Thursday, July 10, 2008

Trade-Off Joe’s

I’ve been putting something off.  Knowing that this issue was slowing gnawing its way into the pantry of my soul, still I avoided it.  I wrote poems that I couldn’t finish, and stories I shouldn’t have started, and essays that didn’t need to exist, and scads of silliness that served only as palliatives to the increasing pangs in my heart.  But last night yet another final straw shattered the spine of yet another metaphorical camel, and I can delude myself no longer.  This is a matter that has moved from being an unformed rumination relegated shamefully to the bottom drawer of my consciousness, to a clear and present concern.  I cannot deny the truth that has foisted itself upon me, and having so recognized the truth, I am obliged - as a man of sterling personal conviction and vigorous rectitude - to address it, publicly and with verbosity.  And so:

Trader Joe’s is running on empty, and it breaks my foolish heart. 

I’ve used this site too often in the past to instill in myself a sense of cosmopolitan superiority - that my little life in my small realm is objectively fabulous, rightly an object of worldwide jealousy.  If you didn’t wish you were me, it was just because you didn’t know how great it is to be me.  And even I needed reminding every so often, so I would get all verbal about the small wonders that cushion the sharp corners of the cheap flat-pack coffeetable that is my life.  If I felt down, or out, or any of the other negatively-valued prepositions, I’d generate a litany of glorious wonders cobbled together from the wispy tailings of my quotidian experiences, and after a few thousand words I’d be pretty sure that I was cooler than the average bear, or at least, more persuasive about my own coolness.  Anyway I’d persuade myself and that was enough to get me off the dime.  And often enough, in that rambling shopping list of “things in my life that are worth mentioning to the rest of the world in my craven attempt to convince it that I was alsome” was something relating to Trader Joe’s - shopping there, the cooking of food obtained there, an experience I’d had related to that food or those stores - anything, really.  TJs has been a staple of my storytelling, my self-view, and my life for many years.  And there is good reason for that.

When I was a lad, TJs was a small chain - a few dozen stores at most, all in the GLAMA (greater Los Angeles Metro area).  They had started in South Pasadena, I think, and my local Sherman Oaks outlet was still an apple fallen close to the original tree.  We’d go to the local supermarket for most of our staples, but when it came time to get wine or cheese or crackers or anything for a party, we’d go to TJ’s and stock up.  I never really understood why we didn’t do more of our shopping there - it was a great little store with, it seemed, everything we needed, packaged up with a good ‘tude and some available-nowhere-else specials.  One that I particularly remember was some special beef jerky they carried back in the early ‘80s, a product that was soft and chewy like a sausage and needed refrigeration.  I’ve never seen anything like it since, and I didn’t even see that item for very long - Barry and I ate the whole container while in the checkout line and spent the next half hour lying on the floor of his van questioning our judgment.  But my point was, TJs had the goods.  Special cookies, big chocolate, funky (in the good way) cheeses, cheap port and wine and beer… that was a store that really seemed to have it all. 

After I got back to LA after college I was delighted to see that TJs had expanded from the San Fernando/Gabriel valleys to the LA basin, where I could shop in Culver City or Fairfax with the same easy gourmandizing as that to which I’d grown accustomed in my salad days (yes they also had really good pre-made salads).  The “fearless flyer” advertising their wares for the month was always entertaining reading and had some great must-buy items along with funny little cartoons.  They had the best selections of nuts, dried fruit, pasta sauces, grains, pastas, crackers, and so many other items.  It was a cornucopia and I committed myself to it wholeheartedly.  Though we did our usual “full” grocery shopping elsewhere (TJ’s paper products and detergents were not quite up to my household standards or were too expensive), I felt proprietary about Trader Joe’s.  It was not a grocery chain - it was my grocery chain. 

Thus it was that when we moved to SF, the lack of TJ access was among the primary things I missed about my old hometown.  But that didn’t last too long, as we soon enough discovered one shy TJ outpost way up north in San Rafael.  I have very warm memories of driving across the bridge to return to that comforting fold to get my weetabix and cojack cheese and fresh breads and such.  We also noticed, when we were shopping there, that we were often in the presence of others who seemed not to have been to a TJ’s before.  I remember so clearly one woman dragging her SO through the aisles as he wrestled with a shopping cart, muttering like one possessed, “there must be chocolate, where do they keep it?” We laughed at them, almost envying their anticipated delight when they realized the chocolate was just above the frozen food in multifarous variety.  What a fun store it was.  We were relieved to have it back, and delighted to share it with others. 

