SHOP DURING QUARENTINE

Shopping

Ann went to Mollie Stones’s for grocery shopping this morning. She has done it for the last six weeks since the quarantine. She and I prepare a lengthy list of what we need for food-vegetables, fruit, cereals, fish, meat, coffee, milk, eggs, butter, canned and frozen foods. Some times we need wine and booze.

Before the lockdown, I did the food shopping. I went almost every day as it gave me something easy and simple to do every day. I liked the people in the stores, customers and employees. In the huge Safeway there was a  good mix of people, white, black, brown, Asian, elderly and street people. That store carries almost everything we need. Even sushi. Parking is ample but it is harder to find shopping carts.

Sometimes I went to Whole Foods. I like that place because it is smaller, neater and less crowded. Customers and employees are mostly young, white and financially well off. The employees are very polite and helpful. The vegetables, fruit, meat, fowl and sea food seem fresher and healthy. The parking is easy and carts easily available.

Mollie Stones is much like Whole Foods. It looks like more LGBT people shop there as it is in the middle of he Castro.

Sometimes I went to Rainbow for cereal, granola and muesli. I like the store but the parking is. limited.  Sometimes I park next door at Office Max that has a bigger parking lot. The population goes for vegetarian products and cheeses. Ageing hippies and earnest health food aficionados and jeans and flannels people are in shopping attendance.

In all the stores, I liked looking at the food, piled in neat stacks and pyramids. The displays of fishing meat appealed to my eyes and made my mouth water. I often said the stores were like museums with the colourful and interesting displays. The people varied from attractive women to worn street people. Young men in athletic gear and older ones like me hobbling, pushing carts and hesitant. I love variety and novelty.

 

I hate to see people stocking up on unhealthy food and drinks like sodas, cookies and candy. I look at what people buy when I stand in line awaiting to check out. Often overweight people do that.

I do not go to luxury stores for clothes, shoes or leather goods.  Lavish spending on stuff like that seem such a waste with so much poverty in the world. I know stores like that hire people and give them work. People have jobs making those expensive items. Of course people have the right to buy whatever they can afford.

In all stores there is so much suff available to buy. Row after row of different kinds of cereal, soda and drinks seem unnecessary. I suppose it is good marketing and people buy more and profits go up.

Much as I enjoy all that food, I do think of all the people who are hungry and starving in the world. We know that much food is wasted and plowed back under or destroyed because selling the stuff at low prices undercuts profits.

After all I do find shopping for food fun and gives me a regular activity as I age and can do far less than I used to do. I like seeing people, getting what I need, being part of the economy and community.