Mooville Roadside Attraction #2: Kipona

Our good Steven Reed, Harrisburg Mayor For Life, declared the 2008 version of this particular Mooville Roadside Attraction open for business on Saturday, August 30 and so begins my attempt to explain this Mooville Staycation-- Kipona to you, Dear Reader... wish me luck.

Kipona

August 30 - September 1, 2008

Up and Down Front St. and City Island

FREE! You can't pay for this kind of entertainment... I mean... no one would...

This is one of the three reasons each year that Steven Reed, HMFL, closes Front St. from the Harvey Taylor Bridge to Market St. so people can mill around to take in the spectacle.

I have to tell you, I have no idea what a Kipona is. But it qualifies as a roadside attraction by virtue of the fact that it occurs by a roadside... it occurs ON the road, for crying out loud. And the side of the road. And half way across the river on the City island.

This year the sponsors are advertising it as an Art festival (sort of), Bass Fishing Tournament, Boat Race, Kiddie Park, Drum Circle and Chili Cook-Off.

You know there was a committee involved, right?

What does a Rubber Duck fundraiser for the March of Dimes, an Iron Chef demonstration, a bunch of people paddling canoes with dragon heads at the front and dragon tails at the back up and down the Susquehanna River, a rash of bands you've never heard of, a karate tournament, bad fair food and the Bath Fitter company have in common? I mean other than they're ALL happening on Front Street RIGHT NOW?

No. Seriously. I want someone to tell me what the hell ties all this activity together.

I mean. Bath Fitter?

The music , I am so sorry to tell you, is really not the draw with the incredibly notable exception of Darcie Miner who holds forth on a stage next to the Market Street bridge on Monday at noon if it doesn't rain again and drown her set out as it has the last 3 of the 4 times she's been a good enough sport to show back up in Harrisburg to play for free. She's got a real alt.country approach and this chick can rawk... I love her and you do, too, if you've ever seen her. The Martini Bros. are also worthy and are listed to close this moneymaker down at 8:00 PM Monday evening.

The only other thing I can truly get behind would be the fireworks.

They are supposed to be happening at 8:35 PM tonight-- that would be Sunday, August 31 and I have to get a move on here to let you all know about this in time to get over to my secret Harrisburg watching site because I won't miss a fireworks display if I can help it.

I'll even go to a pretty poor showing and I will say that Harrisburg has redeemed many of its shortcomings with decent fireworks. I'm going to cross my fingers and toes to make sure they send the Summer off in a manner becoming the season...

The food is the same bunch of folks hawking the deep-fried fat balls wrapped in powdered sugar and then dipped in chocolate you see at every gathering... you're not expecting haute cuisine, I know, I know but rest assured that if you are feeling a little fat, salt or sugar deficient today, these people will fix you right up.

The Broad Street Market is open part way through the day on Saturday so you can get some good Indian at Curry In A Hurry if you feel the need to eat while you're here. These people operate Passage to India at the bottom of Front Street and that is the only restaurant I would eat in willingly the first three years I lived in Mooville. It is, hands down, the best Indian in town and to this day one of maybe 4 in the city where I would send anyone I liked. I saw cantaloupes for $1.50 at the vegetable stand at the front of the Brick Building and there was some real nice-looking produce at the stand set up between the buildings... very nice peppers... beets... watermelons... the little sweet sugar-babies were a dollar a piece. It wasn't Kipona which is why they were probably the best thing about the day...

But I digress...

The Kipona part makes you pay to go see the Art and I wasn't in any mood by the time I schlepped all the way from Broad Street to Market Street so you're on your own with whether there is anything remotely art-like there. The drumming over at City Island was very primal and rhythmic but I don't know why all these indigenous people come to Harrisburg to drum. Maybe it's to irritate the people who took their land. It worked on me and I swear I bought my house from a guy in San Francisco.

The Kids Village is all slap fulla people painting children's faces and making balloon hats and shoving them on kid's heads and getting them to make what purports to be edible sand art. This seems like a set-up for a real cruel pair of shoes... teach a kid to eat sand then take him to the beach. Nice.

The chili cook-off in the middle of State Street was more Halloween Party than serious chili and I've been to Hatch and I know the smell of real chiles roasting in the air... this wasn't it... Sorry, again...

The weather HAS been cooperating this year. It was overcast mostly yesterday and that kept it from being really pain in the ass hot and sticky... Today it's been a perfect low-humidity, sunny Mooville day... really a sweet fairytale of a day to make you think it will be like this until it gets nice again... I wouldn't ruin a day like this by slogging through the masses at this Kipona thing but maybe you haven't yet filled your dance card of odd things people in Mooville do and if that's the case, you have another unknown band / footbag tourney / art show/ kid ride / drumming day ahead of you.

You really ought to try to catch Darcie Miner...

And don't forget the FIREWORKS!!

Next time: I'll tell you where my secret firework peering place is and where to see the best fireworks in Mooville.

