Enter the Vons
If you so dare
For much of my life in Los Angeles, the closest grocery store to my apartment has been the Vons on Sunset. If you’re wondering what a Vons is, God Bless you, I’ll quote this gorgeously written Wikipedia essay:
Vons is a Southern California and Southern Nevada supermarket chain owned by Albertsons. It is headquartered in Fullerton, California,[1] and operates stores under the Vons and Pavilions banners. It was owned by Safeway Inc. and headquartered in Arcadia, California, before that company was acquired by and folded into Albertsons along with all of their subsidiaries, including Vons.
What starts and ends with Vons?! That paragraph!
A signpost on the sidewalk outside the Vons on Sunset states that at one point it was a small studio lot, which means where once dreams were made they now go to die. It is located where Hollywood Boulevard transforms into Sunset Boulevard, leaving a tangle of roads and stoplights in its wake. It is a terrible intersection and both cars and pedestrians are stranded on all sides for what feels like hours at a time. If you make it through this intersection, you may enter Vons, its fluorescent lights lighting it up like a temple to a god of an underworld.
In the parking lot, there is always at least one person crying in their vehicle. Some days that person is you.
If you manage to leave your vehicle, you’ll be accosted by a stranger before you step foot in the door. Sometimes the stranger will be friendly (a Girl Scout) sometimes they will be sinister (a petition gatherer) sometimes they will be heartbreaking (a woman and a face-painted child begging for money). You cannot cross the threshold without confronting this stranger and the moral quandaries they rustle out of you.
Once inside, the familiar grocery store smell envelops you: fresh bread and raw meat.
The Vons on Sunset, of course, boasts specialty services. There’s the pharmacy, which is not set off in any way from the regular grocery aisles, allowing your intimate details to be revealed to any passerby. There is a coffee bar that’s never open. There’s a bakery that specializes in the kind of treats you get as a reward for surviving 9 a.m. mass. Things you’d only eat if you were a child or a desperate adult.
A few years ago I threw myself a birthday party and thought it would be funny to order a huge sheet cake with a photo of myself on it from this bakery. When I picked up the cake, the morning of the party, it had no photo. It was stark white and my name was written in blood-red icing. Not what I wanted but perhaps what I deserved.
Some other cherished memories:
Before recent world events that have conditioned me out of lingering indoors, I loved to stop at the magazine rack and flip through Real Simple. I imagined a different version of my life. One that was real. One that was simple. One day, probably reading an article about how to mindfully set boundaries with your adult stepchildren, I was joined by a man who was, not to put too fine a point on it, tripping balls. He proceeded to pick up each magazine, hold it an inch from his face, and rapidly flip through it. I think he thought he was speed-reading it and you know what? He probably was. Anything is possible on the right drugs.
One time my friend Caitlin, visiting from New York, went to the Vons for groceries and returned with a haunted look on her face. Someone had defecated in the frozen dessert aisle during her visit. When Caitlin and I were roommates in Park Slope, one day our local Key Food shut down due to a gas leak. It never emptied its inventory and released the smell of rot into the air for months. We were unphased. It took the Vons on Sunset to defeat us.
They’ve now introduced a self-checkout area at the Vons on Sunset, something I’m normally opposed to due to, you know, robots taking over, but in this case, I heartily support. If there’s anywhere robots can and should replace human beings it’s the checkout aisles at the Vons on Sunset. Before the robots arrived, there were about fifteen checkout aisles, and at any given time, two of those were semi-operational. Now the inefficiency is in your hands!
When you leave, you will sigh a deep breath of relief the moment your feet hit the other side of the permanently open automatic door. From that point, it’s necessary to run to your car to avoid the stranger you confronted on your way in, who will definitely forget your first interaction. You’ll pass people crying in their cars, knowing it’s only a matter of time before some future task will lure you back inside the depraved fluorescent fever dream to wander its cursed aisles in eternal confusion…
Never been to a Vons and now I never will...
Vons, Safeway, Albertsons are all OK, BUT: “Every day’s a special day at Thrifimart! Every day is special just for you! Whatever you put in your shopping cart, you’ll save and save at Thriftimart, ‘cause every day’s a special day at Thriftimart!” Be sure to pronounce every as “ev-er-re”