Bart Giordano

INTRODUCING FUC-EES I have a business plan and I would like investors. Six locations. Every one sits four hundred yards past the California state line on Interstate 15, Interstate 40, Interstate 10, Interstate 8 and Interstate 80. Arizona and Nevada. You will see the sign before you see the border. And a seventh, which is the flagship. Stateline, Nevada. Right at the edge of Lake Tahoe, close enough that the second floor deck looks straight out over the water. You drive out of California, cross an invisible line, and there it is. Alpine lake, pine trees, a hundred and twelve gas pumps and a full service tire shop. That one has slots. Because it is Nevada and there is no reason not to. You can use a clean bathroom, play a hand of blackjack, eat at an all you can eat buffet featuring nine things Sacramento has outlawed, get four new tires fitted, and walk out having won a gas generator. Nowhere else on the continent can you do all five of those in ninety minutes. That is not a truck stop. That is a civilisation. No refinery at Tahoe though. Even I have limits. Here is what we sell. Gasoline at the actual price. Not the California price. The six interstate locations get their own small refinery, because two of theirs are closing and somebody has to do it. Generators. An entire wing of them. California has banned the sale of new gas generators in a state that turns the power off on purpose, and I intend to be four hundred yards away when people work that out. Leaf blowers. Chainsaws. Pressure washers. Lawn mowers. Everything with a small gas engine, which is now everything California will not sell you. Those little green propane cylinders for camping. Banned there this year. We have a pallet. Fireworks. The real ones. Not Safe and Sane. The other kind. A plastic straw. In your hand. Immediately. No conversation about it. Incandescent bulbs. A whole wall of them, warm and humming and gloriously inefficient. Gas stoves, gas water heaters, gas anything. The gas department is enormous and the salespeople are unbearably smug. Dishwashers that finish in under an hour and showerheads with an opinion. Foie gras. Illegal there since 2012. I am not certain how many people want it, but that is rather the point. The candy aisle carries every dye and additive Sacramento has taken a run at, plus a dedicated cooler for whatever they added to the list since I wrote this. And a full sushi counter with actual sushi chefs, because Californians know sushi and it is the one thing on this list they will genuinely miss. Two hundred and forty gas pumps. Eighty-three bathroom stalls, cleaned hourly, and the bathrooms are the entire point, because anybody who has driven that stretch knows exactly what the alternative is. Brisket. Obviously brisket. And no, we are not carrying tri-tip. Tri-tip is a very good steak and it is not barbecue, and I will not be taking questions. Nothing in the building carries a Prop 65 warning, because we are not in California and nobody has to tell you the parking lot causes cancer. Now the part where I get sued. Yes. Buc-ee's will sue us. Their legal department has flattened bigger and better funded people than me over a beaver, a font, and a general vibe of Texas. I welcome it. I would like to be sued by Buc-ee's the way some people would like to meet Springsteen. But I would rather partner. Here is the pitch, gentlemen. You have forty odd locations and not one is within a thousand miles of the largest captive market in North America. Forty million people, an hour from a border, who cannot legally buy half of what you sell. We are not competing with you. We are the customs checkpoint. And the Tahoe location has slots and a view of the lake. Call me. I will bring the numbers and I will wear the good shoes. 🦋