What NC Congressman is eating straight-up mayonnaise sandwiches?

Also in this week's Tiny Rabbit Holes: Shrinking sharks and an update on North Carolina’s Greatest Place™.

This is a Monday edition of the North Carolina Rabbit Hole, which means it’s for paying subscribers only. If you’re a free subscriber and would like to upgrade, you can do so by mashing the button below. You can find out more about what you’ll get and why I’m doing this here.

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A Follow Up To The Fake Gastonia TikTok

If you who only read Thursday’s Rabbit Hole in your email inbox, you missed an update! The woman at the end? The one who watched a TikTok about a fake version of Gastonia, then drove to Gastonia to experience its majestic mountains only to discover … Gastonia? She wrote back to me and talked a little more about why she did it. She says she genuinely made a snap decision without, you know, reading the comments or consulting Google. And, as you might have guessed, she’s not from around here.

Also, the TikTok guy who’s labeling gorgeous European destinations as North Carolina towns? He’s not slowing down.

Lastly, here: I see you all out here trying to copy this trend.

Which North Carolina Congressman Is Eating A Straight-Up Mayo Sandwich?

Folks, we love mayo here, don’t we? Well not as much as one of your elected representatives.

Kathryn Watson @kathrynw5

There are only 7 of them, if I'm counting correctly, we can figure out this mystery, guys

There are people all up in that reporter’s mentions with another screenshot from the Overheard DC Instagram account saying that it’s probably Madison Cawthorn. I’m hoping the mayo was Duke’s, and I’m guessing the bread was white. Anyway, let’s hope he didn’t eat it after shaking hands with Thom Tillis.

Condolences to Charlotte’s most beloved NFL team, the Buffalo Bills

I watched the crucial bits of every NFL playoff game this weekend, but I really got worked up over the end of the Chiefs-Bills game last night. If you missed it, 25 points were scored in the last 1:54 of regulation.

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

good thing there's not a more compelling visual representation of this

Alas, the Bills lost in overtime, which has to be a sad thing for the city of Charlotte.

Nikki Wolfe @Nikki704

Someone may need to check and make sure The Brickyard is still standing

One thing I learned early on is that Bills fans are fantastic. When I first moved to Charlotte in 2005, I sought out a Browns Backers club. Watching Cleveland football with them was misery. Another time, I ended up in a Bills bar on a Sunday, and it was joyous. After every first down, there was high-fiving and cheering. People were genuinely happy to be watching Buffalo play football without having to be in Buffalo.

And yes, there are a lot of Buffalo expats in Charlotte.

LaMelo’s Burner Account @TheTrolleyWalk

Condolences to the millions and millions of Bills fans that inexplicably call Charlotte home

In 2019, more than 23,000 people moved to North Carolina from New York. The only states that supplied more new North Carolinians were Virginia, South Carolina, and Florida. In particular, something like 257 people moved from Erie County, New York to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina in 2019, per the Census Bureau. Proportionally, that’s a lot. I could go on, but people in western New York know that North Carolina is the first stop on I-77 where you don’t have to deal with extreme cold and God Is Angry levels of snowfall. No wonder they’re all here and cheering for the Bills, which imported a Panthers coach and several players and have managed to be more successful than the Panthers as of late.

More Tiny Rabbit Holes

• North Carolina’s sharks are getting smaller.

• From The Assembly, Durham is home to the last Black-owned insurance company in American. It’s about to disappear.

• A sewer fact!

Hayden Clarkin @the_transit_guy

Despite having nearly the same populations, Raleigh, NC has nearly 2.5x as many sewer main miles than Oakland, CA with 188 and 472 people per sewer main mile, respectively. Urban sprawl is unsustainable.

• The Outer Banks got its first snow accumulation in four years.

• You know that scene in Tommy Boy where Chris Farley doesn’t grasp the fact that there are at least two cities in the United States named Columbus? A version of that happened in North Carolina:

  Colin Campbell @RaleighReporter

  Today in "NC place names are confusing," apparently there are errors in state budget grants, i.e. $9 million directed to the small mountain town of Columbus when it was supposed to go to Columbus County in Eastern NC #ncpol #ncga

• The NCDOT was out here salting the roads and brining your Twitter feed last week:

NCDOT @NCDOT

Yo DOT, let's kick it! Alright stop, Put down the phone & listen Ice is back & will make the roads glisten DOT ain’t taking this lightly, We’re out in force daily & nightly If there was a problem, Yo, we’ll salt it Sit back on your couch While our forces resolve it Ice Ice baby❄️

A New Edition of North Carolina’s Greatest Place™

I’m late on this, but I ran the numbers through the end of 2020 and guess what everyone? North Carolina’s Greatest Place™ is still Yancey County.

To recap here, I calculate this by tallying up the zip codes of all of our paid Rabbit Hole supporters, divide them into counties, then adjust them by population. Hence, this is why Charlotte’s home county can have 54 subscribers to this newsletter, and yet lose to one guy who signed up in Burnsville. Even so, Mecklenburg County made some impressive gains, picking up 14 points in December and catapulting past Caswell County into second place. But! Burnsville remains North Carolina’s Greatest Place™, which means you all get ANOTHER BESPOKE YANCEY COUNTY MEME:

Real ones know.

Fourteen points in a month is still impressive, right? Sure, but not impressive enough to win the inaugural Rabbit Hole Rookie of the Month award, which is awarded to the county that picks up the most points in a single month. That high honor goes to Orange County, the home of Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough. Thanks to its 16-point performance, you, the reader, now get a custom Chapel Hill-themed meme:

Enjoy your week, everyone.