'Crash' on Aisle Five!

“Wow, a two liter of Pepsi is only 99 cents!” “Are you kidding me look how wide the isles are too!” That’s right I was out if the city for a few days and stopped by one of the pieces American culture I miss so dearly…The Supermarket.

Now, don’t get me wrong we have grocery stores in Manhattan but they are by no means Supermakets! They’d be lucky to be called Averagemarkets. For some reason, lack of space probably being the most important, the grocery stores in this city tend to be small, below ground, crowded, an arm-n-leg expensive, and have the most obnoxiously rude employees.

This thankfully was not the case in Saratoga Springs. (Upstate, New York) After leaving my baby, the city, for ten whole days while gallivanting through Europe, I left her again this weekend. I think I’m becoming a bad parent. Nonetheless, friends of mine from Third and Long decided we would make a mini road trip to see Dave Matthew’s Band perform Saturday night.

We left the city around 11am, bright eyed and bushy tailed to get out of the city as the Weather guys were predicting temperatures in the mid 90’s. If you’ve never been in New York City in the dead of summer it’s like being in a concrete jungle just down the street from the depths of Hell! It’s Hot!

“It smells so fresh and look at the size of the produce sections” said one friend. As we continued to marvel at the size and cleanliness we were the recipients of many a “they’re not from around here stares” as we packed our cart full of tailgating essentials. Chips, check…Beer, check…bright colored drinking straws, check…”Wait, what the hell are these?”

“Oh, come on their cute, and we can use them for the Smirnoff Ice’s” was the quick response from the ladies of the trip. Well, the ladies and our gay friend. As we were going to a concert and not a football game, I let the straws slide. I mean it’s not like they were little straw umbrella’s.

With our cart barely containing our “how to have a good time at a concert” kit we headed for the checkout line. Again, it was clear we were not from those parts as we continued to joke, laugh, and occasionally point out mullets as they came into our oasis. The clerk was nice as she scanned each item, it costing about 1/5th of the cost had we loaded up in the city.

“Ok, the total is $126.54 and we need to see everyone’s ID.” Classic, I love it our ages ranged from 23 to 31 and they needed to see all of our IDs. None of us had a problem with this as we could not get over how cheap our evening was going to be. “Did she forget the beer, is she hooking us up?” All of these questions were whispered back and forth with no real answer found other than Manhattan is damn expensive!

But we love it, and it’s great to be back!

Oh, by the way, the show was great and the weather was perfect! It was an all around great weekend!

Thanks for listening