Retail Watchers

Those Walgreens stores in San Francisco used to be packed around 2006. There were wall to wall crowds of tourists and office workers. I literally felt claustrophobic with just inches between other customers. The prices were high, but the tourists and rich office workers shopped like crazy. There was...

A Safeway store in Clayton was rammed by a car twice at 12:30 AM on Saturday morning. There was a series of store rammings in the San Jose area about 1 hour south previously. One Safeway was among the many stores hit that time. The thieves were after the ATMs that time. This time the car could not g...

After the California mask mandate ended the other day, demand for N95 masks had drastically dropped. 3M announced that they are cutting production of N95 masks. I see more maskless people now as well as more people just wearing masks as chin straps.

The "We proudly brew Starbucks," cups are not to be used at Corporate Starbucks locations. You only see those cheaper looking cups at independent places that just happen to brew Starbucks coffee. Barnes and Noble is one of those places where they brew Starbucks, but the cafes are not staff...

There are many well to do people in the San Francisco Bay Area with tons of money to spend. Whole Foods is crowded with many customers which will spend like crazy. These are the kind of people who do not care about prices. You have the health food fanatics and the vegans. Then you have the rich tech...

Wallstreet thinks Walmart is doing great, but in reality Walmart could do better. Just walk into a Walmart where practically every single aisle is locked up in glass and there are no employees with the keys. Customers are abandoning their shopping carts after seeing cash register lines stretching do...

You order an Uber.

I had no idea Electrify America charging stations were owned by Volkswagen. Those were the ones I saw at Walmart, Lucky, and Safeway in the San Francisco Bay Area. They have a green glow and make a noise when cars are charging. The chargers attract your attention. What is that noise? So you follow t...

My Kaiser Permanente health insurance now covers 4 free COVID self test kits from outside pharmacies. I used a Walmart and surprisingly they had lots of test kits in stock. Demand for tests has gone down, so they are in stock most of the time now. Kaiser only covers the BinaxNow kits, but there is a...

A couple of years ago, I noticed a huge number of Tesla cars parked behind an abandoned Hooters in Dublin, California. I did not realize it at the time, but there is a Tesla showroom nearby. I often see about a hundred Teslas with their car alarms going off at the same time. Some days there are no T...