Introduction to Outlet Grocery Shopping - Part 5: Neither fish nor fowl, The Grocery Outlet Store

What IS it?
These are the Highlanders, the Tribecas, the Subaru Foresters of the discounted grocery world... crossovers between true pallet store salvage and the limited assortment discount groceries: some salvage goods, some private label stock, some manufacturer overstock, label changes and close dated product but all of it priced 30 - 60% less than you've been paying at your local, friendly big box supermarket...

In Mooville, the players in this sandbox are Amelia's and the Sharp Shopper.

Amelia's Grocery Outlet
Clemont Plaza / 600 North Mountain Rd.
Harrisburg, PA 17112-2398
Just off Exit 72B of I-81N
Phone: 717-724-2223

1951 Lincoln Highway East
Lancaster, PA 17602-3343
(New location - across from Wal-Mart)
Phone: 717-392-0635

Hours: Mon. - Sat. 8:00 am - 9:00 pm
You get free bags and they'll bag your groceries up for you.
Cash, local checks and debit cards only.

Amelia's has eleven locations including two Mooville stores in Harrisburg and Lancaster. They are proud to be actual manufacturer's outlets for national brands like Kraft, Sara lee, General Mills and Proctor and Gamble to name a few. This arrangement lets Amelia put close-out lots on her shelves that are still in pretty good shape.

I know they have a deal with Hershey because you can find red and green foil wrapped Christmas Candy there until the following Halloween... Hey... it's chocolate and it's half the price you'll find at The Giant. Does your kid know what a Sell By date is? I didn't think so.


Sharp Shopper
1595 Jamesway Plaza
Middletown, PA 17057
Phone #: (717) 944-6606

Rt. 322, 1041 Sharp Avenue
Ephrata, PA 17522
Phone #: (717) 738-4948

340 West Main Street
Leola, PA 17540
Phone #: (717) 656-2156

Monday - Friday: 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Saturday: 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Cash, local checks, debit AND credit cards
They give you free bags and bag your groceries, too!

Six stores make up this group including two in Virginia for some reason. The ones I've got listed are in our neck of the pasture.

You'll find fewer dented cans and taped up cartons at these places... and you will find a lot more private labels... in fact, you can almost do your regular weekly grocery shopping at one of these stores if you're not hung up on fresh meat... they generally have at least one flavor of just about everything else. You won't find 5 brands of sliced peaches, say, but there will be cans of sliced peaches for .69 to .89 cents.

When I was cooking Brutus the Giant Boxer's food myself, I used to get some outstanding marinated frozen pork loins and beef loins there... Brutus spent his last days eating lime marinated beef stew courtesy of Butterball and Sharp Shopper at something like $1.99 for a 3 pound roast.

Amelia's are smaller; about the size of an Aldi's or a Save-A-Lot. Sharp Shoppers seem mostly to have taken over the old Ames and Jamesway Discount Department store buildings. Those chains fell victim to the Wal-Mart march to the sea 15 years ago so the footprint is larger and there's a lot more stuff in them.

You still are better off shopping early in the week and early in the day.

And there you have it.
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it, either. People in Central Pennsylvania have elevated grocery shopping to a kind of participatory performance art. Only in Mooville.

Let me know if you find one I haven't, would you?

Next time: A big fat list of these places.

Introduction to Outlet Grocery Shopping - Part 4: The Discount Grocery Also-rans

Here in Mooville you're talking Sav-A-Lot and Price-Rite when it comes to the discount grocery, the value, limited item supermarket, the stores that are NOT Aldi's.

PriceRite of Harrisburg
3812 Union Deposit Rd.
Harrisburg, PA 17109
Phone: (717)545-1689
http://www.priceritesupermarkets.com

Price-Rite is owned by the same bunch that owns Shop-Rite which is a regular plain vanilla supermarket chain and does not concern us here. Price-Rite, though, sports 35 locations throughout the Northeast and there's one right here in Mooville Proper...

You do have to bag your own groceries in your own bags or buy them from the store but the prices are pretty good.

I had a coupon mailed to my house from them for a 99 cent fresh pineapple the other week... and the best part of THIS store is the Spanish food you can find here. If you want to get fresh plantains to slice up and fry, make some arroz y morados and knock back some cafe Cubano in advance of the siesta you're gonna want after you get some honest to god flan out of the deli case... well, this is the store you've been looking for.

There isn't a decent Mexican restaurant in this town despite a pretty healthy Hispanic population and that's a fact but if you're wanting something other than those pasty things they call tortillas at The Giant... or autentico enough to want to pit-a-pat your own... the big fat bags o' masa harina are right here and so are about 25 kinds of the ones that are already made at the Price-Rite. Smaller than the big boxes by half, the produce here is first rate and I like this store a lot.

Save-A-Lot

2963 N 7Th St
Harrisburg, PA 17110
Phone:(717) 255-9880

Save-A-Lot
1045 Mt Rose Ave
York, PA 17403
Phone:(717) 771-5491

Save-A-Lot

222-26 S. Queen Street
Lancaster, PA 17603
Phone:(717) 392-9978
http://www.save-a-lot.com

Save-A-Lot, on the other hand is not so bright and shiny as Price-Rite.

