Dangerous Surf Saturday

A rather strong gale will form off of New England on Friday. We could get a bit of snow out if it, but the real story will be Saturday's surf.

A north wind will do little to knock down some big waves generated by the low pressure area.

We watched every local channel this morning, and saw no mention of surf. Some of our other resources felt differently.

We double checked with the National Weather Service. Here's what they told us:

"We expect dangerous surf conditions during Saturday. On the Outer Cape we are forecasting surf height around 17 feet, and for the South Shore a surf height of around 13 feet."

That is significant wave height, meaning the average height of the highest third of the waves. It is what you would observe at sea. Roughly one half of that will be the wave that hits the shore.

High tide Saturday morning should be in the 9s, and the tide should be pushing 10 feet. If this storm were a week from today, tides would be 11.7.

We'll have some of our people out with the camera checking the surf in various spots.

National Weather Service Facebook Page

US Harbors Tide Information

Ventusky Wave Forecast

Super Tuesday

We got out on Super Tuesday to check the precinct in Buzzards Bay.

We urge you go out and cast your vote.

Vote early and often!

Fun With Super Tuesday

Tuesday is Primary day, where you can vote for the candidate of your choice.

The problems arise when you see major flaws with the charisma-free Democrat candidates, or if you refuse to cast your vote for someone who once headlined Wrestlemania.

While the Dem race at least has some drama, there isn't a standout among them yet. The GOP race has even less drama, as Trump faces no serious primary challenge.

Massachusetts is a liberal state. In the Presidential elections of the last 100 years, we have voted Republican for only Ronald Reagan, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Cool was the Governor of Massachusetts prior to being Harding's VP and successor, and Reagan could only beat a struggling peanut farmer by less than 4000 votes in 1980.

What's a voter to do?

We're not gonna tell you who you should vote for. We're not that smart, and we don't know you that well. What we can do for you is provide a few examples of how to get a little action out of your primary vote.

- Vote For Whoever Trump Can Mock Best

This would be more fun if Mayor Pete didn't drop out last night. Would Trump verbally gay-bash a homosexual candidate? Our staff had bets on this, with "Swishy Pete" and "Peter Puffer" as names with money on them.

It would be a despicable, caveman act if Trump did so, which is why we were expecting it enough to wave Ben Franklins at each other.

We still have Pocahontas, Crazy Bernie and Mini Mike out there. Amy Klobuchar hasn't merited a nickname yet... nor does she need one.

Liberals will vote for the Dem of their choice. Registered Republicans will be limited to Trump, William Weld and write-ins.

However, Massachusetts is dominated by unenrolled voters. 2.5 million of us are unenrolled. That's a million more than enrolled Democrats, and 2 million more than enrolled Republicans. Unenrolled voters can ask for whichever ballot they wish.

A lot of those unenrolled folks are liberals, and the liberal side of the ballot is a dogfight. Liberals here are unlikely to throw their vote away for a laugh.

If you are an unenrolled Massachusetts conservative, it's a whole different animal. Trump is a shoo-in to lead the GOP ticket in November, barring some earth-shaking development (see below) springing up out of nowhere.

Why not throw your conservative primary vote behind the most beatable liberal candidate? It's a potentially damaging bet for a party that has won the popular vote just once since the Dems ran and lost with the original Mini Mike, Dukakis. It is high risk/high reward.

- Vote for Bill Weld

This is a layered bet, as it really can only pay off if A) Trump gets caught on tape saying the N Bomb or, more likely, that B) he gets the Coronavirus and drops dead with a Quarter Pounder in each hand. Political scientists refer to this second option as a Warren Harding Ending.

Mike Pence will become the headliner if Trump's immune system impeaches him. Seeing as Pence is in charge of our Coronavirus response, it will look bad for him if the pandemic kills his boss.

If the Republican national convention turns into a crapshoot sans Trump, a Weld victory in Massachusetts would send him into the convention as the only living GOP candidate with any delegates. His only opponent would be the comical Trump bootlicker who bungled the pandemic response.

