What's Wrong with this Picture?

Last night at 10:30, I check my email and found a message from a friend in Atlantic City mentioning me that she saw my picture in The Press. I had absolutely no idea of why it would be there. It was too late to call and find out, so I made a flying run to WAWA, to no avail.

This morning on the way to do some shopping, I dropped of our papers at the recycle center. While WAWA didn't have The Press, the dumpster did and the picture about is what I found. So what's wrong with this picture? To be honest, nothing is particularly wrong, but I wanted to write about it, so let's get picky. :-)

I guess I would have to start with the fact that I'm probably breaking copyright laws by publishing it here, but hey, I had no idea that the picture was even being taken. No one interviewed me or asked my permission and if I was in a witness protection program, copyright violations would be the least of my worries. So Press of AC, if you want me to take it down, just let me know. I'll be happy to remove the picture, the link to your site, and be even happier to have something else to blog about.

What else can I say? Well, I remember thinking as I left that Tony was in a particularly cordial mood. Now don't get me wrong. The Barnegat staff is always cordial. It was just that this time it was to the extent that I made particular note of it.

Obviously, he knew the photographer was there, but I didn't. Now I know he wasn't hiding behind a postage stamp and I probably should have seen him. I'm glad it's been years since I was a store detective. It would be hard to live that one down.

Let's move on to the headline and the story. The gist of the story is that the downtown merchants feel that it will reduce foot traffic to their stores and hurt their business. I tend to doubt that is the case. In the 30+ years I've lived in Barnegat, I can count on one hand the number of times we went from the post office to another business downtown. In most cases the business was the reason for our visit downtown and the post office was an afterthought.

The one exception to that was one time when we were at the post office we smelled something good coming from the Hurricane House across the street. Even then we didn't make the 50 foot walk, but we did make it a point to stop there the following week to eat. However, we were disappointed in the food that time and if the post office wasn't there, we would have been better off.

The article doesn't make mention of how residents feel about the move. I can only speak for myself, but since I'm moving to NH, it doesn't really matter much. If I was staying, I would be in favor of the move. As far as I'm concerned, the current location actually makes for traffic problems. Getting in and out is a problem and the parking lot is too small for the amount of traffic it handles. I've been in 3 parking lot fender benders in my 30+ years here and two of them were at the post office.

So to summarize, there is really not much wrong with the picture unless of course, if you feel that this blog entry is what's wrong with it.