7-11

It’s a 7 – 11, so not a whole lot that can be said about it. This is my morning stop for a cup of Joe, or a Red Bull. Very seldom get stuck in line behind one of those pain in the a** lotto ticket people. (You know who I’m talking about.)

I pop in here constantly, not so much ’cause I’m in love with the place, but come on, it’s no more than a hundred yards down the street and around the corner from my front door and open no matter what. I can shuffle over in my pajama pants and hoodie on a Sunday morning and nobody cares. It’s a pretty functional, par-​for-​the-​course 7 – 11 specimen, a little scuzzy, but not really. The dudes in charge are constantly engaging in crazy loud arguments amongst themselves /​shouting on the phone in Ethiopian, but they don’t make you wait, they’re friendly, they remember you, and they more or less keep the floors clean and the taquitos younger than a week old. They helpfully haven’t eliminated the «cash back on debit card purchases» option that many 7−11s have, so you can buy a bottle of water or whatever, get $ 10 back, and save the $ 5 in ATM fees. Sure, you’re limited to ten bucks, but it’s a handy ability to have.
But wait, there’s more! This Seven goes above and beyond the call of duty to bring you «yes you can buy it at 2:45am on a Tuesday» extras: huge, oversize greeting cards the size of concert posters; a bevy of Rap Snacks; fifths of supermarket own-​brand quality cognac and Jeff Dunham/​racist puppet DVDs behind the counter. They used to have some sort of special edition Monopoly set for sale. You can fairly reliably get last Sunday’s New York Times (feel like a time traveler!), along with the current day’s Post-​Dispatch or USA Today. They are rather iffy when it comes to stocking quarts of skim milk. It’s currently the holiday season, so they’re busy keeping three different kinds of «nog» on the shelves, and in the interest of fairness, there are expired skim gallons, but if you want anything smaller, or non-​spoilt, you’re kinda out of luck. But it’s alright, it’s slightly endearing. Odds of ending up stuck behind a neighborhood dude buying five distinct types of lotto tickets (scratch off and hand-​selected numbers for the drawing) are, at bare minimum, 2:1. There’s also the fairly common barrier to convenience of a guy buying one of those 89 cent 24oz-​ers of Natty Light with nickels and pennies, but it’s just a slowdown, it’s not terribly sketchy. Added bonus: there’s no parking lot entropy to navigate like at the 7 – 11 Beyond Thunderdome next to the Chippewa Shop N Save or at the «corpse in the bathroom» QT off Gravois & Arsenal.