Pence is amazingly beatable, especially if the already disgraced GOP has a more vanilla (not easy with Pence) option with far less baggage.

The RNC would be even more fun if conservative celebrities jump in at the last minute. Imagine the smoke filled room chaos as the GOP tries to build a coalition around either Clint Eastwood, Rush Limbaugh, Kid Rock, Sean Hannity, Kanye West, Ted Nugent, Pence or Weld.

- Write In Someone

Why not? We can give you a few ideas. Most of these only work if Trump dies, is jailed or flees the country.

Tom Brady may be moving soon, but he is still ours on Super Tuesday. He has already stood on stage with George Bush for a SOTU address. He'd probably win in a landslide representing either party.

David Ortiz is already a local hero. He has more charisma than any candidate, Trump included. He'd be a living violation of the Natural Born Citizen clause, but maybe Moscow Mitch can do something about that. Technically, Ortiz is an American citizen, and he was naturally born, at least in a MacDuff sense.

Jeb! OK, next...

Oprah has been mentioned before. She'd be a funny Republican candidate, but so was Trump, and I doubt she has paid off a porno flick girl or bragged on tape about how she can walk right up and grab women by the p*ssy.

She would no doubt pursue a liberal policy as President, but the conservative base is very, very gullible., and she could just lie to them while campaigning. She would immediately rip the black vote away from Joe Biden, no mean feat for a party which only gets about 10% of the black vote per election. Trump got 13% of the black male vote in 2016, and 4% of the black female vote. Oprah erases those problems.

Oprah, like Weld, needs Trump to die within the next 6 months.

Vladimir Putin has the same NBCC issues as Big Papi, but remember that one house of Congress is run by a guy known as Moscow Mitch. A Putin presidency eliminates the middleman for the GOP, which, as a broad concept, is sound fiscal policy.

Stephen Colbert would seem to be an odd choice, but his show is going in the tank if Trump loses, and the Presidency is a fine golden parachute.

He'd have to appease the GOP by campaigning as his conservative Daily Show character, but winning the Presidency from a talk show (which would be 5 free hour long campaign commercials a week now through November) would put him miles above Carson or Letterman when future generations rank our late night hosts.

That's pretty much the best we have. Please vote early and often.

Doomed Malls And The Silver City Galleria

The Banshee has howled for the Silver City Galleria. She's still open, but only at certain entrances. She has a Facebook page, but so do several of my dead friends. Only a fool would deny that the buzzards are circling.

As is often the case with mall deaths, this was a slow bleeding, more Death By A Thousand Cuts than a Jason Vorhees-style decapitation.

The death of a Mall is always a sad thing in the eyes of a child of the 1970s/80s. They are a cultural icon. Fast Times At Ridgemont High opens in a mall. Half of the stuff I owned came from a mall. My first indoor job was in a mall.

Today, we'll look at the reasons for the debacle in Taunton, and the demise of mall culture in general.

Malls exist because A) Americans buy a lot of different things, and B) you can only fit so many stores on Main Street in Smalltown USA.

With a mall, you clear out a bit of forest or swamp in the middle of a region, plop down a building about the size of a junior college campus, fill it with diverse stores and let business take her course.

There may not be a Macy's in tiny Dighton, but the residents can could still get a nice sweater if they were willing to drive into nearby Taunton and visit her mall.

This is important, as old people of rural upbringing can remember when everyone was essentially dressed in the same clothes from the same Sears catalog.

The mall houses local businesses or at least local franchises of national businesses. Some of these businesses can't stand alone... have you ever seen a free-standing Spencer's, for instance?

Shopping malls date back to Rome, but the indoor mall dates back to the 1950s. Sweden had the first one (named "Shopping"), and they were going up in the USA soon after.

Malls dominated American shopping through the 1990s, when 140 were being built per year. 

