American's favorite pastimes, popular wisdom has it, are shopping and eating. A Freudian would say we're sublimating. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
I hate to shop. Perversely, I love a bargain. But I'm not as bad as my friend Mike, who bought canoe paddles one time because they were just a dollar each. I don't even have to tell you the rest of that story.
El Paso is a great place for bargains, because collectively we're so poor. But that's okay. Consumer behavior doesn't necessarily dictate quality of life. El Paso doesn't have to have a lot of money, as long as we have enough.
But more would be good.
I like to shop for food at the Mexican grocery store, or, as we call it in my neighborhood, the grocery store. The prices are lots cheaper than at the big national chains, and it offers local delicacies, like big frozen blocks of cow face. Or cow feet. They sell chicken feet at one of the other local grocery stores. I think it would be fun on Halloween to give chicken feet to trick-or-treaters.
And then there's the new outlet mall, which I've never visited. I only know of two kinds of malls, grand mall and petite mall. Outlet must be a new variety.
Sometimes the thrift stores are good. Local thrift stores used to get bales of castoffs from exotic locales like Long Island. They'd sell uniform shirts from the Port Authority of New York, or baseball jerseys from the Schenectady Athletic League. One time I bought a purple double-breasted suit with broad padded shoulders and peg leg pants. It's embroidered with an “M.” It's hanging in my closet right now. I don't get enough chances to wear it.
Thrift stores with clothes of local origin aren't usually that good for me. My inseam exceeds my waist.
They say the thrift store in Las Vegas, New Mexico, is good. That thrift store allegedly gets its clothes from Santa Fe. Thrift store enthusiasts say if you find a good thrift store, you shouldn't tell anyone, because if it gets popular, it won't be good anymore. But I don't mind, because if you ever get up to Las Vegas, you probably won't be my size anyway.
Sometimes I shop at Ross. The Ross stores in El Paso offer better bargains than the Ross stores in other cities I've been to. I buy shoes at Ross. Now I've got lots, because they're so cheap. I'm staying off the Human Growth Hormone because I don't want my feet to get bigger..
The duty-free stores, by the bridges, are crazy cheap for liquor. Cigarettes, too, I hear, but I don't know for sure because I don't smoke. When you buy duty-free stuff at the duty-free store you have to cross it over into Mexico before you can bring it back. It's either an inconvenience or a bonus, depending on your affinity for our neighbor to the south.
There are lots of good deals in Juarez, too. Enough said.
Downtown, also, offers lots of bargains. Last year's fashions, or those from several years ago, can be had for considerably less than retail. And there are fashions that were never fashionable, at least not fashionable in my neighborhood. Or maybe they just haven't got there yet.
And sunglasses. Designer knockoffs, or near enough, go two for seven. Sunglasses always get lost or broken or left behind, so I buy cheap sunglasses.
I bought a brand new zoot suit in downtown El Paso for $75. It's hanging in my closet right now. I don't get enough chances to wear it.
