This store was built in the late 00s, and most recently remodeled in 2020. Those of you who have heard of Carmel (full name: Carmel-by-the-sea) before are probably wondering why I would have wanted to visit such a pretentious sort of place, the kind of place that's all freaked out about
a "historic" gas station (I just had to mention that somewhere -- it's the most California NIMBY thing I've ever heard!) -- well, that 2020 remodel was something a bit out of the ordinary, something that I haven't had the opportunity to see anywhere else. Plus, it's literally right off Highway 1 at the north end of Big Sur, which was the main reason I was on this vacation in the first place!
It has been a long while, but I've been to Carmel-By-The-Sea and Monterey before during the same 1990 trip that brought me to Fresno and several other parts of California. I can't say I remember anything about those places other than the coastal parts for which these areas are famous so if there was a Safeway there (it wouldn't have been this one), I certainly don't remember it.
ReplyDeleteHuh, I had no idea Mario Andretti had a chain of C-stores. As you know, I used to be a big racing fan, so I find it interesting that Mario Andretti was involved in that business. I wonder if that was always a Shell because Mario Andretti was heavily associated with Texaco (and Kmart!) in the 1990s.
You should have felt right at home at this Safeway! After all, that Toyota van over on the left corner has Washington plates! Maybe that was what you were driving on that trip, but that would seem like a strange choice so I'm guessing not, lol. The Land Rover aside, the cars in the parking lot here seem pretty ordinary. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it resembles Tacoma, but it probably looks more like Tacoma than Seattle.
Like I said, it has been nearly 35 years since I was in Carmel-By-The-Sea. Thus, I can't say I remember the demographics of the area, but I would guess that, as you say, it is full of wealthy people...probably a lot of wealthy retirees. It seemed like the Oregon Coast had a fair share of California retirees (probably less-wealthy ones than the ones here). Not all 'old money' types are the same, but in my experiences out east, and I certainly went through a lot of old money places on my trip this summer, the old money types are probably going to be less strange than the new money types. It isn't unusual for the old money types to drive very ordinary cars on a regular basis. Volvos were common out east, but also things like Toyota Camrys and basic Lexus ES/RX type things. Sometimes it is hard to tell they are even wealthy as they aren't trying too hard to give off the wealthy look!
Perhaps the Seattle bourgeoisie have rightly biased your opinion in a bad way, but I suspect the worst offenders you come across are probably the Seattle petite bourgeoisie (or the 'professional-managerial class' if you want a more modern, more American, and less Marxian term), of which I'm sure there are many, lol. While some of those probably travel to places like Carmel-By-The-Sea, I think those are the types who are traveling to Europe these days so I'd be wary of them there, lol. Unfortunately, you'll probably also see those types in business class, but hopefully you can at least shelter yourself from them so you don't have to hear their shallow, daft conversations!
It seems like this store replaced an older Safeway on the same site, but it's possible that was some other store -- I'm just going by aerial images. Either way, it's definitely nowhere near as noteworthy or memorable as Big Sur itself, even for a Safeway fan like me!
DeleteNope, that wasn't my car for this trip, but I did notice it and it is part of why I wrote that! I'd say this is a pretty typical California selection of cars (apart from the lack of Teslas) -- nothing super fancy like I might have expected for the location, but nowhere near as many older cars as I would expect to see around here! If anything, it looks like what I would expect from the wealthier eastside suburbs, except for the lack of Subarus!
The kinds of people I really can't stand are the tech bros and entrepreneurial/startup types, and you probably don't get a lot of that in a place like Carmel! (Seattle, on the other hand... I remember hanging out in the computer science building at the UW, since it was much nicer than my department's building, and hearing students talking about skipping classes to go to Europe for the week, buying fancy cars, all that sort of stuff that you wouldn't expect college students to be able to afford!) I have a negative perception of wealthy people of all kinds, but I don't really interact with the ultra-wealthy/old-money types all that much (despite living in Seattle's stereotypical old-money neighborhood) so I don't know how I would feel about them in real life.
At least the good thing about traveling internationally is that a lot of the annoying wealthy people I come across are talking in a language that I don't understand, so it's easy to tune them out! I will say that I didn't run into all that many annoying people on my business class flights last time (just one on the last flight), though there were some annoying lounge people!
Ha, it is pretty funny that the computer science department had a nice building at your university because, at my undergraduate alma mater at least, the computer science department had a terrible looking building from the outside when I went there. I only went inside it once (I'm not even sure why I went in there) and it was even worse looking on the inside than the outside! It was like a warehouse, but with walls. It had concrete floors, an open ceiling, bad lighting, and so forth. You might think I'm describing the type of retail I hate, and that is true to a large extent, but this was even worse than an industrial-looking retailer because the ceiling was low and the lighting was really bad! I think a lot of the computer science students at my alma mater were foreign students so they probably weren't the same type of wealthy types that UW had, though I suppose a lot of foreign students are wealthy in their own way.
DeleteThe building my program was in was pretty bad too since it was the second-oldest building on campus (which you might think would add some charm to things, but not really in this case, lol). That said, at least my building had a real drop-ceiling (though a very low one) and flooring! Terrazzo in the halls and carpet in the rooms if I remember correctly. We had some middle-of-the-road buildings and some nice ones on campus as well, but I didn't spend much time in the nice ones aside from the Hotel and Restaurant Management school which was located in a fully-functional Hilton hotel on the campus. I had a friend in that program so I did spend some time hanging out in the Hilton. Hey, why not! Otherwise, I liked to hang out in the Engineering Building I if I was hanging out in a part of campus separate from my academic areas. That building was a tribute to the 1970s with shiny earthtone tile covered sunken floors, wood railings and such, planters, dark mood lighting, and so forth, lol.
Yeah, those UW computer science students sound like the definition of the technocratic professional-managerial class that I was talking about earlier. I certainly wouldn't blame you for being annoyed by those types! I'm guessing if there are many PMCs in Carmel, they are probably retired ones, so maybe it isn't so bad especially if you're just running into them at Safeway. Perhaps you might think otherwise if you had to spend a lot of time around them, lol.