Box stores and online shopping then began to inflict killing blows. All the perfumes of Arabia will not remove the mall blood from Wal-mart's hands, as Wally undercuts the very department stores and niche businesses that malls rely on.

2007 was the first year that no new indoor malls were being built. The mall bubble had peaked, and then it began to contract. That contraction will now perform the coup de grace on the Silver City Galleria.

The first indoor mall in the Greater Boston area was Shoppers World, which went up in Framingham by 1956. The Westgate Mall in Brockton (1961) and the South Shore Plaza in Braintree (1963, enclosed in 1976) followed shortly after.

Highway development and urban strife filled the more rural suburbs. A second local mall boom followed, with Hyannis (1970), Dartmouth (1971), Hanover (1971) and Swansea (1975) getting in the game.

That was enough for almost 20 years, which seems to be a mall's shelf life. By the 80s, the malls in Dartmouth and Swansea were as dated as disco albums. They were poised for usurpation by more modern malls with food courts.

Attleboro had jumped on this opportunity in 1989, a year that Kingston had similarly targeted the mall in Hanover. Taunton was the last (1992) local indoor mall to go up, at least in SE Massachusetts.

The builders were thought to be crazy for building a mall in the Taunton forest, but they were on to something. Sited where two highways meet, the mall became a big hit.

At her peak, the SCG housed 90 stores and a community college. She had a firm grip on Bristol County's shoppers. She essentially strangled smaller malls in the area, formerly successful malls such as Swansea, Dartmouth and Mill River Place.

Life was good for the mall. My use of past tense here is meant to be foreboding.

All that Internet shopping and Wal-mart stuff from a few paragraphs ago evenually touched SCG. The Bush Recession sped up the death roll.

SCG was down to 70% occupancy by 2010. She went through a series of foreclosures, bankruptcies and fleeing stores.

Sears, Old Navy, PacSun, Victoria's Secret, JC Penney, Best Buy... the trickle of closing businesses soon became a torrent.

Add to this a 2016 rampage where some nut literally tried to murder everyone in Bertucci's, and a pall hung over the mall. I used to date a Taunton girl, and her response to my suggesting that we shop at SCG was, "Are you trying to get stabbed?"

I was there Thursday.  It was almost empty, save for (de)construction guys and a bunch of old people taking walks. Trading old people for zombies would make it indistinguishable from Dawn Of The Dead, although there weren't as many old people at SCG as there were ghouls in DOTD.

Spencer's, T-Mobile, Dick's, and Round One were the only open businesses. The food court was disassembled, save for the apparently unkillable Bourbon Street Grill.

Most of the parking lot is blocked off, all but one escalator is down and most of the mall entrances were closed. Stores were being gutted, and three workers were disassembling the little carousel.

I had hit the dab pen 15 times before entering, thinking that I would write a mirthful piece. Nope. I was depressed before taking 30 steps inside the building. It was like watching America die.

William Thibeault paid $7.5 million for the mall last May. He insists it isn't closing. However, I shall publish this article on February 29th, and I'd be amazed if the mall is still open on March 1st.

The music world has taken notice.

There is talk of converting it to a distribution center or whatever TF a "fulfillment center" is, and maybe that will happen. Who knows?

While other websites whine about the problem, Cranberry County Magazine takes action to save Taunton. Here are some ideas we came up with:

- Instantly become the laser tag or Air-soft mecca of the world by converting the whole mall to this purpose. The old people taking indoor walks would be collateral damage. Maybe you lose points for shooting them... or maybe you gain points.

- Set up a howitzer in the parking lot, and let people fire a shell into the building for 5000 dollars.

- Hide treasure in each store, fill the mall with traps, bears, carnivorous plants, serial killers and monitor lizards, then charge Ren Fair people X dollars to armor themselves and play real-world Dungeons And Dragons there.

- Leave it untouched, then open a Mall Museum there.

- Turn it into a voc-tech high school to prepare kids to enter the retail economy.

