I don't know. Whenever I travel, right before or right after Czeching into the hotel, I go to a CONvenience store and buy bottled water. Always. (Interesting LA ghetto story to follow.) So I just buy the stuph from Lawsons, 7-11, or vending machines. Don't know who makes it.
LA ghetto story (Integral will grok this)
As I wrote, I always buy bottled water before or after Czeching into my hotel. I often fly to LAX, sometimes very often, so I have a routine. I pick up my rental car, drive down La Cienega past the Burger King and hang a right on Century. Right there on your right is an ARCO station where I stop to buy my water (either before or after taking a quick run down to Yoshinoya on the corner of Century and Hawthorne in the deep dark crevasses of Inglewood). so one time I pull up and start walking into the ARCO and I see the clerk coming ~OUTT and looking around. I keep walking towards the door. The clerk waves his hands and tells me "No, we are closed. We were just robbed. Did you see him?" Well, I didn't, and I had to find another CONvenience store around. So I start heading back towards Yoshinoya on Century and find the ghetto liquor store on the right a few blocks down - I go in and pick up two 1.5 liter bottles of water and my drug of choice, a spicy V-8. I walk up to the Czech~OUTT area and I'll be damned if the whole area behind the broad, long counter isn't behind 2.5 inch thick bullet resistant plexiglass - and they keep the cigarettes behind this wall of plexiglass that guards the clerks and cash registers. They have a rotatable plexiglass pass-thru where you can pay and the clerk can pass change and any behind-the-counter items to you. The woman ahead of me was negotiating to buy cigarettes; she didn't have enough money and the clerks wouldn't sell here individual cigarettes, only whole packs. After listening to her try tho negotiate with them, and since she was obviously drunk, and since smoking is bad for her and will probably kill her early, I gave her a $5 bill and said "it's on me - buy yourself a pack". So finally I gett to the counter and pay for my water and V-8 through this massive wall of bullet-resistant plexiglass with speakers and microphone to communicate to the clerk. I told him that I'm there because the ARCO was just robbed and is closed. He says "oh, that happens a lot to them and the Shell station too".
When I walked ~OUTT of the store, the woman to whom I gave the $5 so she could buy her smokes and gett ~OUTT of my way to Czech ~OUTT is waiting and in her drunken slur she wants to "date" me to thank me for the smokes. Wow. A $5 whore. First time I ever met one of those. She was overpricing herself by about $6.
Welcome to the 'hood.
That's why I love slumming. You gett to have all these memories of weird shit happening. I have a few Yoshinoya stories too - BTW, that Yoshinoya has a full time armed guard inside after dark. There are at least a dozen bros hanging ... errr ... loitering in the parking lott offering to sell you crack rocks, weed, or eightballs.
Way more fun than sitting in the lounge of a Four Seasons.
AI
