Happy New Year!

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Happy 2012, and welcome to the start of a new year of Pleasant Family Shopping, where we revisit those great everyday places from our past – the supermarket, the discount store, the shopping center and more. Think about it – they’ve changed more than a little through the years, haven’t they?

And to start the year off right, we’ve adopted a special theme. I like to call it “ring out the old, ring in the new” for short. (Originality. The hallmark of this website.) To symbolize this, I refer you to the photo above, circa early 1971, showing the huge, brand new Safeway supermarket in Lafayette, California, replete with mansard roof, open and ready for business. (Still there, now with a Starbucks!) In front of it is the original Safeway it replaced, shortly before the older store assumed a flat, paved-over configuration, er…became a parking lot.

So that’s our theme – ring out the old…away with the pylons and pastel colors…the barrel roofs and the checkered tile floors that held us back!

And ring in the new…bring on the cedar shingles and earth tones…the Norwegian woods…the ferns and the lower-case fonts that help us to find our true inner selves.

Ok, wait a minute – sure, I like mansard roofs. Earth tones are great, and lower-case fonts have improved all of our lives, there’s scientific proof* of that. But I still like pylons, too! And pastels, barrel roofs and funky tile still move me. I can’t help it, I want ‘em both! I want it all. Now.

In fact, I’m peeved that they ever tore the old Safeway down in this case. I’m thinking a “Safeway Visitors Center” would have been the perfect use for the old store. Heck, the Starbucks could’ve been put there! Sure, people might have had to carry their groceries a block or so on busy days (when jars were glass instead of plastic), but that's not too much to ask, is it?

* According to Dave’s scientific method.