Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store

nymag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 94 posts

Re: The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store

#41

Post by msla »

gumby wrote: post #23
dotsarefun wrote: post #10

Which city only has one grocery store?

East Palo Alto has only one, and struggled for years without a grocery store or bank.

> East Palo Alto has only one, and struggled for years without a grocery store or bank.

I understand that it's an independent polity, but it's also surrounded by other urban areas.

I can get a 51 minute bus ride from an apartment complex in East Palo Alto to a Safeway, which does cost about $5 but that's a discussion for another day; my point is, East Palo Alto only has "one grocery store" if you ignore everything surrounding it.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Runnymede+Gardens+Apartments...

Re: The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store

#42

Post by mixmastamyk »

tobr wrote: post #16

Yes! Walking into a grocery store is one of the best things about traveling. It is one of the few genuine everyday activities that are easily available to a tourist, but is going to be quite different to what you’re used to from home, sometimes in surprising ways. Hopefully this will not disappear entirely as brands and chains become more and more homogenized across the world. One of the saddest examples of this is h…

Latin America too. Interestingly, each country has it's own name, often the name of an old-time ice cream company that has since went out of business. In the US it is "Good Humor."

Took me a few years during my backpacking days to figure it out. While odd, I never thought of it as "ugly."

Re: The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store

#43

Post by jonathanbull »

mikeholler wrote: post #3

I've been telling friends and family this for years. It's by far my favorite thing to see in a new city in a region I've never been before. It's sort of like a modern anthropological exhibit in more ways than any other single city structure. There was a photography coffee table book I loved, where the artist took pictures of an entire family around their table, which had all of the food they ate for a week on it. I'v…

Not quite what you're looking for, but Time recently did a great piece on what kids eat around the world. You might enjoy it:

https://time.com/what-kids-eat-around-the-world-in-one-week/

Re: The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store

#44

Post by etqwzutewzu »

frankus wrote: post #2

Shopping for food in grocery stores was one of the highlights of touring Switzerland in a rented motorhome (for the record Migros > Coop > Aldi IMO).

Swiss here. Globus > Manor > Coop > Migros. Aldi and Lidl are in Switzerland too but they are German and Migros > Aldi > Lidl.

Re: The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store

#45

Post by malingo »

tobr wrote: post #16

Yes! Walking into a grocery store is one of the best things about traveling. It is one of the few genuine everyday activities that are easily available to a tourist, but is going to be quite different to what you’re used to from home, sometimes in surprising ways. Hopefully this will not disappear entirely as brands and chains become more and more homogenized across the world. One of the saddest examples of this is h…

I really like to see the differences in flavors of common snacks. These triple-onion potato chips in Sweden (something I feel like I'd never see in the US) were very good: https://imgur.com/a/nx3cTCI

Re: The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store

#46

Post by archy_ »

Sadly, this doesn't apply to America. Our grocery stores are very much homogenized, and in many parts of the country the only grocery store will be Walmart. Urban areas will have higher end chains that stock a wider variety and some foreign and independent stores with unique selections, but once you get past the cities and into rural America, your options for groceries are about the same from town to town.

Re: The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store

#47

Post by maxerickson »

archy_ wrote: post #46

Sadly, this doesn't apply to America. Our grocery stores are very much homogenized, and in many parts of the country the only grocery store will be Walmart. Urban areas will have higher end chains that stock a wider variety and some foreign and independent stores with unique selections, but once you get past the cities and into rural America, your options for groceries are about the same from town to town.

How big is "town"?

The towns of ~10,000 that I know that have Walmarts have multiple competitors to the Walmart, and smaller towns don't have the Walmart but may have a local grocer.

Re: The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store

#50

Post by quicklime »

archy_ wrote: post #46

Sadly, this doesn't apply to America. Our grocery stores are very much homogenized, and in many parts of the country the only grocery store will be Walmart. Urban areas will have higher end chains that stock a wider variety and some foreign and independent stores with unique selections, but once you get past the cities and into rural America, your options for groceries are about the same from town to town.

I've been making it a point to visit grocery stores in every country I visit for the last 10 years. I tend to agree with you that grocery stores tend become homogenized within a country (and not just in the US), but there's always a lot of variation between countries.

You'll probably find this strange, but as a foreigner, I was really excited to see Walmart for the first time, and I found it just as interesting as visiting grocery stores in other countries.

There are things there that just seem comically American - like there's a McDonald's inside a supermarket! And there's a section where you can pick up guns and ammo while you're buying milk and eggs!

The chocolates section contains the same products as every other store across North America, but I'd never seen any of these while growing up in Australia, so we picked up a lot of these. Even basic things like bread taste different from back home.

Other stores are interesting in different ways. The size and scale of Costco is insane. Whole Foods and Trader Joe's carry different brands of everything, so it feels very different shopping there.

I'm really looking forward to my next visit to the States, and picking up the bacon flavored popcorn from Trader Joe's. I've never seen this anywhere else in the world, and it's as awesome as it sounds :)

Post reply on HN