If you live in Wisconsin, you probably shop at Woodman's. It's a regional chain of huge grocery stores where it's half a mile from baked goods and frozen foods, and there's a block's walk of frozen pizza choices. They sell just about every brand of just about every product you need, and the prices are seriously low.

Seattle has nothing like Woodman's. In almost two months here, I still haven't found a supermarket that doesn't suck donkey pimples.

Twenty blocks in any direction from anywhere, you'll find yet another Safeway. They're everywhere, and all identical, with not much selection (just three brands of bathsoap?) and consistently high prices unless you sign up for a loyalty card, in which case the prices are still high. Also, the manager of a Safeway store treated me quite rudely in a dream, so I'm never going back there.

There's Albertson's, which was a reasonably priced regional chain when I grew up around here, but they're a giant conglomerate now. They own Safeway and a dozen other chains, all overpriced, with loyalty cards and minimal selection. They should offer a disloyalty card.

There's Grocery Outlet, which specializes in one-time purchases of overstocked or discontinued items, sold at sometimes ridiculously low prices. You can score unexpected good deals on an off brand of canned teriyaki, sure, but good luck finding what you came for, like just plain mustard or a can of cat food.

There's a huge, cheap store, kinda like Woodman's, called WinCo, but all their locations are in the hinterlands. Before I basically stopped driving, I went to their Kent location one afternoon, bought a few things and didn't feel price-gouged. Kent, though, is twenty miles from Seattle, and the WinCo seems to be another five miles from Kent — the store's neighbors are the woods. That's their location nearest to Seattle, but I ain't driving to the woods outside Kent for groceries every week.

So where do I buy mustard and cat food and other necessities? Usually I go to Saar's Super Saver, a Seattle-area chain, not because it's any good, but because it's soooo awful.

Saar's is dusty and run-down, and feels like a second-hand store that sells food. Everything is haphazard and sloppy, the layout makes little sense, and the Saar's I go to used to be an Albertson's — they haven't even painted over where the lettering on the wall used to spell Albertson's, although the Saar's Super Saver sign outside looks like it's been there for decades.

What's hilarious, though, is all their signs in the store, in the parking lot, on every shelf and above every aisle, boasting of "rock-bottom prices." Guess what? Saar's prices are sometimes a few pennies less than Safeway, but rarely low. They sell the most expensive jar of peanut butter I've ever seen — $10.99 for a big jar of the name brand, that would cost half that at Woodman's. And my inspiration for this entire entry is that Saar's is currently selling three-packs of ordinary dish sponges — 99¢ at Woodman's, $1.49 or maybe $1.99 at most stores — for $4.49, in a big display case, with signs claiming that's a "rock-bottom price."

For shoppers' amusement, the employees are usually talking or yelling at each other across the aisles, there's an in-store butcher hired straight from a horror movie, and while I'll confess buying their deli discount fried chicken ($4.49 for ten fresh-cooked drumsticks actually is a rock-bottom price) there's always something in the deli section that worries me.

And then Saar's has the stupidest checkout system I've ever seen. Each lethargic cashier handles two lines of customers at two separate cash registers, alternating between them, so when you think you're third in line you're actually sixth in line. Even when they're not busy, it's a guaranteed ten minute wait to be rung up.

I gotta buy groceries somewhere, and there's no good grocery store, so I shop at Saar's Super Saver because the place bewilders and entertains me every time.

Ah, but same as in San Francisco or any big city, the best prices on fruits and vegetables, and better fruits and vegetables, are at the bodegas. I've found one that I like, and that's where I buy everything except frozen food, mustard, cat food, and a few other assorted sundries the bodega doesn't carry.

Yeah, gotta tell you about that bodega. Some other morning.

5/19/2022