- Take a stab at cornering the retail marijuana market by converting it into a Weed Mall. Put in a dispensary (or perhaps several), and use the remaining stores to sell stoner-friendly stuff like candles, munchies and Pink Floyd records.

- Redesign it as a water park for January through September. For October, decorate it and run it as a sort of Spooky World haunted house. In November, string up a zillion lights and knock La Sallette out of business. Those damned Christians have had a stranglehold on Christmas for too long.

- Demolish the mall, but leave all the signs up. Find a hill with a commanding view and build a bar there. Let locals laugh as shoppers aimlessly drive back and forth, looking for a mall which is no longer there.

- Put SCG on the auction block, where it is purchased for $27US by Cranberry County Magazine, who then begin to make subtle inquiries as to where one might be able to procure a Komodo Dragon.

All kidding aside, this is a bad day for Taunton.

Jobs will vanish, tax revenue will dry up, nearby businesses will lose traffic and Taunton will lose a little bit of her swagger.

The psychological damage will be immense. Many people's first job was folding sweaters there, some long-married couples may have had their first date there and there are at least two or three generations of locals who will have their Christmas routines altered.

A man might see an icon of his youth meet the wrecking ball and start to think that maybe it's time for him to move on to greener pastures, as well.

Only time will tell. Until then, let's pour out a little liquor for an old friend.

President Quotes

Happy Presidents Day!

George Washington, upon being given command of the army during the Revolution: "This will be the commencement of the decline of my reputation." ... Steven Wright once asked, "When they asked George Washington for his ID, do you think he just took out a quarter?"

John Adams writing to his wife, who had mentioned that he was 60 years old in a letter: "How dare you? If I were closer to you, I'd convince you that I'm not a day over 40."

Thomas Jefferson, to an Italian diplomat bad-mouthing a sloppy Virginia church: "It is good enough for He who was born in a manger."

James Madison, when urged not to speak from his deathbed: "I always speak most easily when I lie."

James Monroe, as he attacked Alexander Hamilton with a pair of tongs: "You damned infernal old scoundrel!"

John Quincy Adams, upon running for the House after being President: "No person... could ever be degraded by representing his people in Congress."

Andrew Jackson (who deserves his own entry), when presented a list of shootings/stabbings/brawls that people from his hometown gave in hopes of deterring voters from making him president "Ahh...old Salisbury... I was a rough lad then, but I did my best."

Thomas Benton, on Martin Van Buren succeeding Andy Jax: "For once, the rising sun is eclipsed by the setting sun."

Benton on William Henry Harrison: "Give him a pension and a barrel of hard cider, and... he will... sit by a sea coal fire and study moral philosophy."

Toney, one of John Tyler's slaves, when asked his opinion of Tyler taking a woman much younger than he for a wife: "Massa... you be in your prime now... but when she's in her prime, where will your prime be?"

James Polk, on handshaking "When I saw a strong man, I took advantage of being quicker than he, and got him by the tips of his fingers before he could rend my arm from me."

Zachary Taylor, when approached to run for President: "Stop that nonsense and finish your whiskey."

Millard Fillmore: "I detest slavery... but we must endure it... till we can get rid of it without destroying the last free government in the world."

Franklin Pierce, upon losing his bid for a second term: "There is nothing left.. but to get drunk."

Bachelor President James Buchanan, when asked why there was no First Lady: "That, madam, is my misfortune, not my fault."

Abe Lincoln (who also deserves his own entry), when called "two-faced" by a Stephen Douglas during a debate: "I leave it to my audience... if I had two faces, would I wear this one?"

Andrew Johnson, to Jefferson Davis: "If I could not unsheathe my sword in vindication of my country, i would return it to the scabbard. I would never sheathe it in the bosom of my mother."

Ulysses S. Grant: "I know only two tunes. One of them is 'Yankee Doodle,' and the other isn't."

