Posted on 12/11/2006 6:50:33 AM PST by LurkedLongEnough
For all the nonsense about the love affair between Americans and their cars, people seem to spend a whole lot of time and effort to avoid climbing into a car.
Super Stop & Shop's Peapod provides home delivery of groceries. That eliminates one's weekly trip to the grocery store. Get the grocery list online, pick the items, and the food appears in the insulated box outside your house.
People can go to Match, Jdate, EHarmony and Match.com to start dating without even heading to a bar. What happened to joining the ski club? What happened to taking night classes? Tennis, anyone? Too much car involved with all that.
How about Greensingles. com? That's for Naturenuts who want to get together with other natural types.
Actually, Naturenuts may be a strong way to describe them. The Web site says it is for vegetarians, animal rights activists, and environmentalists to meet each other. Talk about a good time.
Back in the day, a person would head to the bar and meet a few people. Buy someone a drink. Talk and decide if the person was OK or not. Get her number, and agree to meet later or another day.
I'm willing to bet even money it still works that way on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
In some cities, grocery stores are famous people pickup places. On the waterfront in San Francisco's Marina district was a famous grocery store where singles went to meet people they might like to date. To find a match, they would look in each other's grocery cart.
A Naturenut, for example, might check out the items in a person's cart to see if they're compatible. No ground beef. No steaks. No fur coat. O.K. It's veggies, pita and a match. Go back to the apartment and make dinner together.
A similar spot in San Francisco is the Buena Vista, a restaurant near Fisherman's Wharf. One famous story I know about the Buena Vista involves two people who went there by cable car, separately, and met and later married. They never owned a car.
John came from Sydney, Australia, and he'd heard stories about the Buena Vista in Australia to the point where he took a taxi (yes, that's a car) from the airport to the cable car to get there.
He got off at Fisherman's Wharf, found the bar and started drinking Irish coffees. He stayed for two days and met the woman who became his wife. Neither one of them owned a car. John literally traveled 4,000 miles -- without a car -- to meet a woman and settle down -- without a car.
People do so many things to avoid driving. How about the Domino pizza chain? The whole entire concept is you don't have to go out for Domino's. It's all about home delivery.
Animal groomers are willing to drive their grooming van to your house, and some vets will make house calls.
Maybe the love affair with the automobile is a thing of the past.
sweet!
LOL!
So how do groceries and the things I need end up on my porch? Magic? Might be that these people need to go to rehab?
For heaven's sake. The butthead author is the "Transportation Reporter" for the decrepit Danbury News-Times. He HAS to kick up a fuss about his chosen subject or he's out of a job. If he's taking the bus in D'bury, he's living a very small life.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.