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The 2018 to 2019 academic year was an eventful one for The George-Anne Reflector Magazine. We posted every day (well, mostly every day) online, and we created two beautiful glossy magazines designed by The George-Anne Media Group’s talented design staff. We published cool features and added a new quiz section to our website. We also saw the return of Miscellany Magazine for the Arts, along with great pieces by students.

I’m thankful that I was able to serve as the magazine division’s editor-in-chief this year. Being the EIC of Reflector and Miscellany had its ups and downs, but I think we accomplished a lot this year, and I’m glad I was a part of it.

To celebrate the end of this year, I’ve gathered a few “greatest hits” from each of our staffers:

• By Noelle Walker – Football, Family and Faith: The Life of Chad Lunsford
• By Julia Fechter – Clavelia speaking: The story of one of Georgia Southern’s first African-American students
• By Christina McKinley – Southern Limelight: Rachel Hartmann
• By Ashton Christianson – Step into step: An look inside the RAC’s new Step and Sculpt class
• By Brett Daniel – GroupMe: Innocent Study Tool or Breeding Ground for Cheating?
• By Akaria Stewart – What happens to your clothes after you donate them to Goodwill?
• By Tony Ortega – Game Day with GS softball player Mekhia Freeman
• By Alexi Simpson – A look inside the NAACP at Georgia Southern University
• By me, Blakeley Bartee – A Transylvanian lost in Statesboro: Meet “Rocky Horror” director Megan Bowen

Thank you for reading our content and watching us grow. I hope you’ll stick around next year, as Noelle Walker takes on the role of editor-in-chief for the magazines division. This isn’t a goodbye from me – you’ll see me this fall as the Miscellany editor.

Best wishes,

Blakeley Bartee

Editor-in-Chief 2018-2019

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Possible spoilers ahead!

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These two characters are surprisingly similar. Try your luck at figuring out who said these quotes – Disney’s unethical fashion icon, or the cruel queen of “Game of Thrones.”

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Seni Alabi-Isama, owner of local barbecue restaurant The Smoque Pit, is no stranger to business in Main Street Statesboro. He started with a computer shop on East Main Street, then moved on to restaurants on South Main Street – first, South & Vine, which later burned down, and then 441 Public Kitchen and Bar, which he ran for about a year, and finally, the Smoque Pit.

“Every business I’ve ever done has been on Main Street,” Alabi-Isama said. “I’ve been a believer in Main Street long before there was anything called a Blue Mile. I always said, if I do any business in this town, it’s going to be on Main Street.”

Alabi-Isama said the local restaurants in Statesboro are a close-knit group. He’s a big fan of Eagle Creek Brewery, Gnat’s Landing and other small businesses.

“We all look out for each other wherever we can,” Alabi-Isama said. “Whether it be Three Tree – we use their coffee whenever we can here, and they’ll use our meats for different things in their restaurant. Al at Gnat’s Landing is a big supporter of ours, and we’re certainly a supporter of his.”

***

Alabi-Isama left the restaurant in the afternoon to pick up supplies from Ellis Farm Fresh Meats on West Main Street, where Angie Ellis Edenfield handed him a paper bag of items. She said the meat market is a family business that has been running for about 53 years, and they began working with the Smoque Pit when the restaurant opened.

At the meat market, Alabi-Isama pet the puppy that was leashed in the front entrance. He said he discovered Ellis Farm Fresh Meats while he was a student at Georgia Southern University, where he majored in English.

“I love the brisket, that’s my special item that I like,” Edenfield said of the restaurant. “And sometimes, when [Alabi-Isama] comes to get his meat and items from us, he brings me a sandwich.”

***

Alabi-Isama, born in Nigeria, said he moved to the United States when he was 5 or 6 years old. He said his mother and grandmother were great cooks, and he’s been cooking for many years.

“I’ve cooked my whole life. Food is something that just makes sense to me,” Alabi-Isama said.

Yet, the Smoque Pit owner was not always a barbecue chef. He only began cooking barbecue after he set his eyes on the building where he later opened the restaurant.

“I’m not a barbecue guy by trade,” Alabi-Isama said. “It’s just, I thought this place looked like a barbecue joint, and you can’t open a barbecue joint without barbecue, so I figured I should learn how to make barbecue.”