General Rutherford B. Hayes, when urged to run against Lincoln: "I shall never come to Washington, until I can come by way of Richmond."

James Garfield's doctor, on treating the still-living Garfield after his assassination attempt: "Some people say that prayer has saved the President... in my opinion, it was the whiskey."

Chester Arthur, on retirement: "There doesn't seem anything for an ex-President to do... but go into the country and raise big pumpkins."

Grover Cleveland fathered a child out of wedlock, and rivals used to chant "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" Once GC won the election, his supporters would answer that chant with "Off to the White House... Ha Ha Ha!"

Benjamin Harrison: "I can not name my own cabinet... my party managers have sold out every seat on it to secure my election."

William McKinley, after watching his first football game: "They didn't have no game; they got into a fight and kept fightin'... when they ought to have been playing ball."

Theodore Roosevelt, on the battle of Kettle Hill (what he called the San Juan Charge): "I killed a Spaniard with my own hand... like a jackrabbit... look at those damned Spanish dead... Oh, but we have had a bully fight."

William Taft, on losing his bid for a second term: "I have but one consolation... no one has ever been elected ex-President by such a large majority."

Woodrow Wilson was giving an outdoor speech, when a small boy fought his way to the front row and asked what the crowd had gathered for. "I guess it is for me," said WW. "Shucks," said the boy. "I thought it was a dogfight."

Warren Harding, on meeting comedian Will Rogers at a White House reception: "This is the first time I ever saw you without paying for it."

Calvin Coolidge (who, despite his taciturn nature, has 10 pages of hilarious quotes) when a socialite told him that someone had bet her that she couldn't get three words out of him. He walked away from her after saying, "You lose."

Herbert Hoover, when told by Coolidge (during the Depression) that "you can't expect to see calves in the field the day after you put the bull to the cows," in regards to his acts to stop the Depression: "But I do expect to see contented cows."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was described as " a nice guy" by a NY Republican leader: The leader was told, "Don't fall for it." The man asked, "Fall for what?" The other man sneered, "For a perfectly grand political personality, you fool!"

Harry Truman, when asked to describe his Presidency: "There's a grave at Boot Hill that says 'Here lies Jack Williams- he done his damndest.' What more can a man do?"

Dwight Eisenhower once asked an aide to golf with him. The aide declined, saying his wife was expecting him home for dinner. "Are you of mice or man?" asked Ike. "Man," the aide replied. "My wife is afraid of mice."

JFK, speaking to a crowd in Iowa that wasn't used to a nice Cape Cod accent: "What's wrong with the American fah-mah?" he said. "He's stah-ving" answered the crowd.

While showing reporters around his ranch, LBJ stopped to urinatein some bushes. "Aren't you afraid a rattlesnake will bite it?" asked a reporter. "Hell, boy, it is part rattlesnake."

While signing his book The Six Crises, Richard Nixon asked the next person in line who he should address his signature to. "You've just met your seventh crisis. My name is Stanislaus Wojechzleschki."

Gerald Ford, as described by his own wife: "He was an accidental president and an accidental vice president. In both cases, he replaced disgraced leaders."

Jimmy Carter, when asked how he would feel if his daughter had an affair: "Astonished. She's eight."

Ronald Reagan, upon being told that births to teen mothers had tripled during his time as governor of California: "I never felt so young and virile."

George Bush, disparaging an answer given in a debate by Mike Dukakis: "That answer is about as clear as Boston Harbor."

Bill Clinton, upon taking over for Bush: "There is nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what is right with America."

George Bush II, on Iraq: "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, uhm, ahh, I won't get fooled again."

Barack Obama, at the SOTU, when conservatives cheered his statement that he had run his final two campaigns. "I know, because I won them both."

Donald Trump: "Mexico is gonna pay for the wall."

Surf Check: Westport

An absolutely brutal wind was blowing Friday, strong enough to knock power out to 80,000 people. We sent a crew out to check the waves.