The chain is a lot bigger than Price-Rite with more than 1100 stores nationwide and 3 right here in the Greater Mooville area and I don't know why the home office won't spring for an upgrade... even though the Harrisburg store shares it's strip mall at 7th and Division (an aptly named street if ever there was one) with a liquor store, a beer distributor, a rent-to-own furniture place and TWO dollar stores... do they HAVE to remind the poor people of Harrisburg that the big box groceries don't care enough about their money to build stores to take it from them?

Nice.

A little shopworn, a little dingy, a pretty sad produce section and small even by limited-item store standards, the prices are good on almost everything and it IS the only supermarket in the city.

Next time: The Conclusion to our series - In Part 5 we learn about The Hybrid Grocery Outlet. It's hard to contain your joy, I know.

Outlet Grocery Review: Sharp Shopper, Middletown, PA

Sharp Shopper Grocery Outlet
1595 Jamesway Plaza
Middletown, PA 17057
717-944-6606
M - F : 8 AM to 8 PM
Sat: 8 AM - 6 PM
http://www.sharpshopper.net/middletown.htm
Accepts credit cards, debit cards and local checks.
They bag your groceries in FREE bags!

Well, NOW You've Gone And Done It!
You went and told everyone you know about the great deals there are to be had by sucking it up and going to visit the local, friendly salvage grocer. And the store closest to YOU is the fabulous Sharp Shopper, Middletown, isn't it?

I know.

You Know How I Know?
Because I was THERE this morning and I saw TWO Lincoln Towncars and a cobalt blue Jaguar in the parking lot! The gentrification of the Harrisburg Salvage Grocery has begun.

And this is made evident by a once-over on the shelves: The prices in this store have gone up between 15 and 40% on some items just since I was here last month and it's all because they know what they're doing!!

Get in the way back machine and travel to that Intro to Economics class you snored through freshman year... what do you remember from that long ago time? Right. Supply and Demand. Well, the demand has finally shown up in Middletown, dammit, and the white gloved hand of the market is now at work.

I hope you're happy with yourself.

The Proof
The Duraflame log-sized roll of Land O' Lakes cheese that was $1.79 a pound is now $1.99 a pound for the medium cheddar and colby jack favors this morning. Granted, it's a pretty great deal. Still.

Now the 2/ $1 salad dressings are 99 cents each and the 89 cent salad dressings are $1.29 including a VERY good 12 oz. Gardini's Southwest Caesar that I got at the B.B.'s - Shaefferstown 3 weeks ago as a grouping of 4 / $1.

The $1 tubes of Colgate toothpaste are suddenly $1.49. The usually 99 cent 24 oz boxes of really good Premium Milk Bones were $1.39 today.

This is the difference between the true salvage grocery like B.B.'s and the hybrid of the breed of which the Sharp Shopper chain is one: About 30%.

I don't mean to bitch too hard. The 2-1/2 dozen medium eggs are still $2.35 and you'd have to be able to buy a dozen eggs for 93 cents to get that deal at a regular supermarket. There was a whole shelf full of Polly-O 32 oz. containers of ricotta cheese for 99 cents again. And they had 8 lb. bags of shredded lettuce for $2.99! I don't know what you do with 8 pounds of shredded lettuce, either, but I know you're not going to get it for $2.99 at the Giant. So, you know...

I'm not seeing the eye-popping deals I used to at the Sharp Shopper but you know what that means: it's time to head out to the country...

If You Go:
From Mooville head towards the airport on I-283. Before you get to the airport take the PA230 exit and go L at the bottom of the ramp at the light. The next light is the shopping center plaza on the left. Watch. The parking lot is a wreck.

Fast, Cheap and Easy Tip #2 - How To Save Fifty Bucks

How To Save 50 Bucks

First of all: get yourself to one of the Harbor Freight places that have sprung up all over. There's one on Eisenhower Blvd.

Buy yourself one of their $20 live traps... it is a wire contraption that you will have to spend 5 minutes putting together if you don't stop to laugh yourself silly at the Engrish instructions and just put it together like a man... you know... like you know what you are doing...

STOP IT. Men have gotten VERY far with this technique. Y'all are just mad that we know about it...

Then buy yourself a house in the City. Then sit tight for a minute until a groundhog shows up and starts making your life miserable.

It won't take long.

Then put out the trap. Bait it with a bit of cucumber end or one of those tomatoes it so evidently covets from your ONE lone tomato plant you forced yourself to plant this Spring... the pig...

(it IS a hog, after all)...

and trap it.

THEN get the really big fat plastic bag that you have lying around that was too big to put anything else into... a couple of them if you have them... The ground hog is getting ready to pee and poop all over everything and this is your only defense.

Double or triple plastic bag the trap with the groundhog in it and put it in the back of your truck if you have one or can get someone who has a truck to do this for you. Otherwise the whole ball of wax and the groundhog must go into the trunk of your car and if you have a hatchback... well, yes, it will have to go in there... Oh, quit screeching about it. It's not going to be in there too long...

