SF Fort Mason Safeway

[Thats My Word]

I was talking to my friends the other day and the Safeway at fort mason came up during our conversation. Is this some kind of known, but unspoken, place tomeet people for dating? Apparently, people just dress up and go grocery shopping...

I was there getting some gatorade one saturday at like 1pm and people were kind of dressed up.

What do you think?

 

[livemyreality]

Well think about the area that Fort Mason is located in. Pretty high end people live close by, so maybe they dress like that on the norm.

 

[pwalrus]

Originally Posted by LiveMyReality

Well think about the area that Fort Mason is located in. Pretty high end people live close by, so maybe they dress like that on the norm.

I have heard that the Marina Safeway is supposed to be a great place for "single's grocery shopping". I always wrote it off as corny, and onlyapplicable to the "high end" Marina inhabitants, AKA Young Urban Professionals...

 

[jae oh en]

wasnt the one in the marina voted the number 1 grocery store to pick up girls in playboy? i swear i read something about that before.

 

[dens415]

^ I read the same thing but in Stuff magazine like 5 years ago

 

[deewlay]

From wikipedia:

The Marina Safeway is particularly notable for its singles scene - it is frequently listed as one of the city's best pick-up spots and is affectionately known as the "Single's Safeway" or more recently, "Dateway."
[color= rgb(255, 255, 0)]From Violet Blue - Open Source Sex (inside SFGate.com, June 7,2007)[/color][color= rgb(255, 255, 0)]
[/color]

In the Market Street Safeway, the cucumbers are really big. I don't know if that's because they're genetically modified with elephant cells or if that's because it's the Safeway closest to the Castro. I'm guessing it's a bit of both.

I was in the Market Street Safeway about 2 the other night, trying to make a salad. I was dressed as I normally am for side-dish preparation: high heels, black satin skirt and top and plenty of lip gloss. I had all the necessary ingredients for a delicious salad in my hand basket: Reddi-wip and extra-large Trojans. OK, maybe it was a slightly more regional dish I was preparing, but I found myself lingering over the cucumbers long enough to draw someone's attention.

It was my friend Michelle. "Dude, did you score yet?" Conspiratorially, I leaned in while dropping a cuke in my basket. "No," I whispered. "Let's make another circuit and meet in the wine section for provisions."

I figured that if my friend Michelle and I were going to see if there was any truth to the urban legends about San Francisco Safeways being the place for some after-hours amour, then I'd better at least be honest about what I was shopping for. The items in my basket weren't subtle, even if I thought my cucumber was modest for the Castro. But what would you expect? Trying to communicate a complex personality and desire for deep connection with Hot Pockets, Cheeze Doodles and bourbon just wasn't going to yield phone numbers, which is what Michelle and I were gaming for. Any gender would do.

Legend had it that the Marina Safeway was where the het hookups were really happening. The legend has even seeped into Wikipedia's entry on the Marina District, listing the Safeway as an "important structure" and remarking that it "is particularly notable for its singles scene -- it is frequently listed as one of the city's best pick-up spots and is affectionately known as the 'Dateway.'" And I'd seen a lion's share of "shopping" in the Market locale -- but friends who really work the local dating scene recently told me that the scene had moved, that the Marina was yesterday's Power Exchange for hot paper-or-plastic action. No, the new place to get cereal, milk and -- apparently -- laid was the new Safeway in South Beach. Naturally, this would have to be verified in a very scientific, controlled experiment.

Which is how I found myself first at the Castro Safeway, with a basket of Desperate Housewives sex toys, staring at Cherry Pop-Tarts and feeling about the same. Michelle and I walked in together and made the plan of attack: We would choose opposite sides of the store, collecting suggestive items (and hopefully men, women, bears or stuffed animals along the way), cross paths in the middle and come back again. After the recon, we'd check in with each other.

By the time she met me in the cucumbers, I knew we were two girls up against a store full of man-on-man-on-Ragu woo. It was just too fast. I barely had a chance to smile at someone in the breakfast section (eyeing the tarts), before he looked in my basket and decided I was a lunatic.

