Rocky Mount

For Graham's first shot of the Pfizer vaccine, we were able to get an appointment in Rocky Mount at a CVS. First off, let me note how well the process was designed and administered at this site, particularly in comparison to the Walgreen's I went to in Greensboro. I suspect it had more to do with CVS vs Walgreen's than the specific locations. All the questions were asked up front, in the app, so that when we got there we just had to check in on my phone, go up to a table in the front of the store and have Graham's ID checked and name marked off, and walk to the back of the store. Graham was vaccinated 5 minutes after walking into the store.

By contrast I had to fill out a couple of long forms and then wait for an hour or so for my turn to come up. It could be that everyone is getting better at managing the process, or any number of things. It's all good.

It was about 6 and I was tired, so I decided I wanted a fountain soda from the Sheetz next door to the CVS. Before we went in, Graham and I speculated on what portion of the people inside the store would not have masks on, and their demographic. Based on recent samples, I guessed 25%, mostly white men.

I was wrong. It was closer to 40%, all Black youth. A couple of them were clinically obese, buying a bunch of cookies and other shit. When they got up to the register, one of them, maybe 16 years old, argued with the woman at the register nastily about the price of something and then demonstratively whipped out a roll of bills to show how he was going to pay. The source of his funds is up for speculation.

I had never been to Rocky Mount, and downtown was only 8 minutes away, so Graham agreed to investigate. A town of about 54,000, Rocky Mount has a pretty large historic downtown, but it is particularly forlorn and abandoned. Maybe a quarter of the buildings are occupied by some sort of enterprise. From the exterior, it at least doesn't yet appear to be entirely falling down, but the forward-looking economics of the place are far from clear. There are a couple of clearly state- or municipally-supported events facilities. The biggest building in town, on one edge of downtown, is the municipal services building. On the other end of town, maybe a quarter of a mile outside of town, is an improbably shiny mini-skyscraper that says "DMV" on it. A little interweb sleuthing shows that NC has moved DMV headquarters from Raleigh to Rocky Mount, as of December 2020. Which is brilliant on a few scores

1. We are now in a work from home era. What's with the shiny new building?

2. It's off to the side of a dying downtown. If you're going to build a new building with 500 FTEs (theoretically), why not stick it in the middle of the downtown

3. Are these people really moving to Rocky Mount? All of them?

Again, this is why Republicans rightly question putting too many capital allocation and management decisions in the hands of bureaucrats. This doesn't seem to have been a smart one. Who knows, maybe it will work. Maybe the DMV move to Rocky Mount will bring some good jobs and spread income around the state, and support a small ecosystem of suppliers. But it doesn't look smart right now for anyone except the contractor who built the building, or whoever owned it.