Yes, fellow Angelenos, I’m sure at some point you’ve heeded the call and ended up at a 24 hour Ralphs at some point. Oh yes, the despair, the hilarity, the drunken fools you’ll see! For those of you living in other, less pre-apocalyptic places, Ralphs is a lower-mid grade grocery store on the LA food shopping hierarchy. It sits below a Whole Foods, a Bristol Farms, or an Erewhon, but way above a Vons, Pavillons, Smart and Final, or Food4Less. Ralphs is one of the only ones, maybe the only one, with stores out there open 24 hours. This of course, will lead to hijinks at some point in your life but there’s a decline depending on how old you are. the closer you get toward 40 and beyond, the less time you’ll spend in a Ralphs past 10 o’clock in the evening.

Number one, I can’t help but think, every time I go there, that “Ralphs” is grammatically incorrect and it should be called Ralph’s, but no, my friends, the founder’s last name was actually “Ralphs” and there’s a grisly tale to the story of how the mighty grocery chain came about. The man’s name was George A. Ralphs and he went into the biz after losing his arm in a hunting accident. Does that mean someone shot his arm off? Was he attacked by a grizzly? Did he get caught in a trap and have to chew his own arm off? I can’t actually find the exact detail. This was back in the late 19th century, so use your imagination.

The man was known as “The Champion Bricklayer of California” at the early age of 21. Insert “pipelayer” joke here now if you so choose. Anyway, he lost the arm, the actual details are fuzzy, but you need two arms to lay brick, so he bought a store, went into business with his brother, and the rest is history. Yada yada. Pretty boring, but listen to this, in 1914 he was out with his family hiking and decided to rest on a boulder which then became dislodged and somehow rolled over the top of him, crushing one of his legs. He died in the hospital after the limb was amputated. Poor guy had some shit luck.

Down the line somewhere, Kroger bought them out and the rest is history. So although he had some bad turns of fate, he’s now immortal.

Ralphs is on my mind this morning because Jo asked me to pick up milk for our son after work on Saturday night. Here’s a little factoid about me: I love going there late at night to see all the weird creatures in there. I think it brings me back to the time when I was a night creature myself. I’m almost 100% sun these days. Up early, to bed late. A couple of hours at the kid’s park on a daily basis, highly alert, making sure my son doesn’t get snatched by a pedophile but also secretly wishing I could catch one in the act. It’s a bit like that line in Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega, talking about his car to his heroin dealer, Lance:

“Still got your Malibu?”
“Aw, man. You know what some fucker did the other day?”
“What?”
“Fucking keyed it.”
“Oh, man, that’s fucked up.”
“Tell me about it. I had it in storage for three years, it was out for five days and some dickless piece of shit fucked with it.”
“They should be fucking killed. No trial, no jury, straight to execution.”
“Boy, I wish I could’ve caught him doing it. I’d have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It’d been worth him doing it just so I could’ve caught him doing it.”
“What a fucker!”
“What’s more chickenshit than fucking with a man’s automobile? I mean, don’t fuck with another man’s vehicle.”
“You don’t do it.”
“It’s just against the rules.”

That’s the line, “It’d be worth him doing it just so I could’ve caught him doing it.” Anyway…Tangents…

The people who end up at Ralphs late night are the least interesting part of the whole experience. It isn’t them but what they buy. Oh yeah. I once saw someone buying enough diet coke–two liters and cans in two carts–to fully stock a doomsday bunker and this was far past the pandemic. For the curious out there, each order is a story. The guy buying two cheap bottles of champagne, a .750 of good tequila, a bag of chips and a tub of hummus. Yeah, we’ve all been there, right? Let’s party together, dude.

But there’s a lot of reasons why people end up at Ralphs late at night, and it’s not just because they’re drunk or newly released from the hospital. They could be going on vacation the next day, or maybe they just came to town and need some supplies for the morning. I think travel is probably an explanation as to why I might see a guy buying toilet paper, cheese, energy drinks, and tater tots. I’m sure it’s much easier to shop at night where there’s no crowds and the shelves are fully stocked. There’s good parking, damn good parking. If you’re annoyed by homeless, they seem strangely absent from any late night Ralphs excursion. Maybe they’re intimidated by the giant gun toting security guards with the bullet proof vests on. Also…And I’m guilty of this, there’s no goddam kids. Yeah, if you’re not a parent, and I’ve said this before, you have no idea what kind of pure hell the father or mother is going through when their child is melting down at the grocery store. It happened to me yesterday at Trader Joe’s at 5 p.m. Yeah, really stupid on my part to go there at that time and my son was a fucking terror. I could see the annoyed looks on the faces of the populace as he tore around while I was happy he was burning off some of his limitless energy. Maybe there’s something to it. I did see some old guy doing a full blown shop on Saturday night. He seemed at peace. I also saw a dude I thought was homeless–huge beard and stained, moth eaten shabby clothing (not judging)–push his cart out into the parking lot and put his groceries into the trunk of a Bentley. I guess he saved his money for a nice whip.

In my younger days I would go in to buy nacho supplies. Four easy items. Cheese, chips, salsa, and sour cream. Boom. But the woman I saw with a cart filled to the brim only with cat food cans? A little odd in the sense she didn’t want one single item for herself. Not even a packet of gum. I’m guessing the cashiers don’t bat an eyelash at this type of stuff anymore but like I said previously, each one of these food orders tells a story. The quiet guy with the twitch buying duct tape, a knife, shower curtain, and some lighter fluid? What about the two youngsters each buying a six pack of beer and a bottle of Robitussin? The woman buying three packs of D batteries, a tube of lube, and six hard boiled eggs? The person buying ten gallons of bleach and a single banana? The strange, stinky old man filling a cart full of children’s toys, enticing candy, and a solo tub of cottage cheese? Stories all. You can’t write this shit.

Two trips ago I walked from the parking lot and in front of the entrance was an entire case of Bud light beer bottles, smashed, the precious liquid and amber shards everywhere. Bummer. It looked as if it had been thrown in a rage. I thought long and hard and couldn’t understand how every single bottle had been broken from a modest fall. It must have been intentional. You’ve got to keep your wits about you during a late night Ralphs trip, friends.