The Power of Advertising

Wall Drug
510 Main St.
Wall, SD



As a general rule, I try to avoid tourist traps.

But sometimes a tourist trap is so iconic it morphs into the obligatory.

Wall Drug is one of those places.

It also happened to be the only place in this town of 766 people to get breakfast that didn’t involve a fast-food drive-through window.

And I was hungry.

Like Kim Kardashian, Wall Drug is famous for being famous.

Unlike Kim Kardashian, Wall Drug has never leaked a sex tape onto the internet. As far as I know.

Wall Drug was founded by Dorothy and Ted Hulstead in 1931.

Their friends and family thought they were nuts to buy a drug store in a tiny town on the wind-swept Plaines of South Dakota.

Dorothy’s father said, “Wall is just about as Godforsaken as you can get.”

But the devoutly Catholic Hulsteads liked the local priest and friendly natives -- and were determined to make a living out here on the edge of the Badlands where cattle outnumber people by many multiples.

Dorothy and Ted quickly caught on to the power of advertising, placing billboards on the highway and offering “free ice water” -- a commodity that probably held more value to 1930s pre-air conditioned travelers than it does today.

The Hulsteads also gave traveling customers free Wall Drug signs and bumper stickers.

During World War II, GIs mailed back pictures of their Wall Drug signs and stickers from bases and battlefields around the world.

America was in on the joke.

To this day, you can find signs, stickers and even paid advertisements for this little drug store in rural South Dakota in the most obscure corners of Planet Earth.

From the London Underground to the Taj Mahal, don’t be surprised if you find billboards advertising that Wall Drug is “Only 10,728 Miles Away!!”

The tradition continues.

Wall Drug customers -- almost entirely tourists on their way to local attractions such as Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore -- still can get their “free ice water”, signs and bumper stickers. And coffee for a nickel.

Wall Drug isn’t so little anymore.

It literally takes up one half of downtown Wall -- a sprawling bazaar of Western knickknacks, tourist clutter, Indian artifacts and Wall Drug t-shirts and shot glasses.

Oh, yeah, you can still purchase a bottle of Bayer aspirin and Pepto-Bismol to cure what ails you from last night’s fun (not that there is any to be had in Wall).

Most interesting to me and my growling stomach was the café and donut factory tucked in the back.

In this part of the western Plains you can see for miles and miles across the grasslands dotted with cattle.

Starring from horizon to horizon at so much beef naturally made me hungry.

So I ordered the steak and eggs.

You know. When in Rome.

Or Wall.

The thin New York strip wouldn’t win any Grade A awards, but it was more than an adequate splurge for breakfast.

Charred just enough to be tasty, thin enough to be tender, Wall Drug’s steak and eggs more than satisfied the cravings that had welled up deep inside me after driving past so many cows in my travels through the grasslands of western South Dakota.

The eggs, toast and fried potatoes weren’t much more than an afterthought.

The bacon I tried on the breakfast sandwich, on the other hand, was top notch.

What certainly weren’t an afterthought were the tempting looking donuts piled up next to the take-out counter.

If Wall Drug is famous for anything other than their “free ice water”, then it’s got to be their donuts made right here in their “Donut Factory” in the back of the store.

You simply can’t come to Wall Drug without trying one -- or three.

These babies are fresh donut perfection.

A fried crunchy exterior gives way to a soft sweet cake inside that just melts in your mouth. Capped off with a generous yet not overwhelming dollop of chocolate frosting, I could eat these donuts all day.

In fact, of all the crap sold at Wall Drug from the useful to the useless, their fresh made donuts alone should spare this place from the label “tourist trap.”

By definition a tourist trap is a place travelers feel obligated to stop and spend their money -- but get little of value in return.

But Wall Drug’s donuts are worth a drive from anywhere -- even the Taj Mahal.

Rating: Bought an Obligatory “Wall Drug Gateway to the Badlands” Shirt.

Annoying Overly Sensitive Leftists Since 1934

Al the Wop’s
13943 Main St.
Locke, CA




I’m a sucker for any place with a colorful history and scruffy charm.

Even more so if the name of the place includes an ethnic slur.

Apparently “wop” is a politically incorrect term for someone from Southern Italy.

I had no idea.

Can I be accused of insensitivity for reviewing a place with “wop” in the title, even if I didn’t know what “wop” meant?

Just wondering.

In California, the answer is probably “yes”.

That’s one good reason right there to buy the shirt, I guess.

Locke, California is a forgotten Chinese ghost town of ramshackle wooden buildings lined up either side of a dusty little street deep in the heart of the Sacramento River Delta.

Chinese immigrants came into the delta originally to help build the levees that contain the Sacramento River in its banks.

Later, more Chinese came here to work on the farmland that spills out across the fertile plains of the Delta.

Wanting a place of their own, in 1915, several Chinese workers laid out and built this one block town.

In its heyday, as many as 600 Chinese lived in the wooden shacks lining Main Street and patronized Locke’s infamous brothels and gambling dens.

Famous as the only town in America built by Chinese for Chinese, there’s not much left of Locke to look at.

Only ten of the remaining 70 residents are Chinese.

Strolling by the dilapidated buildings, a lady painting pictures on the hood of her car put down her paint brush and just stared at me.

Don’t worry. I’m used to this.

I knew what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth.

“You’re alwul overdressed for Locke! Nobody around here dresses like that,” she said.