As time passed the chain grew.  The San Rafael store was joined by one in Daly City - much closer to us, and there was no bridge toll.  Then one opened in SOMA SF.  Then one opened right in our neighborhood - a really big TJ’s, their 100th outlet (as signage inside proudly proclaimed).  This was in about 1995.  We were riding high.

I just checked wikipedia and the chain is now up to 300 stores.  They’ve expanded 200% in about 10 years, and I am no longer riding quite as high on the TJ experience as I was back in the Clinton era.  The stores are easier to find; there are many all over California and in many other states as well.  My favorite familiar shopping experience awaits me nationwide, from Woodland Hills to Union Square (NY).  Low-priced wine, beer, cheese, candy, frozen fish, prepared meals, and miscellaneous chazzerai are available to the masses.  But not the way they used to be, and that’s what’s got me griping today.

Lately, we’ve been having trouble getting the goods at Trader Joe’s.  The great white bread they used to carry?  Gone.  The mini-bagels?  Gone.  The selections of dried fruit, canned veggies, cheeses, wines, everything - it’s evaporating.  Their frozen dinners are significantly depleted.  The frozen fish selection has been whittled down to a fraction of what it was before.  The great canned smoked trout is no more to be found.  I realize that they buy in bulk and make special deals and never themselves know what they’ll be able to put on the shelves from one week to the next, but a lot of what they buy seems to have been made for them, so I only credit their excuse so far and no farther. 

Finally, we come to last night: Kel went for our weekly shopping trip and came home with the rice I’d asked her to buy, but reported that all they had was white rice (which I don’t care for) or what she got - brown rice with toasted barley and radish seeds.  And that’s better than last week, when the only rice for sale was white basmati.  Can I ask you - what the hell?  Since when is regular brown rice so hard to find?  It’s at the big groceries; why not at this 300-store chain?  They placate me with bins of low-cost cookies and bags of cheap salad greens, but every week we spend more there and the variety is less.  Plus, what they have, they don’t have consistently.  They sell out, discontinue, restock, change manufacturers more rapidly than ever.  It’s getting difficult to know what to put on the shopping list because I have no idea what they actually carry anymore.  The store is frequently re-organized, and we’re wondering if it’s to keep us from figuring out what they’ve stopped stocking.

So this is my lament: I miss my old Trader Joe’s.  It was harder to find but it had more food, at better prices, with a staff that seemed to be dedicated to the mission like Grateful Dead roadies were to getting the band on stage.  Their shoppers were a brotherhood and their products were a commercial sacrament, the sharing of which bound the community of their patrons as wine and crackers are known to do elsewhere, though without the extra bonus of eternal life, for which instead was substituted the gloating gratification of stuffed sacks of gourmetage.  But now my local TJs has lost the cachet.  Shoppers are no longer bound to each other fraternally; rather, they’re forced into opposition - struggling for parking (it’s a terrible parking lot there, but it’s beside the point) and then wrestling past each other down crowded aisles, searching for products that are frequently no longer on the shelves, and racing each other for that last sixpack of Fat Weasel beer or cornmeal crust sausage pizza.  What was once a place to which I clove as a sanctuary of comestibles, has degraded into - dare I say it - a grocery store. 

We still shop there but the magic is significantly faded.  Not that it’s gone entirely - when I have occasion to hit the local major-chain supermarket, the lack of soul there is so overwhelming that I want to put my head under the auto-mister in the produce display just to awaken my senses a little.  I understand that grocery stores are having as hard a time as any of us these days; profit margins are razor thin and prices keep rising as products become scarcer.  But I don’t care.  Trader Joe’s has undergone a mutation akin to gigantism, burgeoning so excessively in such a short time that the spirit of that once-profound establishment has been tragically dissipated.  I’ll keep shopping there, of course - it’s better than the corporate alternative.  But I don’t think I’ll be bragging about it anymore, any more than I’d expect to win your admiration by divulging that I get my coffee at Starbucks or my smoothies at Jamba Juice.  I don’t actually do either of those things, but it’s a fair analogy.  What was once a rare and precious commodity now verges on the generic.  I guess I’ll need to find a new way to impress you all, and a new way to revive my consumeristic soul.  Good thing I’ve got Clement Street essentially at my doorstep.  That is still an extraordinary shopping experience, and I really don’t think they’ll be able to export it to the midwest.