Ok, Here’s the Deal With Speedway Grocery

Speedway Grocery, for those not following us on Instagram (what the hell, guys, follow us), has a funny sign:

Speedway Grocery, for everyone unfamiliar with the heart of Central Austin, is a convenience store that’s basically dead-center in the capital of the large state of Texas and absolutely deserves its place, mostly because its sign is so unintentionally funny. I don’t know if this is the best part, but a part that might be the best part is that those little marks above the “pee” in “Speedway” are actually letters affixed that spell out “NEW,” and I think they’re a fairly recent development from when the place changed ownership a year or two ago. Quite the rebrand. Other best parts:

The lack of capitalization of “ice.”

My strongest theory for this is that it was a mistake. My second-strongest theory is that someone thought a capital i would look too much like a lowercase L. My third-strongest theory is that it used to say “Rice.”

The fact it leads with “Sodas.”

Sodas? Those are the least useful of those five things! Especially for the current clientele! For those unfamiliar with Speedway Grocery, it sits on the North Campus side of 38^th Street, which divides North Campus and Hyde Park. North Campus is mostly grad students, Hyde Park is mostly Nimbys, there’s a gradient between the two (think Alsace-Lorraine).

Were this 1999, yes, some Nimby children would likely love to go use their allowance quarters to buy sodas at Speedway Grocery. But there’s no way Hyde Park kids are allowed to drink soda these days, and if they are they’re certainly not crossing the street to get it. And in North Campus, soda is only useful as a mixer and they’re going to a liquor store or HEB for that, because again, this is not 1999.

The name.

Speedway is the avenue intersecting 38^th where Speedway Grocery lies, and I love that. I love there being a street named Speedway. More streets named Speedway, please. It’s not Speedway Avenue, either. It’s just “Speedway.” Conflicting stories exist about why it has that name, but to my knowledge it has never been used as a speedway itself.

The name, again.

This isn’t a grocery store. It’s a convenience store. And while convenience stores are always hilarious, they’re their most hilarious when they’re disguised as bodegas. Speedway Grocery is a great place to buy an overpriced frozen pizza, an overpriced ice cream bar, a bunch of Lone Star, and plenty of sustenance in the event of a terrible winter storm that kills 700 Texans and leaves you scavenging at gas stations and places like Speedway Grocery for cans of beans and boxes of spaghetti. It is not a grocery. It is not a bodega. If you do your grocery shopping there you will have nutritional deficiencies. If you try to get a sandwich there it will make you question how said sandwich got there, and why pre-packaged sandwiches exist outside of bougie supermarkets.

The choice of those five things.

“Should we put eggs down?”

“Nope. Kids *love* sodas.”