Grocery art

Spring break did not include tourist meccas or sandy beaches, but I hit two brand new grocery stores on my staycation. Neither had super-saturated color postcards for sale on a revolving metal rack.



What's the buzz? Tell me what's happening? This is the grand opening of the Frankford Road/Marsh Lane Aldi store at 10:30 Thursday.

Aldi has come to DFW. Comparison grocery shopping is a serious recreational sport here, and our area is often a test zone for marketing concepts.

Besides the first store openings of the German-owned Aldi chain, this week also marks the opening of the Park Lane Whole Foods store with a dedicated shopping cart escalator to the lower level parking garage.

The preschool rabbit was miffed that I'd given him raw asparagus last evening instead of fresh cilantro. He led me a merry extended chase eating up the minutes on the game clock. He was the victor, thwarting efforts to get him out from under the bed where I store dining table leafs, my mom's phone journals, and a big portfolio of watercolors. I was too frazzled to pack a sack lunch so it was an excuse to visit the new Whole Foods store. I figured I could brave the pouring rain to grab a salad bar box lunch.

Hurrying and Whole Foods don't go together. Unlike Aldi where the employees were caffeinated and ready to explain shopping cart deposits and the green implications of self-bagging, the wheat-germ gang at Whole Foods hadn't quite gotten the tongs to the salad bar at 8:45 a.m.

I'll go back when I'm not late for work. As I whizzed away from the check-out, I glimpsed an Art-o-mat machine. I need a technicolor postcard of that!

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

When the down escalator is down

Missed the train after the rehearsal this evening. The escalator down from the Park & Ride level to the track was broken. Plus, the elevator was unavailable because repairmen were moving loads of escalator stairsteps down to the track level. By the time I found the stairs and went down the three or four flights, my train was pulling out of the station.


With a half hour to wait, I moseyed over to watch the action at the repair site. I did not say, "Pardon me, boys, is that the broken escalation? Woo-o-woo!" They were very polite and glad to talk about their work, but I didn't want to scare them breaking into a song and dance routine.


An escalator step looks much bigger laying on the sidewalk than it does when you are standing on it. The repair guys told me each step costs five hundred dollars, and they were going to replace fifty steps. That amounted to half the steps on the Mockingbird Station down escalator.




As subway escalators go, Mockingbird Station's is a baby. I've never been down the Wheaton Station escalator on the DC Metro. It descends 230 feet, making it the longest in the Western Hemisphere. DART's longest escalator descends ten stories at the Cityplace Station, and has 213 steps.


Dupont Circle is my favorite Metro escalator. I love riding up into the Circle. Best of all, I love the anticipation of going to the Phillips Collection nearby. An afternoon at the Phillips can't be beat.

Growing up in the Sixties, I watched shopping mommies in pointy-toed/pointy-heeled shoes ride the escalator at Miller and Paine department store standing on their tiptoes so their heels wouldn't get stuck on the steps. In those days one still had the option of telling an elevator operator, "Three please," instead of riding a "heel-catcher".

Millions of kids have probably had escalator nightmares of forgetting to jump off an escalator and being sucked into the netherlands below the floor. Isn't that how Pinocchio ended up in that place where kids were turned into donkeys? My best friend, Janice, had escalatorphobia to the point that we ALWAYS rode the elevator, not just at the downtown department stores, but also at Gateway Mall. To balance that, my Danger Baby had elevatorphobia, so we always rode the escalator or climbed stairs.

Similar shoes are in vogue now, so I asked the repair guys if the escalator broke because obese women in pointy-heel shoes got sucked under the floor to donkey land. No. It's the wheely briefcase carts that get stuck. No, obese white-collar workers don't usually get sucked under to donkey land holding onto their wheely carts. The white-collar workers yank their briefcases free at the bottom of the escalator, damaging the stairsteps. If you see those people, better warn them about the donkey ears.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder