Big Shop of Horrors

In an attempt to avoid the crazy-making crowds and woefully inadequate parking, I once went to the Berkeley Bowl-a grocery store with the biggest, best produce section I've ever seen-a half hour before it opened. This was early on a weekday morning. Nevertheless, I was shocked that there was a line, as if it were 1972 and people were waiting for Rolling Stones tickets to go on sale.

I really want to shop at Berkeley Bowl, just a few miles from my Oakland home, for all my groceries. But I never go there. The Los Angeles Times on Monday gave my reasons at least as well as I could.

The crowds are insane-both figuratively and literally. There are way too many people, and way too many of them are jerks. They block the too-narrow aisles with their carts as if they had the store all to themselves. They shop as if competing in a blood sport, shamelessly elbowing you out of the way if you stand between them and their organic pluots. The parking situation is horrific-a too-tiny lot surrounded by streets that are generally restricted to residential parking. (Parking in the Bay Area is often inadequate: In most parts of the country, zoning laws require a minimal amount of parking space, but those laws seem to be nonexistent here.)

The Times article attempts to get at the underlying social causes of this shopping nightmare and pretty much gets it right (though it doesn't mention the parking issue). In the first paragraph, it describes Berkeley as a "strident city."

Several examples back up that assertion, as well as the assertion, implied by several shoppers and even the store manager, that Berkeley is also an entitled city, where the residents are always right, and you, if you disagree with them or their worldview, are always wrong. One man relates his tale of being on his cell phone while waiting in one of the endless checkout lines. He joked to his friend, "Dude, this place is a meat market!"

The fellow behind him "started shouting that what I said was really sexist," the man said. "He wouldn't let it go. I finally had to turn around and say, 'Mind your own business.' "