fashion sense

this is check out aisle 13 at the goleta kmart. i purchased shaving cream, hair gel, razors and floss. i chose aisle 13 because i always have bad luck choosing aisles and i thought, well, why not just go for it! i was persuaded to aisle 14 shortly thereafter by an impatient clerk with no customers.

having spent the majority of my time here in a priviledged cocoon (a nice house in the hills with mountain views, browsing pricey shops on state street, watching tanned, toned and groomed people jog, bike, and rollerblade, sipping latte's at custom roast coffee shops) i had begun to wonder where the real world was. and here i found it, in goleta. sandwiched between an upscale "shopping village" and a vacant modern office building, the kmart unimposingly sits back from the street. the signage is vintage, maybe late 70s or early 80s, dirty and faded. inside, a low ceiling (by today's standards in big box stores) glows with bare bulbed fluorescent fixtures dimly illuminating poorly marked sections of the store. people coursed the aisles in thick groups of familial resemblance. the register lines clogged the aisle to the left. fashion sense was absent, or at least unreadable to my sensibilities. i felt right at home, and thought, well, this is the first place in santa barbara that's felt like white river junction!