I used to go to a Whole Foods before the name was widely known. WF opened a store in downtown PA in the early '90s that was a several block wok from DaOffice. For lunch sumtimes, I'd stroll over to the NewStore and buy one of their tasty, butt expensive, wraps and a cold almond Amazake and wok back to DaOffice and CONsume it whilst reading.
Butt that was then, nott noww. WF is packed wiff DaEffetes that I don't like to 'ssociate wiff.
As to Pierogie's/Porgie's link: (laff) waaaay back in the furthest depths of my brainpan I recall hearing about Butera grocery store(s) from when I was a kid. As I've rote before, for awhile I lived wiff my maternal grandmother (The Sergeant that you seem impressed with given her roles in the ILGWU and Democratic Machine), and she lived in Downers Grove - on Elm Street, just several blocks from the train station. I suspect that is when I heard the name Butera, maybe on an ad on one of her Cubs games on WGN channel 9. Maybe in one of her newspapers. Butt I know I heard the name.
And from my dad's side of DaFambly, most of them that left Berwyn and Cicero (the Bohunk area in the first haff of the 20th Century in Chicago), all live in the same general area - gotts 'em in Westmont, Naperville, Lisle, Hinsdale, and St. Charles. Used to have some in Aurora, Wheaton, and (The Sergeant) in Downers. Now the area is called the I-88 technology corridor, and is Chicago's poor imitation of Silly Valley. In fack, the daughter of my half-sister (from my dad's first marriage after DaWar) was a Naperville cawp until she retired a few years ago - I guess she would be my 'half-niece'? Anyways(TM-Nasfan), I never visit any of those folks as we moved far from Chicago and I never gott to know them, only the names and an occasional phone call, letter, or now mostly Christmas card with maybe a short note.
Butt I know the area well. On my mom's side, the two sons of my great uncle Freddy (who I've mentioned before) live/lived (one recently died) in Lisle and I've spent time in the distant past with them in their homes. Also, grandma The Sergeant was in a nursing home in Hinsdale for a while and then two of her sisters wound up there also, so I do recall driving there with my parents to visit them once or maybe twice. I do very occasionally (meaning nott too often) wind up having to visit tech start-ups/small caps in the Naperville area/I-88 corridor and I drive around to visit spots I recall from my very young youth (like age 4-5 or so), some of witch are gone now. Just have no desire to visit with my dad's first fambly remnants - rather keep things at arm's length since I really don't know the people and CONsider them to be genetic relatives butt nott fambly. Maybe that sounds harsh, butt hay, it's my perogative who/whom I 'ssociate wiff. My mom's side of the fambly (and DaWife's) are too cool and are more than enuff to keep current with - and more inneresting too. And none of them, other than great uncle Freddy's living son, live anywhere near Chicago which is a place I enjoy visiting butt am so very glad that I don't live in the area.
We don't have a Butera market onna WessCoass, butt at least in the greater LA area we have SuperKing markets, witch are fun to shop at and ubercheap on their sale items (great produce - stuph I've never seen at other stores). I go to the one in Van Nuys, just off the Sherman Oaks exit off 405 a few blocks off Da405, and shop before returning to DaNorffland of Cali. The store is pretty large and I can say that many times I've prolly been the only person in the store that has Engrish as a first langwitch. Most of the Czech~OUTT lines and clerks are das spanisch sprechen, butt the clientele is nott all Hispano/Latinate/mestizo butt mostly all foreign born -and the food choices at the SuperKing are in line with this foreign-born clientele so it's kinda a huge international market with Asian/Mexican/Central Americano/Filipino/Indian/European/Japanese/Persian/Arabic/Indo-Polynesian stuph, and it's fairly priced.
I am always much more comfortable with the low-rent crowd (which is from whence I have come) at a SuperKing than at a Hole Foods or a Sprouts or a Nob Hill/Mollie Stone's/Bel Air that cater to the 'price doesn't matter to me' crowd.
Next time I gett to the I-88 Corridor, I'll try to Czech ~OUTT the Butera joynt - they better carry Vienna Beef jumbo Franks! And, if it's still there, I'll stop at a certain Gyro joynt on Ogden Avenue and pick up a gyro and think that, at one time anyway, these six blocks of Ogden Avenue (on both sides) were the small farm where my dad grew up while his dad was putting ~OUTT fires on DaSouffSide of Chicago and getting paid in chickens and beef quarters. Last time I Czeched, the very, very tiny house my dad grew up in as a kid is still there on Ogden, where it (at last Czech) housed a limo service. It is nott much bigger than a garden shed - my dad's room was the attic, where in winter icicles formed on the rafters in his uninsulated attic 'bedroom'.
When he ("Jiggs" the paternal grandfather who died before I was hatched) died from smoke inhalation/lung fibrosis/COPD, they had to sell the farm and that's when The Sergeant moved to Elm Street down by the train station. Today those six blocks of Ogden Avenue (actually twelve if you count both sides of the street) would be worth tens of millions of Dolares. Oh well. So goes life - everything is a crapshoot, except pennyscams witch are 100 percent losers.
I'm just very glad my dad and mom moved away from there, because I don't think I'd have liked to grow up anywhere near there. I much prefer the very rural life, growing up on a lake with farm friends, and clean air and water - and no traffic, you could ride your bike safely anywhere - I used to ride 13 miles each way to the closest town that had a lieberry where I could wander the stacks and Czech ~OUTT books. Thanks Andrew Carnegie, for building a business that employed millions and also allowed you the funds to endow local publik lieberries that allowed rural kids and poor kids a route to the rest of DaWorld.
I don't bleeve in an after life, butt should I be wronGGG, one of the items on my list is to find Andrew Carnegie and thank him - for publik lieberies and for his Hero awards. Now, with the interwebs, peeps don't realize how important a lieberry was in rural areas - and then inter-lieberry loan programs. It was the only real route ~OUTT of ignorance and learning about the world - especially when the TV signal was barely viewable even on good daze. This is why I love and collect books - more than I'll ever be able to read. They are knowledge, and knowledge is power. Books gave me my freedom.
