night as I was watching all the Taylor Swift haters on the Grammys I went to the Uber app and did some calculations.
July 10 Uber Trips at $12.00 a trip with tip – $120.00
August 10 Uber Trips at $12.00 a trip with tip – $120.00
September 7 Uber Trips – $84.00 and 2 airport trip at $30.00 Grand Total – $144.00
October 7 Uber Trips – $84.00 and 1 airport trip at $30.00 Grand Total – $114.00
November 18 Uber Trips – $216.00
December 27 Uber Trips – $324.00 and 2 airport trips – Grand Total $384.00
January 48 Uber Trips – $576.00 and 4 airport trips – Grand Total $696.00
All in all we spent $1794 on Ubers but when you divide that by 7 months we are still averaging $256.00 a month. And yes I know that I spent a lot in January but that is because I just don’t like waiting for the bus or walking in the cold. Add to that when I get off at 5PM it is dark and we did a bunch of entertaining with friends this past January. I don’t imagine that we will be doing 48 Uber trips in a month again. Oh and two of those airport trips were wasted because our flight got cancelled when we were heading to Fort Worth back in January.
Lets get into the pictures shall we?
Laugh all you want to but this cold snap is no joke. Everyone was covering plants last week.
Always a good time when these ladies come into town!
Viv made a visit too
have to make sure that Jewels is doing well at Pinkie Masters
Found the breakfast place that John Kelso met Luther when he had all the flies buzzing around him in Midnight of the Garden of Good and Evil
Fat Kid Breakfast
No that is not Luther but this is where it was shot
Historic Jones Street
Love me some Rock-Mo!
PNG Mike may not approve of this but this got a good laugh while we were in Fort Worth last week.
Since they have said there is another hurricane brewing out there I better get my butt in gear and post this. Here is the post about last weeks ‘weather occurrence’ that Bill Mc thanked me for moving to Savannah. You see the last time a hurricane hit Savannah according to Google was 1979. So of course I get blamed because Yankee Carbunkle moved to the peach state.
Like I said on the last post, we took the hurricane prep seriously. I recall when a measly Cat 1 Hurricane came and wiped out every dock on San Pedro down in Belize. For context, we are some 25 miles from the coast and are not prone to flooding. However, it was the losing power that we were not looking forward to if that happened.
Long story short; we lost power for about 30 minutes and Idalia went north of us. Thankfully we didn’t get much of the ‘bad side of the storm’ with the bands of rain. But now we can get our “Hurricane C1” badge to go with our “honorary New Yorker” badge that Maria gave to us.
On to the pictures because we all know that you get fatigued if I go over 500 words.
You should have seen the Beer & Wine Aisle
Apologies to those who heard me cursing the 5 blocks I had to walk from Kroger to get back to the apartment. There is a case of bottled water in the bottom of that sucker.
Primarily I was afraid of losing power and not having ice so I made some extra just in case.
I recall from Tacogirl’s blog way back that you need to put water bottles in the freezer so that it can keep the freezer colder should you lose power. See I do pay attention some time……hey look a chicken!
I guess the frozen cup with the quarter on top is only for if you evacuate but I had one in there just in case. Again its this silly stuff that you see on Social Media that you learn these hacks. FYI – We didn’t put valuables in the dishwasher.
Full disclosure – we didn’t understand why we needed to fill up our tub (but we improvised) until our friends from Florida told us on Thursday. You see during extended power outages the water pumps can’t run so you won’t get water to drink or cook with. But you really need water to flush the toilets. Again, thanks to GrainBin Gurl for the tip.
I mentioned to James, the maintenance guy, that my buddies down in Belize would sink the patio furniture in the pool and he agreed that it is a hell of an good idea but the property manager said to bring them inside.
Storage of the pool stuff
We brought our stuff in too per the management company’s request.
At least it wasn’t Jim Cantore. What was wild was the rain bands with the hurricane. We would have a deluge of rain for like 10 minutes then it would be sunny for 10 minutes then it would rain again. This was helpful when you have a dog that hates rain when they are trying to pee/poop.
No I didn’t make her wear her raincoat, she hates that damned thing because she can’t see because of the hood.
Not happy with Idalia. At All
So I made an IG post about that someone needed to make sure that Forrest Gump’s bench in Chippewa Square is still there. That is an inside joke with the locals because after they filmed this scene they moved the bench over to the visitors center. I understand that this bench was made by Target and there were 3 of them used for the shoot. The director has one, The Savannah VB has one and Tom Hanks has one in his backyard in CA.
Once Idalia was downgraded to a Tropical Storm and we went from Hurricane Warning to Watch we broke out the booze. I mean there still is the chance of a Tornado but we seriously live next to train tracks so we are screwed.
Thanks to all that checked in on us. I guess Hurricanes are the downside to never having to shovel snow.
You mean to tell me that you don't have Sweet Tea? 