{"id":1607,"date":"2007-11-28T14:51:45","date_gmt":"2007-11-28T14:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/28\/ode-to-costco-a\/"},"modified":"2007-11-28T14:51:45","modified_gmt":"2007-11-28T14:51:45","slug":"ode-to-costco-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/28\/ode-to-costco-a\/","title":{"rendered":"ODE TO COSTCO AND ITS FANS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/photos\/uncategorized\/2007\/11\/28\/costco.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"152\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Costco\" title=\"Costco\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/dontgeltoosoon\/images\/2007\/11\/28\/costco.jpg?resize=150%2C152\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; float: left;\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.costco.com\/Home.aspx?cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_logo&amp;lang=en-US\"><br \/>\nCostco<\/a> seems to be everyone&#8217;s darling.&nbsp; Of course, it&#8217;s been my darling for years.&nbsp; &nbsp;It&#8217;s got great stuff, great prices, great staff, even wonderful employee policies. But in the past week I&#8217;ve read two very loving profiles of the biggest of the big box stores in publications ranging from <a href=\"http:\/\/gracedavis.typepad.com\/i_am_dr_lauras_worst_nigh\/2007\/11\/what-i-did-on-t.html\">State of Grace<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/gracedavis.typepad.com\/i_am_dr_lauras_worst_nigh\/2007\/11\/what-i-did-on-t.html\">&nbsp;<\/a>&#8212; the blog of the remarkable Grace Davis, to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/11\/25\/fashion\/25costco.html?_r=1&amp;oref=slogin\">Sunday New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There are lots of reasons for this I think.&nbsp; Of course there are the usual ones: excellent quality, bulk discounts on staples like paper towels, excellent store brand tee shirts (say some of the men in my life), remarkable produce, and pretty good everything else.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also fun. At the ones around Washington DC, and the ones we used to go to in LA, I always feel like I&#8217;m at the UN.&nbsp; Once, during the women&#8217;s World Cup, we walked in to find, gathered around the television section, an enthusiastic crowd that looked as if they were from every country in the world.&nbsp; Mexico, the Philippines, India, Japan &#8212; just everywhere &#8211; all cheering together.&nbsp; It&#8217;s always like that.&nbsp; Big families, couples, singles, mom and pop restaurateurs, hipsters, geeks &#8212; everyone.&nbsp; Even Douglas Coupland.&nbsp; In my favorite of his books, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0-06-039148-0\/?tag=dotgetosoth01-20 \">Microserfs<\/a>, he writes &quot;my universe consists of home, Microsoft, and Costco.&quot;&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/photos\/uncategorized\/2007\/11\/28\/simpsons.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"112\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Simpsons\" title=\"Simpsons\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/dontgeltoosoon\/images\/2007\/11\/28\/simpsons.jpg?resize=150%2C112\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; float: left;\" \/><\/a> It&#8217;s also home to one of my favorite <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesimpsons.com\/index.html\">Simpsons<\/a> scenes ever:&nbsp; the family almost drowned when they ran into and broke all the giant bottles of cranberry juice in&nbsp; an aisle display and an ocean of juice flooded the store.<\/p>\n<p>OH and I forgot <a href=\"http:\/\/www.costco.com\/Common\/Category.aspx?whse=BC&amp;N=4017442&amp;in_dim_search=1&amp;cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&amp;Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&amp;lang=en-US&amp;search=books&amp;topnav=\">books<\/a>.&nbsp; Best sellers, cook books, thrillers &#8211; if they&#8217;ve got something you want, they&#8217;ve got it for less than anywhere else.<\/p>\n<p>So carry on oh noble vendor &#8212; serving us well and offering us entertaining distractions (if you can park) on Sunday afternoons.&nbsp; We knew you even before the New York Times.&nbsp; But before that?&nbsp; What did we ever do without you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Costco seems to be everyone&#8217;s darling.&nbsp; Of course, it&#8217;s been my darling for years.&nbsp; &nbsp;It&#8217;s got great stuff, great prices, great staff, even wonderful employee policies. But in the past week I&#8217;ve read two very loving profiles of the biggest of the big box stores in publications ranging from State of Grace&nbsp;&#8212; the blog of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/28\/ode-to-costco-a\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">ODE TO COSTCO AND ITS FANS<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6,722,7],"tags":[1924,1926,1920,1925,1922,1923,1888,266],"class_list":["post-1607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-food-and-drink","category-life","tag-big-box-store","tag-community","tag-costco","tag-discounts","tag-douglas-coupland","tag-retail","tag-shopping","tag-simpsons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-pV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}