Safeway Food & Drug

I haven’t been in Safeway since I was a little kid in San Jose, CA. The last time I was in California, Safeway was Vons and Ralphs (and Quikstop) was owned by Kroger.
I got diesel fuel first and everything worked as expected. Then, I went into the store. I thought that they were trying to go upscale like Wegmans on the east coast with the dim lighting over the produce. (They could have been trying to hide the mold on the bleu cheese, right? Isn’t that mold anyway? You have to cultivate bacteria to make cheese in the first place.) Walmart has even tried it in the Neighborhood Market stores.
I looked for snacks and drinks to take with me on the rest of my 2000 or so miles. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything interesting enough to buy at what seemed like high prices to me but then, I didn’t have their customer card.

Vons and Safeway are one and the same, but coming from SoCal it’s still a little weird to be walking around in other states and seeing Safeway instead. The floor plan is the same, the lighting and items are the same you can almost imagine you are in a grocery store from whatever town you started your trip out from… except for the people! O_​O
Not the employees mind you, they were very nice and carried out their job accordingly. It’s just the other shoppers at the store. Behind me in the check out isle there was a couple that look like they came out of the painting «American Gothic» but except more cowboy instead of farmer. Same dour expression but more white hat and jeans. I don’t know what their problem was, just seemed like they were old and racist, because they were giving me ‘the stare’ for no obvious reason. Because I’m Asian, because I have multiple piercings in my ear, because I’m obviously not from ’round here, or I have something on my face?! What? :(
I’ll never know, but I’m just glad I didn’t piss off the grizzlier cowboy at the entrance of the store. He was so grizzly, he makes the men in the Marlboro man posters seem dainty.