Alabi-Isama tried as much barbecue as he could in the time leading up to the restaurant’s opening. At home, however, he said he cooks a lot of Caribbean and Creole food, with plenty of pasta, fruits and vegetables.

His old restaurant, South & Vine, offered an eclectic menu, with shrimp and grits, gumbo, roast chicken, fresh fish, steaks, burgers and pasta. He said all of the food in the restaurant was handmade, from the buns to the pickles and ketchup.

Alabi-Isama remembers the exact date South & Vine burned down: Aug. 26, 2014.

When he was asked what happened after South & Vine burned down, he sighed.

“Tried to find normal, you know? Your entire daily routine gets turned to ash, so you find a way,” Alabi-Isama said.

***

At the Smoque Pit, two servers and a few other staff members worked the first shift of the day. The two servers, Morgan Ray and Payton Ross, are both GS students.

Ross said the restaurant patrons are, for the most part, nice.

“I mean, there’s no tipping policy, but people will sometimes, and that’s just like wow, you didn’t need to do that, but thanks,” Ross said.

Despite the no-tipping policy, Ray said they are paid fairly – the servers receive a percentage of the sales from the day. She also said she knows some customers by name.

“We definitely do have regulars,” Ray said. “Most of them, we know by name, or they know us by name, and we’ve memorized their orders.”

***

The restaurant, Alabi-Isama said, has patrons of all ages. He said everyone likes barbecue. However, he described the local business economy as one where a business must find its niche to survive.

“It is an economy that, it’s sort of a double-sided coin here. You have things that center around the university and the student population that can thrive, but the Statesboro community is still not a tremendously wealthy community,” Alabi-Isama said.

Alabi-Isama said he doesn’t go out for dinner often. However, when he does, he said he tries to only go to local restaurants.

Local restaurants in Statesboro, Alabi-Isama said, stick together to compete with the restaurants that belong to larger chains.

Alabi-Isama said, “There’s no point in looking at someone as an adversary in a town this small, where there’s so few independent restaurants. We kind of have to stick together, because the large chain operations, they … can outlast us and outspend us all day. So what’s the point of beating on each other, when they’re out there doing a plenty good job on their own?”

Just inside the metal-roofed building, there are wooden ducks, jewelry, a chandelier, Elvis Presley memorabilia, old glass bottles, clocks, records, ceramics, fishing supplies, taxidermy, a player piano, hot wheels, miniature ships, an old stove, hats, tennis rackets, antique irons, paintings, signs, posters, figurines, canes, deer heads wearing hats, knives, pots and army patches and canteens. This is the first room of the store. Under the sign that reads “Landfill,” a doorway leads to the rest.

Vincent “Vinny” Castellano owns My Cousin Vinny’s Bargain Barn—officially an antique furniture store, though he calls it a “junk store”—located on Highway 301 in Statesboro, Georgia. The store, a two-story structure surrounded by scattered outdoor merchandise, has been open for about 15 years.

When I walked into the store to interview Castellano, the Georgia Southern – Georgia State football game was playing on the radio by the cash register, but the chair at the counter was empty. Castellano was outside, talking to a man with gray hair.

Displayed by the counter in a frame was a newspaper clipping from The Statesboro Herald, which told the story of Castellano and his neighbor saving a woman from a house fire in 2013.

When Castellano came in and we started talking, the man from outside walked in.

“Thank you, God bless you. Have a good—and tell her I’m very sorry about her loss, alright?” Castellano said to the man.

“I’ll respect that,” the man said.

“Thank you. I’ll see you later,” Castellano said.

“See you later. Bye-bye,” the man said, walking outside.

“Take care, be safe,” Castellano said. He turned to me. “He’s a great guy. He comes in here, he gave me knives once, he brings great stuff. He says, you don’t like this, throw it out. But I do a lot of giving away, too. I give people stuff when they have no money. College kids, I give them a break and stuff, because a lot of you guys really have it hard.”

Castellano and his three daughters moved to Georgia from New York, where he said he worked for a phone company for many years. He began buying, fixing and selling items in New York before opening his store in Statesboro.

***

One of his daughters, Krysta Castellano, said she ran the store before she left Statesboro to attend the University of Georgia as a financial planning major. She graduated high school early by taking online classes, which allowed her to run the store full time from until she completed her associate degree. However, she began helping at the store before she worked there full-time.

“Dad opened it in 2003, and I want to say, when I was 15 or 14, I remember being picked up from school before I could drive, and Mom would drop me off there, and I would be there from after school until close,” Krysta said.

