I've been here nine months and am settling in like a native. There's still at least one place where I feel like a tourist: the grocery store.
It's not the emphasis on organic, vegan, wheat-free, free-range, grass-fed products, although there's certainly an abundance of those at my neighborhood stores.
It's the shameless, exhibitionist showcasing of alcohol. Aisles and aisles of it.
After years of living in a state where hard liquor can only be sold by the state (at inflated prices), it still seems strange to see whiskey, bourbon and vodka lined up next to the milk aisle. I'm used to the feeling Idaho instilled in me, that buying hard liquor is for the depraved and soon-to-be depraved.
Plain brown bags are used to carry out your purchase, and you can read the tsk-tsk in the clerk's eyes. In recent years, when the question has arisen in the libertarian-leaning Legislature there about whether the state needs to be in the alcohol business anymore, people use the old-fashioned argument against it: temperance.
Libertarianism is described as being maximum freedom and minimum government, but that doesn't apply when puritan standards come into play.
Meanwhile, wanton, free-wheelin' California is over here just kicking up her heels.
Pretty displays and a wide selection makes me a fascinated tourist down these aisles. I keep feeling like I'm shopping for lingerie in the middle of the ice cream section -- so overexposed. Here, temperance is just a word learned in history books. I feel like such a naughty libertarian these days.
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