For some time, it’s been known that Cala Foods at Hyde & California was going to depart at the end of December. I’ve never thought of it as a big loss given that if you hold your breath while shopping in Cala late at night, you can actually hear an ambient sadness emanating. And to be honest, despite being cheap looking, it isn’t actually cheap shopping. Whole Foods, just up California is just 5-10% more on basic items, or at least it was when I swore off Cala on the soul my mother.
Today it was announced that Trader Joe’s will be taking over the Cala location in 2012. This, is mighty fine news. I’d rather that they were taking over the old movie theater at the corner of Sutter & Van Ness as it was previously rumored, but I’ll take what I can get and this is apparently what we are to get. And honestly, while my neighbor will heavily disagree with me, I’ve fucking hated that ugly Cala building ever since the first day I bought a bag of flavorless tomatoes there, so I hope it goes as well.
Of course, the question to ask is, “Will this be that almighty Tenderloin grocery store that will allow us all to live in ‘dignity’?” The answer to that is no, that store already exists (in a much smaller scale) the form of California Produce on Polk between Geary & O’Farrell. There you have a nice, neighborhood store where tons of locals shop because they stock good food at good prices for the other five days a week when you can’t get to Heart of the City Farmers’ Market which is now live chicken-shit free.
Will I shop at this new Trader Joe’s? Oh yeah because not only I love their affordable cheese section, but it’s also one of the few places that our loyal commenter, “nutjob” and I can get our ajvar fix short of going out to the Richmond…
24 Comments until now
Cala is actually cheap on some items if you use their card thingy. Otherwise it’s just another grocery store in SF. However, I will their seafood sales. Something tells me that Trader Joe’s isn’t going to have king crab on sale for $10/lb like Cala does from time to time.
Also, woe be the cable car tourists who get nailed by cars fighting to get a parking spot.
I think I’ll shop at the Big Apple on Polk or the aforementioned California Produce.
That should read, “I will *miss* their seafood sales.”
On Sundays, the seafood selection at the Civic Center farmers’ market is pretty solid and affordable. I’d just recommend getting there on the earlier side of things.
I am excited to hear this news. As a person who likes to walk over taking the crazy 38 to the TJ’s on Masonic–I am delighted.
Also, good point on the seafood selection at the Farmers’ Market at Civic Center.
Thank you for the good news!
The building is pretty ugly now, but there’s a really cool building hidden behind that ugly Cala facade. It’s on display in the excellent film “Petulia.” Check out some shots here: http://reelsf.com/petulia-supermarket
I hope the refurb includes bringing back that swooping roof and entryway…
at first thought i said to myself, “ooh, awesome!” then it dawned on me that already enjoy my walk to soma for tj’s and now i’ll just have to take a fucking bus all the way over to safeway every time i need real groceries (you know, the kind that don’t cost a premium for being organic or made by a fake mom n’ pop company). sorry tj’s, i love your cuban style black beans and thai lime and chili cashews, but sometimes i need me some spaghetti-oh’s, kraft mac n’ cheese, a 20-pack of chicken thighs for $5, and toilet paper that doesn’t feel like bark.
but, just one request tj’s… please don’t fuck with the architecture of that building. the inward sloping dome of that ceiling along with towering side windows, never fail to remind me that everything would be just a little bit better if i were frying balls.
This is great, but will miss the fact that Cala is 24 hours.
@blahblah uhh the architecture very much will be fucked with. The whole building is coming down. TJ’s on ground level, condos up top. You can almost guarantee an early closing time of 9/9:30 PM on this one.
Err sorry not whole building coming down. But you can pretty much guarantee that they’ll flatten the roofline so that they can throw up some condos later.
If I lived above a Trader Joe’s, my cause of death (at 40) would be “hardening of the arteries due to massive ingestion of frozen garlic naan and dark chocolate roasted pistachio toffee” A tragic end no doubt.