Krysta said the store has always been a family-run business. Both her older and younger sister ran the store at different times, as well as her mother prior to the Castellanos’ divorce.

“It definitely was a good experience, being able to run a business, family-owned, and learning the in and outs of buying and selling and pricing,” Krysta said.

She said some of the most interesting store items she remembers were the antique clocks, family heirlooms people sold, jewelry and a mummified monkey.

One of the challenging aspects of running the business, Krysta said, was pricing the items to ensure the store made a profit, as well as whether they were legitimate.

“You do have to look up what things are going for, and if it’s actually real or fake, because a lot of times, people are going to come in there and try to talk things up and act like they’re something that they’re not,” Krysta said.

Krysta said her father always had an interest in buying and selling collectables, as well as fixing and changing old items. However, his career in selling antiques and other items began as a hobby.

“When he opened the business, it was just a hobby. He, and this sounds kinda bad, just opened it out of the blue. I don’t think he really talked to my mother at the time,” Krysta said. “Wasn’t too good at the moment, but it’s just something he’s always had a passion for. He’s always loved antiques, like collecting things, so he just opened a business, and it’s been running for 15-plus years, so he must be doing something right.”

***

Before I had time to ask Castellano any of the questions I had written down, he began telling me there were ghosts in his store.

“You know, it was weird, a guy came in here the other day with a rosary bead on, and I’m like, ‘Oh, you wear a rosary bead?’ Because I always wear a cross, and he was like, ‘Yeah, it keeps the spirits away.’ He went upstairs, and things started happening,” Castellano said. He motioned toward a wooden cross hanging on the wall by the cash register. “That thing came off the wall and hit me on the head. It came apart and hit me on the head.”

He said a woman told him an old mattress he had in a baby crib upstairs was haunted with an unsettled spirit and that he would need to get rid of it.

“And I was hearing things up there, so I was like, oh my God. I threw it out. I burned it,” Castellano said. “And after that, nothing happened. It’s just crazy stuff that happens. I had a cat like that. It freaked me out.”

The cat, he explained, was a skull of a cat he found under someone’s house while digging around for old glass bottles.

Castellano said he hopes to retire in Costa Rica or Brazil. However, he is unsure of what will become of the store when he leaves.

“I don’t know yet. I might even keep the store and have someone run it. The only problem is people like to deal with me directly,” Castellano said.

***

Two customers walked around the store, looking at the merchandise on the shelves. They were regulars, and Castellano knew them well. Dylan Bragg, a young man wearing glasses, said he comes to the store several times per week.

“It’s where cool stuff goes to retire,” Bragg said, explaining that he has purchased instruments, furniture, albums and more from the store.

The other customer, Ryan George, said he started coming to the store almost every day when he moved to Statesboro two years ago. He said he has found boats, motors and pictures at the store.

“I’m a regular. I come up here just to hang out, look at everything that he gets new in,” George said.

Castellano said George knows the store’s inventory better than he does.

Although Castellano has several regulars, he said many of his customers are people in the Georgia Southern University community, including students and parents.

“I get all different people. I get a lot of out-of-towners. Believe it or not, a lot of my clientele now is students’ parents,” Castellano said.

Castellano and I walked through the doorway to the rest of the store, where he keeps furniture, paintings and a wide variety of odds and ends. He talked about pieces he has built, like the chair he made with an old engine at its base. He pointed at a corner of the room with tapes and a tape player.

“That’s an 8-track player. I probably got 200 of those 8-track tapes. If people have an old car and they want to get 8-tracks, because, you know, a lot of the old classics have 8-track players. But even the truck I drive every day is a 1982, and it runs great,” Castellano said.

He gestured toward a brown sofa.

“This couch, believe it or not, it’s called a Duncan Phyfe couch, if you look this up on the internet, they go for 4,000 to 10,000 dollars. That’s how much that couch is worth. And you know what I put it for? 300 bucks,” Castellano said.

“Why?” I asked.

Castellano said, “Because I got a good deal on it, and if I pass it on—I had a college student come in, and she loved one that was pink, and I sold that for 250. And she’s like, ‘Oh my God,’ she goes, ‘Do you know-?’ I go, ‘Yeah, I know what it’s worth.’ See, if I give a good deal to someone, they’ll always come back.”