In one of my earliest blog posts, I talked about an experience of going to the local “Snob” grocery store. I won’t rehash it, just go ahead and look through my old blog entries if you want to find it.
Today, however, I went to a new “Snobbier” grocery store that opened up near our home. I was quite impressed at how classy the place looked. I felt quite bad that I was only there to pick up a frozen pizza for a quick supper.
One thing I did notice, however, was the cars in the parking lot.
Actually, it wasn’t so much the cars as it was the bumper stickers on those cars. What I noticed is probably derived from a number of strong generalizations stuck in my head.
1 – People who shop at this store have higher than average incomes
2 – The Right Wing is the “wing” of the rich
3 – The Left Wing stands up for the “little guy”
With those generalization in my head, I was suprised to see 3 cars (there were only about 10 cars in the lot total… my town is the corporate home to another major grocery chain) with bumper stickers such as follows:
Defeat Bush
Coexist (with various religious signs built in to the text)
Celebrate Diversity
Wellstone
Don’t Park the Bus (a reference to Wellstone)
Add to that the general feeling of “Artsy/Organic/Earth Friendly” offerings in the store, and my class/political understandings were turned a bit upside down.
In my forays to the local “hippie food store” here in hippie central USA, I take great care to read the leftist bumper stickers which are pasted all over the cars. My conclusion is that there are a whole ton of upper-income liberals in the world, and they tend to eat organic food.