The Gas Card Gospel

☕📰 03.22.25 The Saturday Rundown

This week’s Coffee with Steve stories—The Debt Lie, GratiTuesday, Milk and Music, and Finance Your Footlong—all orbit the same unspoken question: What are we really owed in this life? We were told hard work would pay off. That staying out of debt was holy. That institutions would protect us. But behind the myths, we see what actually happens: debt that lingers like a ghost, commissions spent on medical bills, houses sold before the public ever sees them, and food delivered with a side of personal loans.

And yet, we keep showing up. We find beauty in busted flooring stores. We celebrate the people who quietly hold communities together. We write through the ache and walk through the pain—crutches, cats, and all. This week’s thread is rebellion disguised as persistence. Not because the system gave us anything—but because we’re building anyway.

💭 This Week’s Big Ask:

👉 In Reality Bites, there's a moment where Lelaina, broke and out of options, gets handed a $5 gas card from her dad. At first, it's a punch to the pride. But later, she flips it—buys smokes for her friends, resells them for cash, and scrapes together just enough to keep going.

It’s messy. Resourceful. Kind of brilliant.
So this week I want to know:

What’s your “gas card” moment?
The one where you flipped rock bottom into something real.
When no one was coming to save you, and you made something anyway—out of grit, chaos, or sheer will.

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PULLING FROM THE WICKED MOXIE ARCHIVE

The very first Wicked Moxie spotlight before I knew what I was doing: assistant manager Sebastian Franks shared how Milk Street Studio blends historical industrial charm with modern creativity. Remnants of its past, like an orange “Flooring” sign and repurposed carpet, coexist with acoustic panels, instruments, and jam rooms. Owner Kurt Eddins prioritized sustainability, soundproofing, and community relations, even meeting every neighbor before launching. More than a music venue, Milk Street Studio aspires to be a community hub.

Next week, watch for Tokens Taproom, Skeletone Records, and Seacoast Outright. Yep, you read that right: not one, not two, but three Wicked Moxie essays.

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#GratiTuesday:

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🎧 Nothing But Rent and Guitars | A Playlist by Coffee with Steve

This is what Reality Bites sounds like 25 years later—after the gigs fell through, the debt piled up, and the dreams cracked at the edges.

Brandi Carlile and Eddie Vedder hold the center while indie folk, Americana, and 90s grunge crash into each other like saints in work boots. This playlist is about holding onto your soul when the world keeps asking for your receipts.

I keep thinking about the gas card scene—that moment where all the posturing stops and vulnerability bleeds through. It’s what happens when idealism meets infrastructure. When poetry crashes into a credit limit. When “do what you love” turns into “how do I get home?”

The film gave us the raw ache of idealism cracking under capitalism, the messiness of twenty-something identity, and the deeply uncool courage it takes to care about anything in a world that keeps telling you not to. These songs—anchored by Carlile and Vedder—pick up where Lelaina, Troy, Vickie, and Sammy left off. The angst is still here, but it’s slower now, less performative. It’s grown into something quieter, heavier, and more persistent—like rent, grief, or love you can’t shake.

Every track carries a piece of that gas card moment—the weight of dignity stretched too thin, the tension between rebellion and survival. You can hear it in The Joke, in Everything Is Free, in the ragged grace of Society. These aren’t songs of defeat; they’re songs for when you’re still trying, even when trying feels like begging.

This playlist soundtracks what happens after the temp jobs turn into careers you never asked for, and the dreams you were so sure of start to evolve or evaporate. It’s full of voices that don’t just question the system—they mourn it, survive it, and sometimes, beautifully, rise above it.

The gas card is first offered as a leash—a gift from her father that stings. But then? Lelaina flips it. She hustles. She buys cigarettes for her friends and resells them for cash. Suddenly, the card isn’t just desperation—it’s resourcefulness. It’s grit with lipstick on. It’s the micro-capitalist hustle of someone who’s been told she’s worth nothing without a résumé or a 401(k).

That moment is the ethos of Nothing But Rent and Guitars. It’s what every track here embodies—songs from people handed broken systems, told to make do, and who built something anyway. Whether it’s trading smokes, selling guitars, writing songs no one asked for, or singing in rooms no one paid for, these artists turned their gas cards into currency. This playlist doesn’t romanticize struggle—it dignifies the hustle, the flipping of pain into poetry. It says: you may not have power, but damn, you still have agency.

💬 Send me your grit anthem—the song that got you through when nothing else did.

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