Quirky appeal of Disco Krogerwill be missed in Montrose.
A tall man approached me in the beer aisle once at the Disco Kroger with a crumpled 3-foot duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He dropped the bag to the floor, unzipped it and promptly started stuffing cans of beer into the bag with more calm than I’d have expected. The beer was nestled atop what looked like a little league picnic quantity of steaks and other meats wrapped in plastic foam and cellophane. Satisfied with his haul, he zipped the bag and walked toward the exit
Witnessing small-scale shrinkage never troubled me greatly, which I admit is a personality flaw, but having seen this largerscale act of theft, I felt obligated to say something to a store manager, worried such a discrepancy between stock and till would only come out of the paychecks of the people working there.
Who knows what became of the guy and the loot he’d plundered. Presumably he got caught or he arrived home a folk hero. Either away, his short-term activities were bracing to this one witness, who was just trying to buy beer.
Another time, I saw a man at Disco Kroger making a decision about bread wearing only tighty whities, a T-shirt and baby blue slippers.
I don’t know who will be most affected by the impending closure of the Montrose Boulevard Kroger, sad news announced this week. Presumably duffel-bag guy wasn’t a regular — if so, he had gumption. Slipper man, perhaps, could’ve been a regular patron. Anecdotally speaking, people in my social circle appeared more greatly affected by the closure of the Fiesta grocery stores on Dunlavy and Wheeler. But Disco Kroger was nevertheless a viable place for a quick grocery run, and years ago, it became my family’s go-to stop for Christmas trees. Unlike other purveyors with more offerings, Kroger didn’t require freeway transport to get the tree home. Just three right-hand turns and one to the left.
But what other fate is there in a cluttered market with a strong regional player and an Amazon-backed entity?
Disco Kroger became easy to take for granted in an area as rich with grocery stores as it is pharmacies and mattress purveyors.
Put a pin in Disco Kroger, and the nearest H-E-B was less than a mile away. Two Whole Foods locations were both within 1.5 miles. Trader Joe’s was 1.5 miles away, too. And were a shopper Kroger loyal, the next nearest Kroger was a mere 1.6 miles away onWest Gray.
Such saturation feels normal in 2020. But I’m reminded of my childhood in Kentucky, where a small grocery was closer to home but with limited offerings in the produce, dairy and meat departments. Thirty or 40 years ago, my mother would drive a little farther to the Kroger.
Kroger was, from a grocery splendor perspective, the mansion on the hill. And that was a long time ago.
So while Montrose Boulevard loses a grocery store, Montrose the neighborhood remains flush with groceries. Yet some undefinable thing feels lost. And not just
the opportunity to watch largescale shoplifters ply their trade.
Disco Kroger became a reliable source of groceries for my household when our wretched pandemic present was in its infancy.
Most local grocery stores attempted to provide curbside delivery for anxious buyers. But Kroger was, if not the first, one of the first to provide the service free of charge. When others resumed fees for shopping, Kroger resumed free curbside delivery
My household includes an immunocompromised person, so this service was a crucial component for dealing with quarantine during the most anxiety-riddled of days in March, April, May and June, when knowns about the virus were a little more scant.
So I missed my particular pimiento cheese as well as the in-house ice creams from H-E-B and any number of impulse buy
sweets from Trader Joe’s and a specific deli ham from Whole Foods. But when my family needed staples during what we perceived to be a short-term crisis, Disco Kroger routinely took the order, dropped it in our trunk and sent us on our way with no additional charge. And at the peak of pandemic panic, Disco Kroger routinely had pickup slots open when other stores did not.
Those open pickup times may have reflected the sort of grand disparities in supply and demand that ultimately sunk the store. But that weird little Kroger — small by contemporary grocery standards — always felt welcoming in a neighborhood with some history of openness. And it often provided strange moments of narrative pizzazz. Its hours were off-hour, impulse friendly. And friends always had strange tales about visits there.
And as a minor note of mourning, Disco Kroger did stock raclette, my favorite cheese, year-round, which can’t be said about any other grocery store within walking distance from my home.
Despite the colorful nature of its nickname, Disco Kroger won’t likely draw the same elegies as Dunlavy Fiesta, which had the greatest music soundtrack of any grocery store I’ve ever entered and an array of dried peppers that now require more. hunting to be procured.
So farewell, Disco Kroger, both a casualty of the pandemic and long tail changes in a neighborhood increasingly removed from its oddball heyday. I fear I took this space for granted when times were good, only to have it deliver reliably for my family when times were not.