I went a few blocks east of home to the wonderful Loehmanns Plaza Shopping Center in the beautiful town of Reseda, CA today because I had to do a bank run and then hit the Vons supermarket (a place I loathe) because I have no cat food, am running precariously low on cat treats, aka, "kitty crack" and also needed a loaf of bread (not for the cat.) Plus I'm on a program here not to do any major supermarket shopping until I use up stuff in the house and that stuff is mostly soup. The added incentive there is to start knocking off some holiday weight gain.
Vons, CVS/pharmacy, Big 5 Sporting Goods, Starbucks, Party City, Fab's Hot Dogs, Dollar Tree (the meth-head's store), Kaye's Music Scene, Subway, a couple of places selling cell phones, a pastry shop, some other sort of ratty woman's clothing stores, Pizza Hut, Chase bank, a Carl's Jr... some other stuff. This corner mini-mall has a long history with me. The Vons was a Shopping Bag and when you were a kid going to Shopping Bag with your mom you'd run in and slide on the linoleum floor setting yourself down in front of magazine and comic book heaven while mom went shopping. I'd look though everything BUT Mad Magazine because Mad was going into the aisles with me to find mom and ask pretty-please to buy it for me.
There was also Radio Shack when Radio Shack was a real electronics store with old guys who knew their stuff. You could buy all sorts of components and kits and actually build yourself a radio or some other gizmo. Or you could just pick up some random capacitors, wire them up and blow the crap out of them.
Tandy leather, arts and crafts, plastic resins, beads, headbands and bangles. All sorts of fun stuff that helped a pre-teen in the 60s feel part of the groovy scene our parents were afraid of even though we only saw it through record jackets and the Monkees on TV.
Most of the stores here today, I've never been in them. Even Loehmanns which probably went in during the early 70's, never been inside. But Woolworth's in the 60's, it was a regular hangout. Holiday Hardware... all the time. I got my haircut for $1.50 at the barber next to Shopping Bag while the mom was in the store and snuck my 1st peeks inside Playboy magazine. Hey! It was for the articles.
Anyway, I try to extend the distance a little on excursions like this but from my front door to the bank ATM, is only 1.22 km. Even after up and down aisles in the supermarket it's maybe 2.64 km total, hardly a walk. I'm also still recovering from the bronchial aftermath of the cold I've been dealing with for 8 days. Right now, to make up for the minimal walk effort, I am going on the indoor bike for a little cardio before dinner and a movie.
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