You're going to take it for a little ride, all right, but you're not going for a mafia hit, for crying out loud... just over to the City Island where they will not mind at all if you do not ask to free your groundhog...

Even if you do manage to strike up a conversation with the guy running the
Susquehanna kayak rental place he won't tell you not to. He does have a little doggie with him most summer weekends and I liked her immediately. She has an obvious intolerance for crapola. Black and white and some rat terrier in her, I'd say, and she LOVES groundhogs...

But despite what he says about being infrequently consulted on matters of relative moral turpitude... he told me to go over to the other side where the parking garage is now so his dogger wouldn't be too easily amused with it... so I did... and I cut off the plastic bags and opened up the trap after the hateful creature inside tried to bite me or make me think he would... he jumped out and ran for the river's edge and I wished Darwin well...

Darwin who I so named after the guy at the Susquehanna Rental place told me about the guy who invented City Island. It seems the place had to be repopulated with wildlife after they cleaned the Superfund waste site enough to sell it to Harrisburg as the premier sports and entertainment complex it is today. He had to bring rabbits and squirrels over in order to attract the hawks and so invent an ecosystem right there on the reverse New Zealand of Dauphin County... so, far from being wrong in loosing my Eleventh Ward groundhog there, I was actually participating in a rich tradition, he said...

I was just happy to have the ground hog gone from my back yard... and under my deck... and chewing on the underside of my sun room where I heard him gnawing away at the joists all damn summer without having to kill it.

And I was advised to kill it. I was advised to dose it with Coca-cola and antifreeze. I was advised to drop it, trap and all, off the Harvey Taylor Bridge like Billy Joe McAllister. I was advised to hit it with a Louisville slugger and to use a propane torch on it.

I mean.

I was even advised by an ex-82nd Airborne Paratrooper to pull its rodent head back and slit its throat in an effort to avoid the city ordinance against discharging a weapon.

I am not kidding about any of this and certainly not about the propane torch.

And as greatly as that furry rat on 'roids stunk up my car... and as poopy as he left this stupid trap that I'm about to hose off with bleach and whatever other non-biodegradable detergents I can find in this house... it made me happy to know I helped that stupid, destructive, tomato-eating creature...

I might have had more immediate sympathy for him if I had moved in on HIS territory out in the country... but he moved in on MINE... and I've gone to a lot of trouble to live in this ridiculous place!

But it's good to be good...

And Now For The Fifty Bucks Part:

This S&S is a very reputable service... there are many like it. Look up "Pest Control" in your local friendly yellow pages and you will find a whole raft of them. They will set a trap for you for about $35 and they will come and take the trapped creature away for another $35 or so. Now, if you didn't spend that $70 on having your little problem handled for you and instead bought that trap at Harbor Freight and spent your Saturday morning making your mind up to free Darwin at City Island instead of watching him die a horrible, double-plastic bagged death on your back porch... you will have saved... yes, it's all true,fifty bucks

So you will have to decide: What IS your time worth and what is the cost of a clear conscience? In my case: Priceless.

An Introduction to Outlet Grocery Shopping, Part 3: The Germans

Here we begin the discussion of those Outlet Grocery Store shopping categories known as The Discount Grocery Store, the Limited Assortment or Value Grocery.

Aldi’s

3437 Simpson Ferry Rd.
Camp Hill, PA 17011

50 Westminster Drive
Carlisle, PA 17013

6445 Grayson Road
Harrisburg, PA 17111

1302 Lititz Pike
Lancaster, PA 17601

105 N. 11th Ave
Lebanon, PA 17046

280 Northern Way
York, PA 17402

And 61 more in PA alone! The Germans have come to Mooville in a big way.

Aldi’s is the first among them all.
This German-owned bunch are exhibit A in How They Won the War… E-FISH-EN-CEE. I’m talking low-cost grocery world-freaking domination. Not yet in South America, Africa or Asia, the Germans are EVERYWHERE else and they are all the same, every last one: clean, well-lit, lots of aisle space, 1300 items not 30,000, pay a quarter to get a cart but get the quarter back when you slide your cart back into the queue and bag your own groceries in your own bags. Hey, these guys invented "Arbeit macht frei," remember?

900 stores in the US means there’s one close to you and Mooville has a whole batch of ‘em… the one they just opened on the West Shore next to that other behemoth of weird stuff that’s pretty cheap all the time Big Lots is as lock-step sterile and cookie-cutter organized as any of them. And while it does have the personality of a cardboard box, they have not quite figured out their inventory par levels yet: I found the 1 lb. bags of every day 99 cent chopped lettuce (Easily $1.99 at The Giant) for TEN CENTS A BAG!!! I ate salad every day for a week!

Go there before they tweak the traffic counts and start ordering closer to the edge.

Set your watch by:

5# of sugar – 99 cents [Ed. note - As of 8/20/2008 this is bumped up to $1.19]

5# of flour – 99 cents [Ed. note - This, too...]

1 dozen large eggs – 99 cents [Ed. note - Ditto]

The $2.99 bouquets of fresh flowers as you walk in the door are a nice touch of the natural world in a box of straight lines and enforced calm that is pretty much the atmosphere here... but they don’t hold up that well, considering.

