Grocery weirdos rise up
How grateful am I that The Haul exists? Something I had considered my own narrow focus—grocery by lottery—also turns out to be a pursuit for other weirdos. Many thanks to Jesse and Abby for the nourishment and/or artificial crab meat product.
Is it hyperbolic to state that my life's foundation is one of bargain shopping? Or am I being overly dramatic for the sake of The Haul's devoted fanbase, who are, I can only guess, a combination of thrillseekers lost in a supermarket, bemused omnivores, and fans of mercantile sociological critique?
But it's not embellishment, as some of my earliest memories involve rolling around a fluorescently lit Pic 'N' Save with my mother, ever watchful for some cheap novelty that could be afforded with her inadequate spending money. We may have been poor, but I never felt like we were: What's more American than that?
Before changing their name to McFrugal's and eventually being swallowed up by Big Lots, Pic 'N' Save was the nation's second-largest liquidation chain, and was my primer in shopping as diversion. Charting the changing fashions, this was where also-rans and overexposed hot properties went to die: GoBots, which were definitely not Transformers, made an appearance, as did every iteration of E.T. The Extraterrestrial product tie-in. The soft, chalky memory of a water-based chocolate milk product, extra-large cartons of calcified Tang approaching their best-by date, summer sausage of dubious origin and content: I'd like to think that this is the source of my adventurous nature, but I know better than to mythologize.
What was the stuff of legend were my first adult forays into cheap groceries, thanks to the Bargain Circus—or as it was known in my circle, Cirque du Bargain. Before being turned into a soullessly clean 99 Cents Only Store, this was where I became a true believer. Beyond the ever-present mountain of Ferrero Rocher (IYKYK), amid the abundance of West Asian and Eastern European foodstuffs, I discovered that the roundest babushkas have the sharpest elbows: you do not get in the way of a woman who has likely fled Soviet-induced hunger when a deal's in the offing. Mostly the lesson was that smoked cheese and Sovetskoye Shampanskoye are luxurious when you're 20 years old, and you should always hang onto the ambition of accessible luxury.
In devising my own version of how to eat well when skint, I found a sort of power, one that would serve me when I left Los Angeles' cheap largesse for San Francisco. My rent quadrupled, but I was walking distance from The Bargain Bank, which in the late 90s and early aughts was where newly dead e-commerce stock turned up at a considerable discount. Anyone remember Webvan, the company that sought to revolutionize groceries with home delivery? They were just a little ahead of their time, so the venture’s former wares fought for floor space with consignments from Pets.com. For shoppers, the schadenfreude was sweet and priced to move.
After Hurricane Katrina, the wine-savvy owners acquired the cellars of restaurants and hotels in New Orleans, the gamble being that many of the vintages were potentially ruined. This is how I ended up with spending couch change on Heitz Cellars and Grgich Hills bottles, and at the same time felt ickier for it: the complexity of cheap groceries, folks.
Nowadays, I'm a short stroll from a Grocery Outlet—I prefer the sobriquet of Grocelet, but a friend recently reminded me it's also known as GrossOut. My usual M.O. is to drop in after the local bakery has dropped off surplus fresh bread, and to find as many staples as possible.
But this is boring. For the purposes of doing Jesse proud, I have enlisted my partner CJ to accompany me on a weekend trip. CJ complains that I don't buy nearly enough snacks when I do my weekly shopping, and he's right. Today, we overcorrect that wrong.
We grab a big shopping cart because we're here with a car—something I could get tangential about regarding food waste and CostCo abuse, but I won't, because we're here to score. I immediately stop CJ from putting chocolate-covered almonds in the cart. Not because I'm a monster, but because I know there's a bigger and less expensive bag to be found further in the store, and the products at the front of the store are ones that need eating in the car, if not while walking around shopping. Forgive him, he does not know. But he is extremely helpful in that if I look at something, he tells me to put it in the cart....
NOTE FROM JESSE:
I love Nicole's writing! So evocative and charming, but we've run out of space for this week. Stay tuned for the next edition, where you get to see what she bought. It's fun.
xo,
Jesse
P.S. I added a couple of "Left on the Shelf" photos to break up all the text.