Knowing Your Demographic

One of our local public radio stations, KPCC, is in the middle of a pledge drive. They're playing the Birkenstock-wearing public-radio-listening liberal stereotype to the hilt. They're giving away a Prius to one lucky donor! And more than once, in trying to prod listeners into making a donation, multiple announcers have said something along the lines of "these people who are already donating to public radio are just like you! There may be a public radio donor driving in the car next to you! You may be sitting next to a fellow donor at church, work, or school! There may be a public radio donor ahead of you in the line at Trader Joe's!"

One announcer almost slipped and said "supermarket" (gasp!), but thankfully she caught herself in time, only getting out the first "ssss" before pausing and getting back on track. I hope that she won't be punished.

That Trader Joe's stuff wouldn't work in Berkeley, where for the latest entry in the "How Berkeley Can You Be" file, local NIMBYs are opposing a TJ's in their neighborhood. My favorite quote from the article:

"Trader Joe's is a nonunion store owned by a secretive German family that sells specialty food and low-cost alcohol," said Steve Wollmer, who lives 250 feet from the site. "Do we really need this in our neighborhood?"

Those secretive Germans! I'd never thought of TJ's typical behavior of getting you hooked on a particular product, only to vanish it without a trace months later, as a dirty Nazi mind trick, but now it all makes sense!

(I've been on the future Trader Joe's site in question; right now it's a run-down little strip mall fronting a busy street that houses a Kragen Auto Parts and a pet-food store. It's not as if Trader Joe's is bulldozing a public playground or the last Julia Morgan historic building in South Berkeley in order to plonk down their store. But we can't have change, because change might possibly be bad -- this is why you have to be a special kind of crazy to successfully live in Berkeley.)