“A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy.”
Wasn’t that the description of Long Island in some movie a while back? Ugh!
It’s definitely a cultural wasteland of strip malls, big box retailers and bland chain restaurants. Not to mention ugly cookie cutter houses, bad drainage and poor land use planning.
Guess where we went yesterday?
What should have been a pleasant day out for Salomé and I became a reminder of everything I hate about suburbia as we drove out to the father-in-law’s place in Bethpage so the kids could hang in the pool while we caught a movie. Instead, torrential downpours pushed them indoors to McDonald’s (they didn’t mind) while we wandered the many unsigned streets of eastern Nassau County trying to find a movie theater that Yahoo! Maps told us was to the right when it was actually to the left. It took a while to find our backup theater using my cell phone and Verizon Maps, but a wrong turn and the stupidest parking lot design ever for a relatively new movie theater meant strike two, and having wasted an hour driving in circles in the rain, we decided to just eat instead.
Only problem was finding somewhere that wasn’t fast food, an Irish pub, or strip mall Italian, which proved impossible — oddly, out of the seven Chinese restaurants we passed, all but two were out of business and one was take-out only — and we ended up at Chili’s.
Yes, Chili’s.
I. Hate. Long. Island.
