Beer Run

Hi there, blognoscenti. I had intended to post a couple of days ago, but the impending (well, next week) arrival of the Mrs.' dad for a visit forced us to confront some house-cleaning imperatives. We did take some time out from cleaning over the weekend to do some errands, including a run to the liquor store, which gave me the idea for this entry.

For more than a decade we lived about a mile south of Wellington Circle, which is the tangled and tricky intersection of routes 28 and 16 in Medford, MA. Now we live about a mile north of it. For pretty much all this time, I've been buying my beer from the Kappy's Liquors store that sits at the northeast edge of the Circle. I prefer to buy my beer by the case, because that way I only have to think about it every month or so.

Our friend Sandra has always referred to Kappy's as "the Liquor Palace" so I got in the habit of doing it too. It's arguably a palace of commerce, but not in the aesthetic sense: it's a plain white building with way too much fluorescent lighting inside. But when I walk through the door and see the mountains of beer cases stacked in rows, it makes me feel warm inside, the way I used to feel when I was a kid with a dollar to spend at the candy store. It usually takes me at least 20 minutes to decide what kind of beer I'm going to get, even if I walked in thinking I knew what I wanted. I just like to wander up and down the aisles, looking for something different, or something familiar.

But this weekend I decided to try another store in town. I was swayed by a radio ad I'd heard. I'd been there once or twice a while ago; it's not any more or less convenient than Kappy's. The ad claimed their prices were better, and I guess I wanted to see if they were. The store itself was somewhat dingy inside, done up in paneling straight out of Ralph Kramden's Raccoon Lodge and probably about as old. They had plenty of beer, and it was piled high like at Kappy's, but somehow it just wasn't the same.

And the prices weren't that great either: most of the brands I tend to buy were a couple of dollars more expensive per case. I did end up buying beer, but pretty much only because I'd already put my empties into the machine and gotten my deposit credit, but I don't need to go back. So, Liquor Palace, I've learned my lesson. Just because a store has a radio ad doesn't mean it's the better place for me to shop. Sometimes, the best place to shop is the place you've been shopping all along.