That was one reason why the Obots always filled me with revulsion: They shop at Whole Foods, where you have to take out a second mortgage just to buy some turnips. Yes, I've visited a Whole Foods market. After scoping out the prices, I decided not only to take my custom elsewhere but to place their entire clientele on my Eternal Enemies list.
Turns out the quality ain't even all that. Anglachel:
There are several Whole Foods in the greater San Diego area, including one about three miles from where I live. I admit I was caught up in the glamor of it when it first opened up, but quickly grew disenchanted by the incredible price premium and, frankly, the crappy quality. The deli food tastes like the "organic" shit served up in college cafeterias everywhere (bland, under-seasoned, fibrous, incorrectly cooked, allowed to sit around for too long) but at about six times the price. The bulk foods are twice the cost of comparable products at the nearest area competitor, Henry's Market (which is locally owned, serves up local produce, and has great prices, just in case you're wondering), and the product selection is limited to high priced goods. Their bakery items are, in a word, inedible.What pisses me off is the fact that the Obots -- a.k.a., the Whole Foods Nation -- routinely accused me of racism throughout 2008, simply because I favored another candidate. Yet most bots would never shop at the Hispanic supermarkets that I favor. And why not? Because -- and let us now be ruthlessly honest -- upscale progressives would never consider the food clean. In prog eyes, broccoli acquires cooties when it spends too much time in the presence of brown-skinned customers. For all of their pretended political correctness, the Niles-and-Frazier types who gave us Obama would never take meat from a butcher who speaks Spanish.
Give me a market with a sombrero in the logo. There are plenty of 'em in southern California. The moment I see that sombrero, I know that I have found a new home.
Take a look at the values I found last month: Seven pounds of onions for a dollar. One measly buck -- yes, one -- bought me a full pound of boneless, skinless chicken breast. Rice for 33 cents a pound. Combine the three, and you've got some mighty fine burrito fixins.
You know where else I shop (when in the area)? A mega-market called WinCo.
We're talking about unbeatable veggie prices -- broccoli crowns (yes, crowns) for 69 cents a pound, artichokes for 50 cents, bell peppers for 39 cents each. And the place has an amazing bulk foods selection -- pasta for 72 cents a pound, powdered milk for less than half the boxed price, and the best granola ever concocted for roughly $1.50 a pound. A machine spurts out fresh-churned, unprocessed peanut butter for less than the price of Peter Pan. This is a place where real people -- of all ethnic backgrounds -- do their shopping.
The best news: WinCo is employee-owned. Now that's the kind of enterprise a true Democrat would favor.
As for the Whole Foods Nation -- Anglachel has them pegged:
Uh-huh. Riiiiight, you're there for the healthy, organic, natural food. Which is packaged at the same factories and comes from the same industrial farms and ranches as the other stuff, but has that pretty "365" label on it. No, you're there to shop in an upscale grocery store where dirty poor people aren't able to join you, but marketed in such a way that you can pretend you're doing this for socially responsible reasons.Yet the bastards called me a racist!
16 comments:
Joseph, those are great prices! I have no clue what the reason is, maybe I need to get out more, but I had never heard of Whole Foods until the 2008 primaries...and then in relation to Obama. Right then and there I knew I would never shop there. You've given me more reason not to. Thanks.
I live two blocks (literally) from a Whole Foods and do shop there on occasion. The price on the produce and on the meat is preposterous. Butter, however, is always $2 per pound. Milk and orange juice are identically priced to my local Ralphs. They have the best bread I've ever eaten and it's around $5 a loaf - so I don't get it very often. They're bakery stuff is vastly superior to most supermarkets and even most bakeries, but isn't quite as good as a really good bakery - though it's the same price. Still, if you wind up running in to get a cake for a friend's party in an emergency, it will be very good, if not perfectly heavenly. The side dishes are substantially better than the side dishes at other grocery stores but not as good as homemade. In addition, the wages are good. They pay the same rates as Trader Joes. The staff is always friendly and considerate. I'm in Sherman Oaks and it's very much a neighborly vibe. I do think part of the attraction is that it is small as opposed to the outsized monstrosities that most stores have decided that they need to be in this day and age. I have a small Armenian market that I love shopping in because it reminds me of a NY market in a 70s movie - and the prices there are great. Mostly, I shop at Costco, which is unionized, and pick up produce and whatever I can't get at Costco at Trader Joes, the farmer's market, and other local markets.
I don't shop all that often at Whole Foods, but I think it will be awhile before I go back at all.
In the eighties, during Alar scare, Whole Foods was still Mrs. Gooch's here in SoCal. The LA Times discovered that the apples with the highest amount of Alar were the organize ones, at, you guessed it, Mrs. Gooch's. And plain old apples at Ralph's were entirely alar free.
I like to drink milk within a half hour of jogging, since it helps buid muscle. So I'll go into Whole Foods once in a while for a quart of milk, which is the same price as everywhere else. And to eye to snooty bitches.
Yeah, the supermercados have amazing produce at great prices.
Don't even get me started on WinCo. In my neck of the woods, it's evil. Oppressive and hostile work environment which ignores many if not most labor laws, is profoundly misogynist, and, when I worked there, did not support any kind of health reform (a lot of the material I went through after being hired covertly encouraged employees to support conservative agendas designed to prevent progressive healthcare agendas).
