August 24, 2022

"Love with the Proper Shopper"
commentary for scene 5 of #book1

JUMP TO: Plot Summary - Cultural References - Locations - My Thoughts

TAGS: #book1 #MaryAnnSingleton #ConnieBradshaw #MichaelTolliver #SocialSafeway

Link to the text: Her New Home (starting on page 26) (Scribd membership required)

Plot summary: Connie and Mary Ann show up at the Marina Safeway for the famous "social safeway" evening, a chance for single straight people to find others interested in love (or at least sex). Connie says it is "pickup city" but Mary Ann has less luck. She first has a conversation with a creep who can't take a hint, but then has a great conversation with a cute guy... who then introduces her to his "roommate" Michael. Mary Ann decides to give up and head back to Connie's apartment.

Cultural Refences:

• Social Safeway - Armistead first wrote about this phenomenon in the Pacific Sun in 1974 (I had no luck finding it online, but if anyone does have a copy of it that we could share here, please be in touch), but quite a few others have written about it over the years (including some who have used the term to refer to a favorite spot for singles in the Washington, DC metro area).
  
  Here are a few of the sources that I found:
  • Tales of the Tours has a great write-up about this Safeway (scroll down to page 12 of this PDF)
     
  • Julia Coyner Robinson - oddly enough, I learned that this safeway actually has some really cool mosaic art on the side of the building, but also that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was supposed to visit the new store in 1959, but ended up pulling a fast one and visited a different grocery store instead.
     
  • "Is there really a 'sexy safeway'?: Here's the real deal with all of those Safeway nicknames." Washingtonian (Mar. 25, 2018) by Abbey Gingras
  • "Shopping for sex at the supermarket/Marina Safeway: Hot or not? SF Gate (June 7, 2007) - by Violet Blue
     
  • Obituary of Sharon Ramirez (1946-2022), who met her husband at the Marina Safeway
  
  
  By the way, I should mention that the story about the Social Safeway is what led to Armistead being asked to write the serialized stories in the short-lived San Fransisco edition of the Pacific Sun, which eventually led to the serial being picked up by the SF Chronicle and eventually the TOTC series of books.
  
  Everything starts at the Marina Safeway.
   
• “Since we’re neighbors, let’s be friends." - According to Wikipedia the slogan was used by Safeway from 1969-1979.
  
  Here's a commercial (starting at 0:48) from 1974 that uses the phrase in a Safeway ad. And here's several more videos of TV ads that used the same slogan from this era.
   
• Saffola oil or Wesson oil?” - Two brands of cooking oil.
  
   

• "He was wearing a leisure suit with a white vinyl belt and matching shoes."
   
• Chinese Cooking - a popular cuisine at the time. I wonder if this might have been the cookbook that many were using to learn how to do it?
   
• Charlie Manson - the famous serial killer
   
• "Age of Aquarius Shit" - the idea of an age of Aquarius was being talked a lot out about in the 1960's and 1970's, but obviously some were getting tired of the talk.
   
• Dear Abby - Robert is saying he doesn't want to sound like "Dear Abby" so I assume he is saying that he doesn't want to sound preachy or old-fashoined.
  
  On a tangent --- in doing a little research for this post, I discovered that Dear Abby's column came out in support of gay rights starting in the late 1960's, but Ann Landers --- not so much, including in 1996 when she still was supporting a ban on gay marriage.
   
• "He’s awful at hollandaise.” - This line is one that has always made me wonder if I'm missing something. Thankfully, I wasn't the only reader to wonder this, as seen in this excerpt from an essay in The Guardian by Damian Barr:
  
  

  Not so in 1976. There are lots of coded references, such as Michael's insistence that his "friend" Robert, who Mary Ann tries to pick up, is "awful at hollandaise". I thought hollandaise was a sex act. Aged 14 I didn't yet speak the language of camp, but with Maupin's help I was learning fast. The dreaded diagnosis – "homosexual" – doesn't appear for well over a hundred pages. In the serial Michael didn't appear properly for six weeks. "His editor kept tabs with a wall chart," explains Gale. "There were two columns: one for heterosexuals and one for 'the others'. Armistead wanted to be entrenched before he took risks."

  
   
• "squeezing a roll of Charmin" - A reference Mr. Whipple in TV commercials urging people to "not squeeze the charmin."
  
   

Locations:

• Marina Safeway - Not only famous for being the source of the "social safeway" (see above under cultural references), but also for being the first of the "Marina style" Safeways (I've seen this style in not only California but also Oklahoma -- the later of course being later converted into Homeland grocery stores).
  
  I also oddly have memories of this store because I visited it on my first trip to San Francisco (when I was in law school), mostly because it was very close to the hostel I stayed at on old Fort Mason. --- I unfortunately had not read TOTC yet, so I didn't know this was a place for looking for dates!
  
  It's also worth noting that the Marina Safeway is famous, not only for its dating scene but also for its architecture. Here are a few links that discuss that, as well current shenanigans at the store:
  • "The Marina Safeway at Night, 1968 PleasantFamilyShopping.blogspot.com (Sept. 2007) - This one is more about the architectural side
     
  • Marina Safeway Grand Opening, June 25th, 1959" Reddit/SanFransisco
     
  • Save the Marina Style Safeway in Regina, Saskatchewan
     
  • "Man caught pooping in the aisle of San Fransisco Safeway" WFLA (Dec. 17, 2019)
     

My thoughts:

This scene is the scene that arguably created Tales of the City in the first place, but it is also noteworthy for being the first scene of the book in which a character is known to be gay --- but even so, it is also very coded, because as know from Armistead (in both his book Logical Family but also from several interviews), he was trying to build up his readership before the conservative newspaper ownership might kill the column.

By the way, a good example of this can be found in this advertisement that is pitching the kick-off of the series in the SF Chronicle. The ad gives an introduction of the three of the characters: Edgard Halcyon, Mona Ramsey, and Beauchamp Day, but nothing is said about the sexuality of the characters (we will later learn that both Mona and Beauchamp are bisexual --- Mona being out, with Beauchamp being very closeted), and not a word is said about the arguably more important characters of Anna, Michael and Mary Ann.