tiendas, té, y telefonos

last night, my phone died. i was talking to my mom and it shut off. no warning beeps. nothing. i figured the batter was dead, so i plugged it in, but it wouldn't charge. the screen wouldn't light up (but the keys would!) after about 45 minutest i gave up.

off to verizon tomorrow, i thought. and this morning i headed to chevy chase to my nearest verizon store. there i got a lovely new motorola phone, which sort of looks like a razor, only black and thicker. well, really its thinner, but deeper, if that makes sense. anyway, it seems to work just fine (and infinitely better than the dead one). but of course since no one can get the old phone to turn on, i've lots all my numbers. so if you are sad i haven't called you back or something, its probably because your number has now been lost to the evil hand of technology. best way to exact revenge is to use technology to give me your number again. but enough of that...on with the story!

my plan was to go to verizon, then to my local (not-so-social) safeway for some grocery items. but as i left verizon, i noticed trader joe's across the street. for years i have heard of the wonders of trader joe's. i've never stepped foot inside one though. until today. and i, quite honestly, was a little disappointed. maybe i'm just cheap, but i expected better deals. the only cheapness i was amazed at was the veggie burgers. $2.69 is damn good. but the selection was lousey. in the end i decided on fake chicken nuggets and mcribbs. roll your eyes, yes, but back when i was a meat eater nothing excited me more than the McLean McDonalds advertising that the "McRibb is Back!" I was even known to eat them on the way to track meets. Hm. No wonder I could never keep up with Heidi Knapp. Anyway, again, back to the story. Most disappointingly, there was no cheap wine! Isn't that the whole point of Trader Joe's? In the end I got a lovely selection of things that Safeway does not carry. Maté, quinoa, tempeh, organic veggie soups, organic rasins, white cheddar mac & cheese, etc. But I don't think I'll be going back. It seemed just like whole foods, only with about 10% of the selection. I'll stick to safeway for now, perhaps with periodic wholefoods runs for those crazy grains i like so much.

goodies from joe's

Trader Joe's on the other hand did add quite a bit to my internal fieldnotes contributing to an ethnography of grocery stores. I guess i first thought of food stores as anthropological sites, back in the rez days. i was always so intrigued by city market. the giant bags of blue corn flour, and raw wool, stacked next to rows and rows of koolaid. the new york post cards. my beloved salad bar. it was an amazing place. contrasting your average rural supermarket with a Dominick's in Chicago, Shoprite in New York, or Safeway in DC is pretty fascinating. Not to mention throwing in a C town town. In the end Trader Joe's ranks somewhere between whole foods and A&P, but it definitely has a granola appeal the others don't. Sure wholefoods seems to be aimed at the same crowd, but I'd argue they're catering more toward the post-granola yuppie bunch that now votes with their checkbooks rather than making their voices heard in the streets. But that's just an initial impression.

I thought of Andy today too, and the mental schema of grocery stores that we expect. I clearly had problems today. I missed the baskets as I walked in, and took one from a stack behind a checkout. the checker gave me a strange look. not stern, a little confused, but more of a "why the hell are you doing that?" sort of thing. I wandered around, back to front basically (produce last), and couldn't find what i was looking for. I basically went through the store 3 times before i was satisfied with my choices. i got up to the counter (with the same checker), and placed my basket to be rung up. i put my small tote-bag-ish purse on the counter to take out my wallet, and he just left all the food on the counter. did he think i was going to fit it all in that bag? i do like the idea they assume you'll bring your own bag. not even wholefoods does that (at least around here). i could see plastic bags hanging behind him. we had a bit of a stand off. i eventually put a few things in my tote bag, before he reached around the side and pulled out a paper bag. ah! there they are. so now i know. if only there were going to be a "next time."