In the heart of the 'hood is our local Weis Markets. Weis is a regional chain, with 204 locations. The store is a staple of the area, and is often mocked for attracting a less than desirable clientele. But for me, it's full of memories. My grandmother shopped here for a good chunk of her life, and it reminds me so much of her that I can't help but love it.
Just after getting this shot from halfway across the parking lot, one of the guys inside the store came out and accosted me, demanding to know why I took his photo. Again, not a great area.
This is the Pompeii of supermarkets. Walk through those automatic doors, and you're whisked back to the late '80s. I moved to this area with my parents in 1990, when I was ten years old. The place looks exactly the same as when I was a proud holder of the Cookie Club card, which granted me a free bakery cookie with every visit. And yes, the store still hooks kids up with those magic cards to this day.
Over a year and a half after publishing this article, I found the fabled card:
Dig that neon. The floor. The contoured green plastic, generally used as shed roofing, as a background for even more neon. It's surreal. I can see my pint-sized self, chomping on the aforementioned cookie, in tow with my late grandmother.
Some of that glorious pink neon has seen better days, but I hope it never comes down:
True Story Dept.: I once worked at this store. The year was 2002. I was a junior in college, and I was entrusted with the task of restocking the illustrious aisle seven:
Lining everything up perfectly proved to be too much of a temptation for my OCD, and this ended up being the only job where I've gotten fired. (I really wanted to make a pun and say "canned." Why did it have to be the cereal aisle?) I later sold my work shirt on eBay to a guy named Bradley Weis. He must have gotten a kick of out the coincidentally personalized attire. If I were him, I would use it to convince women that I owned a chain of supermarkets.
Update: I returned to Weis in November 2018, and the store has been modernized (read: "stripped of its soul"). It was like someone painted over a mural. I won't be back.