But Nibbles...the granola!
Also, I really like Umqua and you can't get it anywhere else in CA.
For all of their pretended political correctness, the Niles-and-Frazier types who gave us Obama would never take meat from a butcher who speaks Spanish.
This has to be admitted. They "bleed" only for the folks they know their money will protect them from .
I've never been able to afford Whole Paycheck as we call it 'round these parts, and also their clientele just royally turned me off. (The same is starting to be true of you Trader Joe fans, so watch it.)
Poiskonally, I shop at a local family-run farm stand, a funky-Bohemian local herb farm, and my local chain supermarket, SuperFresh--the latter because it's a union shop and the mostly-female staff I talk to there say it's a great place to work, that they're treated really well. Also they give me great coupons for being a loyal shopper and offer these fantastic reusable shopping bags (much better than the Whole Foods ones, I might add. You could carry bricks in these and they are way way cool-looking.)
There is a locally-owned organic food store down the street that I keep forgetting is there (MUST GO SUPPORT THEM) and I've heard they do a good business, but prices are high.
I've never been able top spend much time at a Whole Foods because of the bad vibes. I had never thought about the connection, but it makes sense that these creeps might be O-holes.
Joseph- read this interesting little blog on Mackey:
http://happilybitter.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/whole-foods-ceo-unloaded-stock-1-week-prior-to-writing-boycott-spawning-op-ed/
Interesting post. I've often wondered about how acceptable anti-Hispanic racism is in the US.
(The fact that I bear a Hispanic surname and would probably be considered Hispanic by many in the US - despite having zero links with my father and his family, and never having met anyone I'm related to who can speak Spanish, and therefore not being Hispanic in any meaningful sense whatsoever - is only a very small part of the reason for my interest. But during part of my childhood when I was incarcerated with upper-crust bourgeois scum of the same age, I frequently experienced what it was like to be called 'dago'. I don't know whether this term is used in the US; it's a racist term used similarly to the N-word, but targeted at those considered to be Hispanic).
Hispanics are the largest non-white ethnic group in the US.
The vast majority of them are proletarian, as is true of white people, African Americans, and indeed any ethnic group I'm aware of in America apart from Jewish people.
But I can think of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama. Obviously these individuals are ruling-class filth just like their white counterparts, and their appointment or election in no way helps the black poor. But it's curious that I can't think of any similar figures who are Hispanic, despite there being more Hispanic people than black people in the US (the difference in numbers presumably being even greater once one takes account of those without residence permits). Why is that?
Ah...whole foods. Same gig in Britain. Poxy 'whole food' stores with bare wood shelves, selling many foodstuffs at higher prices than the standard supermarkets and much higher than in Asian supermarkets, where the trendy lefties are too racist to take their custom.
Even in the standard (Big 4 or 5) supermarkets, there are usually 'ethnic' aisles and sections (Asian and, increasingly, Polish) where e.g. spices are sold at 1/10 of their prices in the aisles for whitey!!
"But it's curious that I can't think of any similar figures who are Hispanic, despite there being more Hispanic people than black people in the US..."
You know who was the most powerful American of Hispanic heritage?
James Jesus Angleton. I can't think of anyone else.
And Angleton took great pains to hide his mother's Mexican ancestry. Throughout his CIA career, he always hid his middle name. He changed his attitude after he was terminated from the Agency -- but until then, he did everything he could to mix in with the "Oh, So Social" crowd.
By the way, his mother was very lovely.
John 'free market' Mackey is a jerk who tells his check out people to ask every customer in semi-intimidating tones at the checkout stand
"Would you like to donate to save a child in XX country? I will ring up the amount on your bill."
So, I say "no" and they give me a look like "WTF, Gomer, you mean you don't drive a Maserati? - don't you CARE about poor people?" Oh, and this is in addition to the counters being lined with cans that read "DONATE TO THE CHILDREN'S FUND" etc.
I have nothing against donating to worthy causes, but I find such unbridled solicitation and hubris an affront to my personal economic sensibilities. (But that's John Mackey, whom I've had the dubious displeasure of having to endure at a local fundraiser once a few years ago after he started Whole Greed.) Screw that place. Everyone should boycott it and stick to farmer's markets and local butchers.
Has anyone else noticed that when you go into Whole Screwed and Glued, it is often hard to find any price tags? This is against the law not to provide visible price labels in grocery stores but Mackey's free-market frijole counters rely on the arrogant "Niles and Frazier' types to be too embarrassed to ask so they get away with it.
gosh joe, bitter much. you and the loser bloggers will spend he next eight years saying I told you so, while the rest of us enjoy our lives with two term President O.
I normally shoot down comments like joe p's. But I thought that readers should see that zombies still walk among us, and that they remain, as always, utterly bereft of erudition and wit. Is there any cure for Kool-Aid poisoning?
Joseph, joe p will have a HELL of a hangover when he finally comes off the Hopium.
Meanwhile, I've been so busy denigrating the bridezilla generation I've forgotten to include the Whole Foods Nation in my ongoing disdain. I must check out anglachel's latest.
Trader Joe's is superior in every way.
Great post!
Keep the Mexican produce secret. I got onions last year for $1 per 12lbs. I can actually afford to eat healthy. All we need is a bunch of gringos going in there to screw things up
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