Velociworld

Outback Crab Shack

I live in the freaking boonies, but civilization encroacheth, inexorably. I still have the Outback Crab Shack about ten miles down state road 13, however. That is still the boonies. Nestled alongside a creek off the St Johns River, it is an oasis of crudity in an otherwise uncivilized world.

The Shack is surrounded by nothingness, like a Camus novel, and yet folks are drawn there, like sandgnats to my tearducts. A lonely drive along the river road, passing nary a car, will deposit you into a Buford Pusser like world at the Shack. Great food (don't eat the fried, it sucks, get some oysters or crabs) ensconced in a huge ramshackle building. The crowd is eclectic: bikers, families, grandparents, teens. All come to revel in a lush environment more akin to a Tarzan movie than any notion of Florida. It is like happening upon a couple of huts in a clearing in Darkest Africa.

There are docks (well, queasy floating docks) in the creek, for many of the crowd are just off the river, and the sport of the day is spotting gators, for they sulk and brood among the hydrilla and water lilies that choke the creek. They are surprisingly not aggressive, given the foodstuffs tossed to them, however I suppose the equal number of rocks and stones heaved their way make them cautious.

If you sit outside raccoons approach your table for scraps, oppossum nose up out of curiosity to sniff one's ankles. It is actually like camping in a way, only the ferals are more fearless.

There is live music most days, not dancing music as a rule, but bikers will dance to anything, except blogmeet music.

(Nota bene: the next time I organize a blogmeet I'm going to hire a chamber orchestra, or Joe Savage, so the preening strummers will get off their hemorrhoid cushions and come party with the rest of us. Because there ain't no groupies at a blogmeet, and there sure as hell ain't no mosh pit at an acoustic set. However, if they insist on bringing geetars I shall place the pimp hat upside down at their feetses, and collect nickels and quarters and the errant dollar bill, which I shall then use to defray my room costs).

So the Shack kicks total ass. And in the grand scheme of blogmeets, since I brought them up, it would be the perfect dinner choice. Verdant , fecund locale, wild creatures not unlike ourselves (inquisitive, not toilet-trained), gators and snakes to covet the hides of, deck you can spit upon.

This is all concomitant with the fact I will be baching it this weekend, and I always need a place to go to ponder the next meet. I think I will liveblog from the Shack Saturday, and maybe post a pic or two.