Mistaking me for some big city lawyer or consultant, she began a ten minute description of how she has been victimized by the local corrupt town counsel.

“I paid $22,000 for one of these run down shacks and then three days after the deal closed the city told me I couldn’t buy because the original Chinese landowners must be given first right of refusal.

“So I can’t buy a building in America because I’m not Chinese?!?”

I sympathized as she told me the tiny town had spent $50,000 of its $60,000 budget suing her for “breach of contract” simply because she tried to purchase one of its run-down buildings.

While I felt sorry for her, immersing myself into the politics of a 70 person Chinese ghost town was a bit above my pay grade, so I excused myself as I strolled into Locke’s most famous establishment, Al the Wop’s.

In 1934, an Italian named Al Adami opened his saloon with money he earned from taking the rap and serving jail time for a bootlegging family member.

Al the Wop’s was the only non-Chinese place in town.

At 11:30am the bar stools were already filling up with a fun-loving crowd of local farmers and fishermen.

As usual, I was the only one in the place wearing a suit.

And the only one the bartender didn’t know.

And the only one not knocking back shots of Crown Royal on a Monday morning.

I ordered a water as I pulled up a rickety stool and tried unsuccessfully to position myself comfortably in the middle section of the bar that sloped downhill at a ten degree angle.

Apparently those Chinese in 1915 didn’t know how to use a level.

Farm paraphernalia and deer heads decorated the bar, along with a few hundred bucks worth of one dollar bills mysteriously stapled to the ceiling.

The juke box was blasting out one great cowboy tune after another as the lady behind the bar hummed along to “Tight Fittin’ Jeans.”

Conway Twitty. Dwight Yoakam. Townes Van Zant.

At least someone in the place had good taste in music I thought as I told my bartender I’d take the famous Al the Wop’s steak sandwich.

It is a sandwich only in the sense that the bartender served me meat and bread -- on two completely separate plates.

My steak came out cooked to a perfect pink, nice and juicy but devoid of any seasoning or smoky flavor.

A standard issue sirloin, Al’s isn’t going to threaten any of the top-notch steak houses further south in Santa Maria, that’s for sure.

On another plate came five thick-cut slices of Italian bread still warm and crisp from being griddled on the flat top.

To be honest, that bread was the highlight of the meal.

And a perfect delivery vehicle for Al the Wop’s other famous delicacy -- peanut butter.

Peanut butter?

Yeah, for decades, folks have been spreading peanut butter and marmalade on Al’s good Italian bread.

I was expecting some sort of homemade, hand-churned Al the Wop special peanut butter.

Nope.

Just opened jars of Jif with spoons planted into the standard grocery store peanut butter scattered along the bar top.

Well, that was a letdown.

Young Suit757 was a picky eater. I literally had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every single day of my life for lunch from first grade through junior high. And probably every other day during high school and college.

And you know what?

I haven’t had a one since.

I got my lifetime’s supply of peanut butter in my first 22 years.

But being a good sport, I played along and slathered some Jif and marmalade onto my bread and took a bite.

Not bad. I’m not saying I’m turning in my suitly credentials and going back to the diet of an eight year old, but I can kind of remember the appeal now.

Then again, maybe it’s just that good bread.

I bet California tofu would taste decent on freshly griddled Italian bread.

Don’t worry. I’m not trying that anytime soon.

As I polished off my last bite of steak to the sweet sound of John Fogerty crooning about being “stuck in Lodi again,” I wondered whether I liked this place or not.

This is something that we world famous restaurant reviewers have to contemplate. We can’t just pay our bill and hit the I-5.

Some sort of deep philosophical analysis of Al the Wop’s was in order.

But how do you rate a century-old dive bar with ordinary food and a good juke box?

I mean, Al the Wop’s can’t be famous for its stovetop steaks.

Or it’s jars of Safeway-bought Jif.

There has to be something more that draws folks to this remote Delta dive.

I think that something is authenticity.

Like the overall-wearing locals knocking back Monday morning whiskeys…

…like Townes Van Zant crying on the juke box “for the sake of the song”…

…like the weathered signs dangling from the dilapidated porches on Main Street…

…like the politically incorrect name of this joint that has graced the front window for 80 years…

Al the Wop’s is a unique slice of authentic America that is getting harder and harder to find in our homogenized franchised world.

That’s still worth a few points in Suit757’s book.

Besides, how cool would it be to walk around Berkley sporting an Al the Wop t-shirt?

Yeah, I’m a sucker ever time.

Rating: Seriously Thought about Buying Shirt (just to annoy some overly sensitive leftists).

Best Burger - Ever

Annie Gunn's
16806 Chesterfield Airport Rd.
Chesterfield, MO





This is the new standard that all burgers shall be judged:  Annie Gunns near St. Louis.  I had no expectations, I was just tired and hungry and this was near the hotel.  What a great surprise.


Save up your per diem if you are in the St. Louis area.  This is worth every penny.

http://www.anniegunns.com/pdfs/ag_menu.pdf

You might want to make reservations.  I had to fight for a seat at the bar.  And it was worth it.

I am in awe of the burger.  The steaks here are great, and the trimmings are what get ground into burgers and these bad boys are huge, flavorful and every topping you could want.

Great beer selection, excellent scotch, whiskey and rare bourbons.



Rating:  Heck,  Don't just buy a t-shirt, buy stock in this place.