Three of my friends live together in a 3 bedroom apartment in LA. Two of them are engineers, one of them is an MBA-type, and they’re all guys, so of course there’s no food in the house. As such, we walked down Main St. in El Segundo in search of grubbage Sunday morning. Finding everything quaintly (and annoyingly devoutly) closed on a Sunday, we ended up at the glorious Chevron Food Mart at the end of the street.

Some of you may remember the days when gas stations were places you went to get gas.

Over the years, there has apparently been an explosion of need when it comes to food whilst getting gas. Perhaps it’s something about fueling your body and your machine. (I’m not sure how the “I (heart) LA” and Chevron car-mascot kitsch fit into this, but I’m sure they must somehow). At any rate, I’ve become increasingly fascinated with the products for sale (and presumably bought), at these little communist strongholds.

To continue, while failing to find anything I would consider palatable that early in the morning except for a thing of orange juice, I did succeed in finding a can of black pitted olives.

“Saints be praised, Mom! They have those black pitted olives we were looking for!”
mumbling a la the teacher in Peanuts specials
“What? No, they don’t seem to have any anti-freeze…but the olives Mom, the OLIVES!!!”

It amuses me to no end that the attendant/fine quality food service provider didn’t even flinch as I carefully placed my single-serving orange juice and 16oz can o’ olives on the counter.

I wonder how long that lonely can will sit on the coffee table in my friends’ non-descript SoCal apartment before they realize that it shouldn’t be there in the first place.