If you want the freshest flowers really cheap AND performance art... you have to go see Mike the Flower Guy at Third and Market Sts. in Harrisburg…

Next time: The Discount Grocery Also-rans...

Technorati Tags: shopping, outlet grocery, cheap stuff, Harrisburg PA

An Introduction to Outlet Grocery Shopping - Part 2: Bad Food Stores and The Rules

Here we begin the discussion of those Outlet Grocery Store shopping categories I was telling you about the last time... This trip: A two-fer! Salvage groceries... and the rules I made up to help you.

Salvage Groceries

The salvage grocery is not so much a store as an experience. Like many of the strange and wonderful things I have uncovered in Mooville... well... this is one of them. They are mostly Amish-run and this one shrewd buncha folks... among their Old Country ways comes some fairly space-age concepts like, save the fuel, use things up before you throw them away, waste-not want not and all that... plus they are really good at making a buck and they understand that volume cures a multitude of sins...

Graduates of the Harvard Business School could take a page outta these books... and if they did, the Amish salvage grocer would sell that book with a page out of it for a dime and both parties would be as happy as a pig in hog heaven about it...

These stores... warehouses... garages in some cases, are run by people who gather up the shelf-pulls... the returns... the stuff that has been sitting on the conventional supermarket shelves a little too long... and they organize them a little bit and sell them for so little money it makes your eyes water...

Sometimes.

Sometimes they're just a little store in the middle of nowhere and they know they've got you. If you need a jar of olives out there in East Bejeezuz, you're pretty much going to pay what they ask or drive 30 miles to The Giant... but not the ones I'm going to reveal to you here... these are the real deal: Pallet stores... Real live discounted salvaged groceries... outlets for food that you really just have to get into like you learn any other language... total cultural immersion.

Go to one of these places and see what life is like on a planet where stuff is banged up a little but, hey! So are most of us by the time we reach a certain age. In people, we call it character. In canned goods we call it inventory for the Bad Food Store.

Pays your money, takes your choice.

How They Came To Be Known as Bad Food Stores...

So, there I was... out in the wilds of Cumberland County... drove through all the miles of countryside where you can't imagine what on god's earth people living there do for a living... fought past all the traffic congestion at Newville (when you get to Newville... and you know you're gonna go... you will see what high comedy I am crafting here...) made it past the Greenspring community grove and the Cumber-bland County Landfill (yeah... THAT'S where they put it...)... you are OUT there when you go to B.B's-Newburg, I'm telling you... and turned there at the Red Wing Shoe sign to FINALLY get to my high value target.

As I was wandering through the parking lot I overheard a woman who must have had the network following her around because anyone with a half bar of cellphone service in that part of the world isn't using ATT and she was obviously trying to explain to the other party where she was...

Do You Do This? Well, Stop It.

What exactly is up with the first 5 minutes of every cellphone convo in this space-age bachelor pad universe we inhabit? Why is the first sentence always, "Where you at?" What on earth does it matter where you at unless you're on your way in the front door and the one you're speaking to is upstairs in bed with someone they will have difficulty explaining away? Is the point of mobility not that it just doesn't matter where you at? But I digress...

Where She Was At

So, there I was listening to this woman explain to her party where she was at and after trying "BB's... you know... that place out in the country... with all the cheap stuff... you know..." she finally gave up and said it: "The bad food store!" And with that she was able to continue her conversation and I had the core description for these places that are like nothing else you have ever seen. Despite my best efforts... and that is what you are getting here... my poor powers cannot really come close to the experience itself. Like so much of life, 99% involves showing up. You just have to be there.

I mean! Where else can you spend $20 for hours of non-stop amazement and come home with a trunk full of cheap food?

Only at THE BAD FOOD STORE!!

What They Are Not

Now I have read some comments from folks saying they just are too proud to venture into one of these places.

And I suppose they aren't for everyone. They ARE for people who don't mind banged up packaging and stuff that has gone a little out of date sometimes... all right, ALL RIGHT... sometimes a LOT out of date... but you pull up your big girl panties in this world and make your own decisions about whether or not you're too a-skeered of 99 cent peanut butter to save $3 for, no-lie, Crazy Richard's all-natural organic peanut butter that goes for $3.99 at The Giant in my snooty Camp Hill neck o' the woods...

My dog won't eat his vitamins in the morning if they aren't coated with peanut butter, ok? We won't debate the relative spoiled rotten-ness of my dog at this exact moment but I have 6 jars of 18 oz., $3.99 organic peanut butter that is all perfectly within its Sell By date that has not one smidge of hydrogenated coconut oil in it for Shadow the Wonder Dog that set me back 99 cents a piece and YOU don't!

Sorry. I don't mean to gloat but that's what happens after you've been in a couple of these places.

I got the Minority Report at my house in the 'hood on Saturday... Get this: The Patriot News takes all the aging classified ads and engagement notices for people you don't know and photos of things that happened the month before and wraps them around the ad inserts for the Sunday edition and throws them on the stoops of poor people's houses in the City here in Mooville...

