Thursday, January 3, 2013

Food 4 Less on 81st and Powell is closing. 
We found out last week. 
We have been faithful customers for 15 years, despite the poor lighting and dubious quality of some of the produce, not to mention the guy that died, while I was shopping for my mother in law's 70's birthday dinner (see my blog entry for March 2009)
I am willing to overlook a dead body, for the large and expansive selection of eastern European and Latino articles you could find there, and the giant selection of exotic produce and Asian stuff that came at a better price than any where else in town.
They also carried a lot of other stuff at better prices than you could find up any place else.  Need a giant bar of decent soap, for a dollar?  Yup, they have it! plus a plethora of cleaning supplies that you would never think you needed until you saw them there, for pennies, and thought  
"well for .89 a bar of ringaroundthecollarremovingsoap seems like a really good idea!"
The store was a throw back to the 70's with a unapologetic no frills attitude that I personally find endearing.   We also got attached to the clerks. 
There was the jittery former addict with the swastika  tattoo on her forehead (no really), and Nazarene, the motherly tough as nails woman that worked every Thanksgiving & Christmas for the time and a half "I can celebrate tomorrow when I get PAID. Love you baby, you have a nice night, darlin'", Rolf and I brought her dinner on holidays the first couple of years we lived in the neighborhood, before she politely told us that she received multiple dinners each holiday and that a donate to a charity would be better spent. There was Brad, who looked like he was about 14, but had this absurd John Wayne voice, who called me Ma'am. Oh, and the hard ass kid that used to bust on the drunks, refusing to sell them alcohol.  He was there tonight, when Rolf and went to make a final trip, stocking up on soap, rice, PBR and applesauce. 
It is a sad closing for our neighborhood, the only place with fresh produce for the poor folks who live between Division and Powell, east of 60th.  Our little pocket of the hood, closer to the river and on the right side of Division,  has gentrified like crazy, but 82nd will never be anything other than poor and depressed and now the people forced to live in that island of misfit & hopelessness will have one less option.

3 comments:

  1. I will miss the prospect of visitng that store, it was indeed an experience.

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  3. We today went to the Food 4 Less on 81rst and Powell and sat with our jaws dropped when we pulled in an saw that it was no longer there. Closed. It had been in Mid Dec. that we had shopped there last for our big stock up and now to realize it was no more, I literally was almost in tears. We live close to a Grocery Outlet and try to spend as much money in that store as possible to support the neighborhood. But the Food4 Less was the BEST place to find great prices and Unique foods, I loved to sample all the ethnic items and the produce was AFFORDable.
    We are so sad, first our Sav A Lot on 52nd, then the SAV a Lot on Foster now Food 4 Less. I do NOT want to shop the uPscale and Frou Frou stores, We are bummed.
    I guess it is WinCo, but the last time I bought bulk rice there it was so dusty and dirty I had to wash it 5 times. Not happy.

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