At first I thought the building was ugly too, but then I realized it was so over-the-top with 1960′s kitsch – that I will miss it when it’s gone. It’s like it was designed on another planet and then dropped onto Nob Hill. But I am not sad to see Cala go. The few things that I would consider buying there were really not cheaper than whole foods.
California Produce backed hard
Freakin’ sweet, I love TJ’s, and it’ll be nice to have one within slightly-closer-than-9th-&-Bryant walking distance. This is mostly awesome, except that as a graveyard-shift vampire, I occasionally need groceries at 3 in the morning on my nights off. Plus the need for “regular” groceries like blahblah mentioned, although Cala doesn’t have a lot of regular stuff that Safeway has. Same with Big Apple, but sometimes they are my only option when I don’t have the time or patience to bus it to Safeway. I love to support local small businesses of course, but Big Apple and California Produce are pretty expensive, at least for all the processed and frozen foods that I buy. I can’t speak to their produce prices because I don’t buy produce.
Safeway and Cala are union shops, while Trader Joe’s and Whole Earth are non-union. I support union shops and so will be sad to see Cala leave. Also, I love the retro architecture and their plentiful specials which make the food much less expensive than other places. Plus those drunken trannies at 3am. And you can buy booze at all hours (don’t tell).
Lived at Bush & Leav for 8 years, Sutter & Leav for the past two. Will *seriously* miss having an all-night grocery store in the hood, even if Cala is an overpriced pit (Whole Foods is actually often *cheaper* on staples, and the quality is generally better, too).
The plan back in 2010 was to tear the sucker down and replace with a big mixed-use rectangular slab of a building, but the wrecked economy trashed those plans, so the swoopy original (with the ugly box they added to the front in the ’90s) will remain in-place (for now, anyhow).
As for Big Apple, they gouged locals in the wake of the Loma Prieta quake, so f’em. Won’t set foot inside. Glad to see TJ’s coming to the hood, though. It will be great for low income folks in the area, although their produce is garbage that rots the day after you bring it home.
As Martha Stewart says, “It’s a good thing.”
Hopefully the folks who now work at Cala will be able to work at Trader Joe’s.
@supertamsf There are a number of them at that store who I wouldn’t mind not seeing in the grocery industry anymore…
I’d much prefer a Fresh & Easy to TJ’s. I don’t get the Bay Area fascination with TJ’s. It’s a terrible grocery store. It’s a decent bazaar, but it’s not a grocery store. I might NIMBY up and try to block this TJ’s.
I love TJ’s, and buy many things there, but I prefer Cala for meat and fish by far. And I always thought the building looked cool, but seeing it without that addition in front – wow! What a wild and imaginative piece of architecture.
@humin: the ajvar is nice, but more importantly where can you score proper cevapcici in this town? I’ve penciled in getting my slave to make them from scratch but that seems hit and miss.
@blahblahblah: if you shop at safeways you deserve everything you get. Not only is the TJ’s at the arse-end of soma cheaper on many items (they have non-lesbian earth mother shit too if you actually look, you’re actually thinking of Rainbow) but they’re actually not idiots. My last (and last) visit to the safeway involved repeating “give me the box” to the moron at the meat counter who said he couldn’t give me a cardboard box to carry my stuff in. I kid you not. I also nearly had to punch out some lippy gay guy who seemed to take offence at me asking for a box and holding things up, although it was the moron holding things up.
Anybody has a picture of how it looked without the addition?
@nutjob, you can get decent čevapi at Del Monte in Sunnyvale, but no where else in SF. I just started making my own, but Bosnian style with no pork. I make up about 2kg at a time and freeze them to have later, although they’re best fresh. I even got my own meat grinder to control the beef and lamb that I use and to get a more even consistency. Now the only think I really miss is burek and kajmak, but I’d have to import a baka to get them right. The next time I’m out of work, I should probably start a ČevapKart here in the Loin but I doubt people would notice the difference between kebab and čevapi, so screw it.
I have a meat grinder, a recipe and a minion so I think I’ll have a go at it, but a cevap with no pork is no cevap. Apparently the secret ingredient is vegetta, which I’m inclined to believe.