No sense in stirring poor people up with the news, right? And how is a newspaper supposed to get its circulation up far enough to justify their sky high advert rates in this day of declining ability of people to read and the damned internet if they won't give a few thousand away, huh? But I digress...

...and I went a-looking through the ads for The Giant and The Weis and The Wegman's out there in Anglo Heaven, I mean, Silver Spring Township... and I WAS APPALLED!!!

Who PAYS these kinds of prices?! Well, now you and I both know: people who are too proud to go to the Bad Food Store!

The Rules

So here's Rule #1 - Get over yourself! If you hit the Powerball for $197 million, would you turn your nose up at it because you only paid a buck for the ticket? I didn't think so.

Rule #2 - This ain't your weekly trip to The Giant, that shrine to the brightly lit, football field sized footprint with 70 kinds of everything and all of it lined up nice on the shelves with Buy One Get One Free loss leaders advertised to get you to show up and drop the rest of your cash on that dreary list of things your household manages to consume like Pavlov's damned dogs over and over and... ["It's Tuesday"... *buzzer buzzes*... "I want spaghetti." Bah.] NO! This is high-adventure, people. At The Giant, you KNOW what you're gonna get... at the Bad Food Store... you NEVER do!

Rule #3 - When you've been to one Bad Food Store... you've been to ONE Bad Food Store. Most of them are NOTHING like any other one you have ever seen. This is some honest to god cultural diversity going on. Some have bags and some you gotta bring your own bags. Some take debit cards and some take credit cards. Hell, the Amish-run B.B.'s won't use Englisher electric company power but they've got an ATM on-site and for a $2 surcharge they'll let you get at your own money so you can hand it over to them!

They pretty much all accept American money so you'll be safe if you bring that.

Next time: The Germans

An Introduction to Outlet Grocery Shopping - Part 1

Outlet grocery store shopping... salvage groceries... discount supermarkets... call them what you will they are not for the faint of heart, it's too true but I am here to 'splain it all for you: this is NOT your mama's supermarket, ok?

Some Definitions
Let us begin at the beginning: Here on my planet there are three loose categories of alt. grocery procurement.

Bad Food Stores: Salvage grocery, outlet food store, pallet store. The inventory comes from every cat and dog place you can think of and the good people who run them organize the truckloads a little bit and price the stuff to move. Brands you recognize and brands you don't in every condition from brand new to smashed beyond recognition. Sometimes they package smashed stuff into baggies and tape others up so they look like something a man with duct tape got hold of. Sorry. Or a woman. Most have lots of cleaning products and the HBA line up... make-up, shampoo, vitamins, all that. Some have produce and some have frozen stuff, too. These fabulous people have listed a whole bunch of them.

Discount / Limited Inventory Grocery Stores: These will be your Aldi's and Sav-A-Lot style stores. Mostly private labels and no frills but very good prices on pretty much every basic grocery thing you need over the course of a week. These are chains so there's a greater likelihood that you live near one. Adventure? No. Endless variety? Hardly. Cheap groceries that ARE always in date and organized so you can actually see what it is you're getting into? You betcha!

Hybrids: These are the crossover vehicles of the medium. Not exclusively banged up and dented cans, not only those one-step-up from the black and white generic labels of our parent's price-controlled Nixonian 70's Show pantries... these are a little bit country AND a little bit rock 'n roll. They tend to be chains but medium-sized; usually 5 or 10 all told. Amelia's has gone and gotten way too big for her britches but here in Mooville we have the Sharp Shoppers and I love them so... If it weren't for the Sharp Shopper, what would have become of all of those abandoned Jamesway Plazas?

Next Time: Outlet Grocery Shopping Part 2: The Bad Food Store

Technorati Tags: shopping, grocery outlets, cheap stuff

Mooville Roadside Attraction #1: Green Dragon Market

Now here's a thing you really should not deprive yourself of... If you don't have a bucket list, start one and put this on it... you will die a restless spirit if you go without having been to the Green Dragon.

Green Dragon Market
955 North State Street
Ephrata, PA 17522
Telephone (717) 738-1117

If you have the good fortune to be from WESTERN Pennsylvania, you may have had the pleasure of experiencing Pechins in Dunbar, Fayette County when it was across the falling down bridge off Rt. 119 and around the back of that cut before they moved out to their much cleaner, tidier and altogether less satisfactory digs at the Laurel Mall in 2005.

If you have any idea what a Pechins was, you will not need nearly so much convincing to take off work and get your self up out of bed early enough to hit the Green Dragon as it is opening up at 9 AM...

And if you have ever found yourself at the hallucination that is the Sunrise Swap Shop, Circus and 14 Screen Drive-in Theatre just north of Ft. Lauderdale... you think I'm kidding about this? On the BEST drugs I couldn't make that place up... the Green Dragon is like an Amish Sunrise Swap Shop without the abused elephants or the 14 movie screens... I know, I know, who wouldn't want to see THAT but we're talking about STAYcations now... stay with me here...