But when Michelle and I made it to the wine section, we knew the game was up. Maybe Market Safeway was a fluorescent proto-brothel for the boys, but unless we wanted jobs there, the closest we were coming to getting a phone number and playing "hide the salami" was to read the 800 number off a Columbus Cured Meats package (deli aisle) and then lose the bag in the car.

We needed satisfaction, and fast. The Marina Safeway had such cute boys in the parking lot, we almost popped our cork (the wine) and stayed a while. But the plan beckoned; we had to take the experiment to the limits.

This Safeway is across the street from a 24 Hour Fitness gym, so it's no surprise that it had earned a reputation as a sexually charged, straight singles' spot -- and kept it. From the moment we walked in, we looked around and realized -- this place is a meat market. Literally.

While not as packed as the Market Street store, this Safeway had the goods and the groceries. The candy looked sweeter. The produce (allegedly the place to meet and be met) all looked so … young and ripe. The bananas looked eager. People were dressed up. And they were eyeing my (ahem) basket. It was eerie how sexually charged the atmosphere was.

Suddenly, we weren't dorks with striped socks and way too many condoms and bananas and tubs of cupcake frosting in our shopping baskets -- we were the hunted. When a sexy Asian boy found himself flirting with both Michelle and me, trapped between us in a hot moment of blushing and smiling, I knew the legends were true. People don't go there just to shop for dish soap. Score one for scoring (and Michelle) at the Marina Safeway.

Our final cruising spot was the South Beach Safeway, nestled in the new condo developments. Both of us found this intriguing: What kind of new-to-the-city hotties would be buying corporate food and looking for lust in the aisles? Sadly, none. The place was jammed with couples, and not the kind we might find on Craigslist Casual Encounters: "Safeway M-F seeking F-F for four-way in frozen goods." South Beach was a bomb for babes. Perhaps it was the conditions, the timing or the control level of the experiment.

Or maybe, like the Highlander, there can be only one Dateway. Maybe the Marina Safeway was built over the site of an Ohlone sex cult or on the former location of an exceedingly decadent Barbary Coast brothel, and the spirits of randy sailors, bawdy babes in breeches and corsets and hard-up, fortune-seeking prospectors fondle the cantaloupes and caress the canned peaches at midnight. One thing's for sure: What they say about the Marina Safeway is real.

And I'll bet their security cameras are fun to watch.

 

[Fong$tarr]

I was just talking about this yesterday with a couple of folks. I freakin' hate the Marina though.....but it beats the Safeway that I go to on Market andChurch.

 

[dr 715]

Meat market forsure.

If you don't mind "the Marina crowd" you'll surely come across some very pretty girls.

... Very pretty girls.

And the Safeway near AT&T Park is usually dead, while the Marina one is poppin' no matter the time of day.

 

[bayareaboss]

i work at the safeway here in fairfield. theres alot of bad ones who come in. you get the every day custumers and that makes it so easy. i cant even lie ipulled more girls at safeway then i have at a bar or club

 

[Kev93]

i work at safeway in fairfield too!

 

[theheff]

I work down in the Marina and frequent that Safeway...im 24 and there are some bad women there with dime faces and fake tahtah's all times of the day...Abit Cougarish too haha, head on over after work before dinner time for the meat market, maybe one will be looking for a sausage haha

 

[sc415]

I recently went on friday, to buy some candy and didn't see much. Lol. Maybe cause it was 1oclock. I just saw a couple of ladies in their 40's.

 

[livemyreality]

Originally Posted by bayareaboss

i work at the safeway here in fairfield. theres alot of bad ones who come in. you get the every day custumers and that makes it so easy. i cant even lie i pulled more girls at safeway then i have at a bar or club

Safeway on Waterman Blvd? Haha.

 

[el flaco mcfly]

hahahah i was just over by there earlier today talking about that with my one homegirl.....crazyness