The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

27 August 2006

I never thought of this

I've been to one of H.E.B.'s Central Market locations — Austin, 40th and Lamar, if I remember correctly — and I'm sure I'd remember seeing something like this:

  1. Enter Central Market in the fruit section,
  2. grab a toothpick and get 8 of every possible sample the store offers (usually a total of 48 treats, which fills me up),
  3. prance over to the expensive body lotion department,
  4. try on enough samples of obscenely expensive body lotions to cover my full legs, arms, and back,
  5. waltz over to the sink with the expensive soap samples,
  6. wash my hands with the expensive soaps and dry them off with the earth-friendly paper towels,
  7. polka over to the coffee counter where the free samples are,
  8. pour myself not one but two free samples of coffee I could never afford,
  9. use the restroom and discover that I have mud on my neck (or strawberry seeds in my teeth or other silly thing), and
  10. tango out to the patio where I have a stash of tortillas hidden in my bag to feed all the grackles and pigeons that normal people are trying to scare away.

And that's the Central Market Ritual, my trademark, which I would highly recommend to anyone.

Cost? $0.00

Time? 6 minutes and 22 seconds.

Benefits: You're full, you smell great, your skin is soft and shiny, and you have enough coffee to last a good half hour whilst you feed the birds.

Needless to say, this would never work at a Wal-Mart Stuporcenter.

Posted at 7:20 PM to Almost Yogurt


She forgot "you're also better than everyone else, because not only do you partake of all the free samples that everyone else has access to, but you feed the pigeons and grackles, which for some reason makes you superior to the rest of the human race."

I do all the things Ms Smug does, but I've never felt that I was any better than the "normal" people for doing it. Now, instead of innocently enjoying the benefits of the free sample counter, I'll have to think that other people actually imagine they are somehow "screwing the man" for taking something offered for free.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at 10:10 PM on 29 August 2006

My major issue with this is — feeding the grackles? Are we running short of grackles these days? I see enough of these big, nasty birds, and they don't have any problem feeding, so far as I can tell.

Posted by: CGHill at 7:12 AM on 30 August 2006

Having just returned from Austin, I regret missing the wonder that is H.E.B. I passed by several (including the one you speak of at 40th and Lamar) and was always curious about what lay inside. But alas, time was short as I spent most of my time stalking the free samples at Whole Foods.

Posted by: Sarah at 6:47 PM on 30 August 2006

Some of OKC's movers and shakers would kill, or at least maim, to land a Whole Foods, preferably somewhere near all the new downtown-ish housing. I don't think we're quite big enough for that sort of thing yet, and we still need to update the local liquor laws — I mean, we'll never get a Trader Joe's here if they can't sell Two-Three-Buck Chuck — but we're still emerging from the shadows of being, um, Lubbock North.

Posted by: CGHill at 7:36 PM on 30 August 2006

I love Central Market (personally, I like it better than Whole Foods, even the superduper one in downtown Austin) and when I lived there and was dead broke, I often made the rounds of free samples.

Or if I wanted to eat and drink really well, I would go through all of the free samples, then buy a loaf of parmesean bread (heavenly stuff at about $2 a loaf) and an all-you-can drink cup of ice tea in the cafe, and then spend the rest of the afternoon on the patio reading.

My other favorite cheap eats was going to the Posse (a little bar north of the UT campus) between 3-5 p.m. when happy hour was going on. I would then buy an iced tea for one dollar and fill up free chips and salsa.

And, back in the good old days when they didn't limit you to one refill, I would go to Schlotzky's and get water with a lemon and a bowl of soup (back then it was $1.49) and go back over and over through the course of a long afternoon.

Posted by: J. M. Branum at 3:43 PM on 2 September 2006