I picked up my jeep today. after shipping it from my former unit in Germany in October I have had to rent a car to get around since being in the US. Driving down to Charlotte SC from NC on I95, my wife and I passed a lot of billboards advertising “South of the Border” a rest stop/ attraction/inn/etc. Anyone who has driven on the stretch of I95 through South and North Carolina probably knows what i mean.
They have billboards every half mile or so, and they’re pretty cute or funny. They all feature “Pedro”. As you can see on the link some of them use cartoon like mexican-english like “Sommtheeng Deeferent”, I saw one that wrote “with” like “weeeth”. I commented to my wife that if I were mexican or latino I might be a teeny bit offended. She said that was being too PC.
I agree with her, but hell, I liked the Taco Bell Dog and he got canned. Heck, as a kid I though the Frito Banditowas cool, too.
What do you think? Obviously the signs are up and this place must be popular. It looked pretty cool, though I didn’t stop in it.
A side note: I like to listen to talk radio while driving. I was scanning channels after we had picked up “Sea Biscuit” (yes, I named my car) and the wife was driving the rent a car. I listened to a talk show on AM for a minutes in South Carolina where the host sounded like a Rush Limbaugh wannabe. He was bashing Obama on something, I forget the subject, but he referred to him as “Count Chocula”. PC or not, I thought that was just wrong.
Having driven I-95 north and south more times than I can recall, I know the signs of which you speak. I am not of hispanic descent, but I might be offended just because most of the signs are incredibly lame or downright stupid.
Plus we stopped there once. Had the worst burger of my life there. But we had to buy a Pedro sombrero ashtray for a friend who was turning 50. He quit smoking shortly thereafter. Coincidence? I think not…
I was a little offended by a Mexican restaurant named ‘Ponchos and Gringos’ knowing what connotation the word ‘gringo’ sometimes has. Of course, being in a defunct Pizza hut and then being torn down a couple of months later to build a Comfort Inn, I wasn’t too upset about it.
It’s a fairly recent disturbing trend in talk radio - the hosts try to skate as close as possible to outright rascism without crossing the line. Even when the issue at hand has no relation to race, if a black person is involved the racial terminology comes out.
What, you didn’t stop to take a picture of your Jeep between the legs of the giant Pedro sign?
I stopped there for gas in 2006 on the way back from a job interview in Lake City, SC. I didn’t get the job, but I got a really interesting picture in front of the Pedro sign. The store attached to the gas station was called “El Drug Store”. The whole place was run down enough that I opted to drive up the road to a truck stop to use the restroom.
It didn’t look to bad when we passed it, but as I said we didn’t stop. I was following my wife and she had the GPS on the way back. I honestly thought she’d pull in for a bathroom break and general curiousity since we talked about the place as we passed it going down. It looked pretty empty, but then its not tourist season.
It wasn’t crowded at all or anything. I’m wondering though, what could near enough to it for it to warrant the motel? Just asking, I’m new to the area. I am kinda looking forward to finding out about fishing and camping around the Carolinas. (not campground camping with bathrooms and stuff, but out in the woods camping.)
As a roadside attraction junkie, I made a point of hitting South of The Border. I didn’t eat there, but I had fun checking out the kitsch. One plus was that they had Blenheim Ginger Ale in one of the shops.
We stopped there in 1985 on our way to Orlando for Disney World. Biggest tourist trap ever…only half the stores were open, there were about six people walking around. It was like the Seven Worse Dwarves: Dirty, Dusty, Empty, Creepy, Cheesy, Corny and Shameless.
