WAWA vs. Sheetz

Wawa vs. Sheetz: Isn't That Convenient?

Both So Awesome, but You Must Choose

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By Hank Stuever

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 27, 2009

All the wild-fowl sang them to him,

In the moorlands and the fenlands,

In the melancholy marshes;

Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,

Mahng, the loon, the wild goose, Wawa . . .

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

"The Song of Hiawatha"

Wawa in the morning, Sheetz at night.

Sheetz in the morning, Wawa at night.

They're just convenience stores, you shouldn't think too hard about them. (Fair warning: This story thinks too hard about them.)

By late July, this much came clear: Some of us were going no place exotic in this, the bummer summer. There wasn't the time or there wasn't the money. Things keep not happening, or the wrong things happened. We never got farther than the Sheetz convenience store off the interstate. Stood there paralyzed by the choices in a Wawa -- what kind of chips, what kind of sandwich, what kind of soda, what kind of frozen chocolate thing? What kind of life? Which? What?

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