The wind was SSW, which eliminated the South Shore from any wave watching consideration.

The South Coast gets the shaft on Nor'easter surf. Even the SSW winds only tune up part of the SC, as Martha's Vineyard blocks or lessens much of the heavier surf.

That leaves us Westport, which the Vineyard doesn't serve as a barricade for. She also is very accessible.

It has been a slow storm season. There hasn't been much in the way of high surf or heavy snow. 

We would have gone to Tiverton or Little Compton, which also get high surf with SSW winds. However, it's about a half hour getting from Horseneck Beach to Sakonnet Point, and we didn't have enough sunlight left.

We only consider Rhode Island to be South Coast for this SE Massachusetts website during storms with SSW winds.

There was a nice crowd at Gooseberry Island to check the waves.

I was technically at Gooseberry Neck, as the road was blocked. If I was really motivated, I'd have hoofed it out to the southern shore of Gooseberry Island. It would have been dark by the time I got there, so I just hung at the Neck.

It hasn't happened yet, at least not while I was there with a camera, but Westport is the most likely place to maybe see waves breaking on houses... at least on the South Coast. The SC is more threatened by hurricanes, which don't happen here that much.

You do see houses on stilts from Westport to Wareham, so the SC does get hit. It might be where we set up if a hurricane approached. Nor'easters tend to send our photographers to heavyweights like Duxbury or Eastham.

In the picture above and the video below, you can see Westport using a bulldozer thingy to push the water off of East Beach Road.

Sometimes...

... we do a rapid fire one-two shot from the same vantage point.

Pilgrim Exploration Route

Via Laura Kelly...

This map shows the approximate routes that the Pilgrims took around Cape Cod between November 10th to Dec 16th 1620.

From: Maps of Early Massachusetts, by Lincoln A. Dexter 1979.

Notes:

- Bourne, even then, was flyover territory.

- The Mayflower, 300 years before beaches became recreational for most Americans but amazingly just like a July 2020 Saturday day tripper, suddenly had her smooth commute slow to a crawl as she moved through Bourne. She didn't hit Cape traffic, she just had rudder problems.

- Corn Hill was actually a dune/bluff with burial mounds on them when the Pilgrims visited. Some were graves, some were corn. The Pilgrims raided these, gaining the enmity of the local Nausets. They paid up 6 months later, with Squanto as an intermediary.

- Saquish may likely have been an island when the Pilgrims sailed by.

- Truman Capote lived on Clark's Island for a summer. Local legend said he wrote In Cold Blood there, although it was actually Breakfast At Tiffany's. He used to be rowed into Duxbury for supplies, shading himself with a parasol.

- Clark's Island is where the first on-land religious service went down. It happened at Pulpit Rock. Local historian snobbery requires calling this "the real Plymouth Rock."

- The Pilgrims were supposed to go to Virginia. Pollock Rip Shoal (3 miles east of Monomoy) teamed with rotten New England weather to turn them around and keep them in Massachusetts.

- No one knows exactly how deep into Duxbury Bay the Pilgrims went, but Duxbury Beach (especially the bay side) is a fair cutoff point for their northern terminus. The Mayflower was anchored off of Saquish, and they went into Duxbury Bay on a shallop.

- If you ever go to First Encounter Beach, your enjoyment of the amenities there may be enhanced by knowing that the "first encounter" involved theft and gunfire. The English had been in these waters before, and were not averse to kidnapping or shooting the occasional native. The locals fired a few arrows at the Pilgrims, who shot back with guns and chased them into the woods. The English then stole some corn and beans.

- Samoset had a better first encounter. He was from Maine, had picked up some English from fishermen, and walked- pretty much nude- into Plymouth, greeting the Pilgrims in English. They didn't fully trust him until he started asking for beer.

- The maps above and below show the Manomet and Scusset Rivers, which would be merged to form the Cape Cod Canal. Myles Standish was an early proponent of a Cape Cod Canal.