There's a big out of control flea market on E. Baseline on the way to Apache Junction east of Phoenix off the 60, come to think of it, but I digress...

The Green Dragon is ONLY open on Friday. How do they manage to pay the rent on one day's sales? VOLUME!!!!

Now, don't go expecting the greatest deals in the world necessarily although there are some to be had... the attraction here is the sheer amount of stuff they have managed to cram into 10 acres of sectioned off stalls in 7 enormous buildings. Bring cash. And wear sneakers.

Directions from Mooville:
The scenic route is 45 miles and about an hour and 20 minutes from center city (and I use the word loosely) Harrisburg, PA. Find Rt. 322E and stay with it no matter what until about 40 miles out of town you hit the square of Ephrata and turn L on to PA-272/N Reading Rd. Go about 1.5 miles and make that R at Garden Spot Rd. If you get to Wabash Rd., stop and turn around as you'll have missed it. Less than a mile on Garden Spot later take the R onto North State St. You can NOT miss the signs.

Need to get there 15 minutes faster? Take 283 S to Rt. 30 E at Lancaster. Take the Rt. 222 N interchange towards Reading. Ten or so miles up take Rt. 322 towards Ephrata, merge yourself onto Hahnstown Rd. then L at E. Mohler Church Rd. and stay with it (you'll have to turn right after a mile and a half to do that and then make another one... that Mohler Church does NOT want people from Lancaster to get to the Green Dragon), finally you will see North State Street after about 2 and a half miles of Mohler Church Rd. all told. Half a mile on State St. and you'll be there.

The Turnpike won't get you there any quicker, either, so save the outrageous $2.00 toll on the Harrisburg East to Reading section and see the cows... they're bored to cow tears out in those fields and they will moo with happiness to see you...

I always honk my horn at cows. I think it gives them something to think about.

Fast, Cheap and Easy Tip #1

Or: How I manage to live on a state worker's salary in this half a horse town.

Some while ago I read someplace... I read, you know... I don't spend EVERY second trapping the random thoughts that flit through my brain... something written by some man who appeared, up until that moment, attractive to me in some way I can't recall now, when he said... and I can't say why he said this but it occurred to him, apparently, and now I am recalling it for you... something to the effect that there was nothing less attractive to him than a really beautiful woman reaching down to pick up dog poop. He couldn't help it, he said, it just really disgusted him.

Ok?

So there I was at 7AM this morning staring into the grass that lines the sidewalk near my house with a dog leash in one hand and a plastic bag of poop in the other and, as I was staring... I was looking for the one piece of poop I had missed having disappeared in that disappearing-in-the-grass way dog poop has... and I remembered this thing this guy had said all these months ago. And it occurred to ME, all these many months later that there is very little I myself find less attractive than a big pile of dog poop that someone... I won't say a MAN because, god knows, there are idiot women walking around who think it is beneath them to pick up their own dog's poop, too... felt too attractive to pick up.

How the hell does that guy think poop is removed from the streets, yards, parks and every other place a dog who is lucky enough to be owned by someone who attempts to care for it walks, hm?

I know very few people who don't have an MTv reality show named after them who hire other, presumably less attractive, people to pick up dog poop FOR them. You pick up your own dog's poop, for crying out loud. It's what you do if you were raised right or ever had an intelligent thought in your head.

Jeeze-US.

Which brings me to:

The Cheap Tip O' the Day If You Haven't Already Thought of It Yourself

When you are at the mainstream supermarket of your choice, stop on your way out and pick up a bag of plastic bags from the recycling can they have strategically located next to the entrance for well-meaning people who want to feel better about the detritus they generate by shoving a bag of plastic bags in there where they can rest for a moment before they are hauled off to the incinerator.

The bags, not the people.

Never mind the existential argument of paper versus plastic for a moment. We can get back to that any time.

What? In THIS town that incinerator is where every bit of everything that goes into the garbage goes... they aren't even pretending to landfill this stuff and we all know it... it gets burned up into cinders and the heat does not generate electricity to make the people's electric bills in this town more affordable or even to reduce the cost of doing business by businesses or is otherwise made use of... it gets burned up and there goes THAT revenue stream... it's all true. You could look it up... but never mind that, either, this is the tip...

Pick up a bag of bags so you have something to pick up your dog's poop with.

It's a lot cheaper than buying the plastic bags they sell for this purpose and it gives new life, for a second, to a poor, doomed, about to be burned up plastic bag. You are allowing it the dignity of having greater use and the plastic bag doesn't harbor any delusions about how it is too attractive to be so closely involved with dog poop.

Don't worry about asking permission to take the bags from any supermarket staff... you could, in the interest of good manners, I suppose, but I never have and I have taken the lid off those barrels and rummaged around for a decent sized bag of bags right in front of those poor men who retrieve carts from the parking lot for a living and not one of them has ever said a word to me not even when they were looking straight at me while I was doing it... you could, though... it would be a way to make conversation and, hey, you might meet someone...

