Trader Joes – Finally!

By Anita Garner

Our little town is one of a string of small towns in this part of Northern California that together have finally come up with the magic formula to cause a Trader Joe’s to open  nearby.  That statement, of course, has nothing to do with the way these deals really happen.   There was intense lobbying from both sides and parking studies and all kinds of rigmarole involved, but we TJ’s fans don’t care, just so the danged store opens as planned in August.

A friend of mine worked in development for a nearby city that pined for its own Trader Joe’s.  The board she reported to kept asking her, “Can’t you get us a Trader Joe’s?” and since she’d tried many times, she knew the answer, which was “We don’t fit their expansion profile.”

Yet many in my community didn’t want the store, complained about what it will do to traffic patterns, etc.  While checking online to find the actual opening date, I encountered a website loaded with comments for and against TJ’s coming to this area, with some commenters asking, “What’s the big deal?  It’s  just another grocery store.”

Answers are plentiful at a TJ’s fan site.  Yes, here’s a grocery store with its own fan site, devoted solely to loving all things Trader Joe’s.

I don’t know why I feel the way I do about them. When I lived near one of the stores in Southern California, I wasn’t there every week, and it’s true they don’t always have the same things in stock trip after trip.  If that’s what you require from your grocery store, you and TJ’s may not be a match.

A shopping trip to Trader’s is much more of a grab bag (awful wordplay – I apologize) where we make a list based on ads (their Fearless Flyer and their radio ads are fun) or our particular needs, and then end up wandering the aisles finding cleverly packaged, well-displayed stuff we never knew we wanted.  Yes, it’s the way many grocery stores entice us, but with TJ’s distinctly, deceptively laid-back spirit.

While all the comments online about our new store aren’t positive, many of them express the same kind of odd loyalty I feel toward this company.  Without blinders, with full knowledge that much of their success is in the marketing of their “brand”  (and their store brands) still I have never been disappointed with their merchandise and certainly not with the entire shopping experience.

Parking?  That’s another subject for another time. The opening of a Trader’s will turn a too-small lot into an exercise in patience.

But for now, I’m glad they’ve overcome all hurdles tossed at them and I’m happy the welcome mat is out.   I’ll be in one of those cars looking for a parking spot.

Ó Anita Garner 2009

Too big for the block?

Here’s what I see on a morning walk:   Cars parked on the street bumper to bumper, with barely an inch between them.  Vehicles with their wheels up on the sidewalk where baby strollers and wheelchairs and assisted-walkers fear to roll.

Vehicles clog the small village where I live, parked along every winding lane, every mountain road, many of them parked askew so that this morning as I walk carefully among them, a driver approaches, weaving through the space that’s left, becoming a skilled participant in the getting-to-work marathon.  As more walkers and runners and kids with backpacks  join in on their way to school, it becomes a dodgem game.

How did one small town get so full of shiny metal? 

Well, here’s a cottage that’s been expanded with its garage “repurposed” and its driveway fenced off.  Four vehicles park out front.  Here’s new construction – a giant house going up where a cottage once lived.  It’s being built fence to fence with no yard, no garage and no driveway.  More vehicles join the lineup. 

As I wander, I wonder something else.  If this house is too big for the block, is it also too big for the times?  

I do remember how it got like this.  I participated.  The thinking was, I’ve worked hard and my home (and sometimes what I drive) are part of my very identity.  If I can pay for it, I’m entitled to it.

It’s going to take a whole lot of re-thinking to change that part of our American dream.  We’ll need to figure out a new personal definition of success, ways to find gratification in making better choices.  And we’re just now beginning to ask the tough questions:  Is this home/car necessary?  Is it right for the preservation of the larger community? 

The biggest personal hurdle is getting past what is our right and moving on to our responsibility.  The toughest question is,  just because we can, should we?

Ó Anita Garner 2009