A-1 Market

Yesterday it was finally dry enough to take Victor to the boat park again while Vida was at futsal practice. We had fun building houses out of twigs and knocking them down with the front-end loader. We went up and down the slides and jumped off the benches in the boat. There is a house being built down the block so we took a break to see what was happening there. There was a crane lifting wood to an upper floor, which wasn’t quite as exciting as last time when they were digging out the space for the garage and dumping the dirt into a huge truck.




Just before picking Vida up we stopped at A-1 Liquors and Groceries on 42nd and Irving for a snack. I loved the simple sign and beige wood paneling. There are a lot of A-1s around and they usually are not what they claim. It’s as if they have to convince themselves they are the best. In San Francisco there is an A-1 Café and A-1 Bakery A-1 Plumbing Supply and A-1 Construction. The list goes on and on in its remarkable lack of creativity. When we walked in past the newspaper rack with Chinese newspapers. The owner was sitting at a little table in the corner. There were rows of chip racks just in front of the door so we pondered them a minute, but nothing looked good to Victor so we continued around the corner to the coolers. There were the usual wine coolers and sodas and sad assortment of Oscar Meyer meats and a few cheeses. As we turned the corner to head toward the beer Vic looked up yelled “Chrissy Field!” and “Golden Gate Bridge!”. I looked up to see a huge Budweiser photo ad going across the whole back of the store flanking a large Budweiser car. Vic was in love with the car so we stopped to stare while I picked up some Pabst Blue Ribbon in a can.



As we turned the corner toward the register there was a deli case empty except for some plastic wrapped quesadillas and tamales. There was a bread rack with Wonder bread and other Hostess type pastries. More empty freezer cases were positioned in front of the register and as usual Victor was interested in ice cream. We found one that actually had ice cream in it and he picked out some Dibs. I reluctantly let him have them thinking that he would share them with Vida. The owner saw us staring at the empty cases and explained that they were getting new ice cream to fill them out soon. I was mentally going through some cash flow scenarios in order to explain the empty cases. I asked if the cashier was the owner and she said that she owned the market along with her sister. I wanted more of a story but Vic was getting impatient. We took one more picture on the cute benches out front as we left and went to the car. Vic dug into the dibs and started to practically polish them off before I took the container away.



Vics Snack—Dibs Beer of the Day-Pabst Blue Ribbon 24 oz can