If anyone ever did try to stop you, I'm sure they would lose interest about the time you started discussing the problems of that freaking incinerator and why people think they are too good to pick up their dog's poop...

I'm just saying.

Outlet Grocery Review: BB's Grocery Outlet, Schaefferstown, PA

BB's Grocery Outlet

Route 419 N.

Schaefferstown, PA

No phone, no pool, no pets

M - F: 8 AM to 5 PM

SAT: 8 AM - 3 PM

Cash and local checks only

They bag your groceries in FREE bags!

Now, like many of these charmers, you will not find much more than a State Route Number when you go looking for an address. These Amish are crafty marketing geniuses and they know that a large part of the attraction of these smash and dent places is that not everyone knows about them, damned plain elitists that they are. You need a connection to find one. It took me YEARS to find the first BB's and now if, like Lou Reed, you've been waiting on your Man to hook you up on the BB's East location... well, here I am:

Mostly How To Get There:
From Mooville Proper, get on Rt. 322E from Harrisburg towards Hershey. Stay on Rt. 322 no matter how tempting the signs or the Google maps might make that 419N, Schaefferstown address... on the other side of Hershey, past the conference center at the Lodge and the Milton Hershey School and all that you will see a thing looming on the right that will set your nose to twitching...

it's called the Country View Grocery and it is just that sort of mixed-use looking building that these salvage places set themselves up in... It might have been a little diner once... one that was too clean and couldn't find anyone to make any decent pie, you know the kind... and it is a grocery all right... I found some 2 for $1 L'Eggs control top pantyhose on a shelf and there is a little room in the back with all kindsa Amish noodles and whatnot back there... lots of bagged up and containerized bulk foodstuffs...

DO NOT BE FOOLED... this trompe l'oeil trifle is NOT the real deal. I did get a big bag of Spring mix lettuce for 75 cents that would’a set me back $3.69 at The Giant but I digress... Stay on 322E, you hear?

Eventually you will pass a road (Starner Rd.) and the very next turn off to the left will be for 419: TAKE THAT LEFT. You will very shortly hit Rt. 72/Quentin Rd. (big intersection, big ass gas station and a HUGE horse riding school place on the left... lots of very beautiful horses and girls spending Daddy's money on lessons and tack and snoot long before he strokes out from getting the bill) cross over 72/Quentin Rd. and keep on 419 which sometimes will be east and sometimes north but stay with 419 even as you have to dog-leg sort of left past a lovely old redstone church where they have a peach festival in August and then right and quickly left again at the Cornwall Furnace...

ALL OF THIS IS RT. 419... right about here is where you may catch a glimpse of a sign that says Schaeffer Rd, no matter...

Follow 419 past some utterly lovely homes and a stinky farm where this Saturday morning I saw an actual calf with an actual collar on it on a lead of some kind that was attached to a big igloo-looking thing right in the front yard by the road. I am against chained dogs in principal and in fact but I have not yet thought out my humane treatment of cows ethic and I was trying to get to BB's before all the good stuff was gone so I didn't stop to nose around (i.e. get shot)... finally you will see a large sign for 501N which will be disorienting because it will appear to be heading west.. PAY NO ATTENTION TO RT. 501!

A second later you will see another sign for 501S or some such and then you must begin to watch... (don't turn onto 501, you hear!?) VERY shortly after this you will come to a little bitty town square... right will take you past a cute and likely over-priced antique shop. It is called Market St. but there is nothing that way but a cool old rotted out Distillery and there is no liquor there any more... I looked, believe it. Straight ahead will take you onto Rt. 897 and god knows where. Instead, go LEFT onto Market St. In two shakes of a lamb's tail on the right you will see the familiar low to the ground yellow sign that you've been looking for: BB's Bents, Bumps & Bunch of Bargains.

It is on the right and it is MUCH smaller that the home office out between Newville and Newburg...

The Goods

More cramped for space but many of the same goods were here, from the looks of the assortment yesterday, as the stuff I looked over last week in Newburg... The COLDEST freaking freezer, check... Spices in a buncha boxes you have to go through every one to find what you're after for 25 cents or 50 cents, check... 8 oz. salad dressings @ 4 / $1, check. They've got a shipment of banged up super-premium dog food in and I picked up a 26# bag of Wellness CORE dog food that runs $40 at Superpetz on sale for, get this: $9.50.

And pint cartons of Woodstock Farms organic half and half: 3/$1!! OH, ALL RIGHT! They went out of date on Valentine's Day but I opened one in the parking lot and there was NOTHING wrong with it, I tell you... I went back in and bought the rest so there aren't any more of those, sorry. And VERY FRIENDLY shoppers! Very!

9 Stars. It's not the Newburg B.B.'s, but what is? Incredibly Highly Recommended. Bring your cooler if you're coming from very far away.

How To Leave

Go home the way you came. You could try to lollygag around on 501N up to 422 in Myerstown or take Main St./897 to the right on your way back through town and ride that out to Lebanon if you had a mind to go that way but I wanted to see what was in that Country View Grocery...

If I hadn't stopped, I could have been back in Harrisburg in 40 minutes. No lie.