who cares?

Makes me want to hide in my room and never go shopping again. Reminds me of the Matrix shots of the Fields where they grew humans like crops. Reminds me a lot of that, actually.

And we wonder why the East Germans' heads exploded when they wandered into a fully stocked retail store after the Berlin Wall came down.

The really scary thing about this picture is that I've been bombarded with so many advertising images for so long that I can recognize products that are out of focus by the shape and color of the packaging. I decided to use the pic as my wallpaper because its so pretty/scary.

Duck Tales! Whoo-oo! (will have that theme song in my brain the rest of the day. Thanks a lot.)

So is this a stereogram and will a giant totempkopf logo appear if we stare hard enough?

Fred Meyers is just a high-priced Wal-Mart wannabe. Coincidentally, they're also behind the campaigns to keep more Wal-marts from opening in Portland.

What I find interesting is the reaction from some people of OMG CHOICES CHOICES R BAD AND MAKE ME SCARED when they see this picture. Do these people have some sort of OCD that would force them to buy every item stocked in a grocery store?

I'd like to echo the comment of who cares? The boingboing caption named this store enormous but I've been there. It's actually one of the smaller ones I've been to. What's the big deal? So there are actually products sitting on the shelf? What's so scary about that? Help me understand, guys.

Have you been since they remodeled it? I would say it's pretty enormous. I wouldn't define 2-story grocery stores as small.

Okay, I'll tell you what scares me about this picture.

I'm a careful shopper, I have my likes and dislikes and I'm of the opinion that quality wins over quantity. The scare factor is that I'm going to stuck in a store (any store, really) reading labels, ferreting out greenwashing and generally stressing out over too many choices.(To make things worse, I'm in the food business, so I have to do the same thing with products that go into my business).

When I see a shelf with twenty different brands of BBQ Sauce it makes me go home and make my own. Maybe I'm completely OCD, but the more choices I have the more it drives me to simplify to the point where I make my own pickles and can my own tomatoes. So yeah, I'm a nut, but I eat well.

"Fred Meyers is just a high-priced Wal-Mart wannabe"

Nooo...Freddies is much nicer than Wal-Mart, with better quality merch. And friendlier staff.

Fred Meyer? Look, if it's not here on the east coast, we don't care. And by "we" I mean "I."

Actually, I'm on the west coast of Florida, which is on the east coast of the US. It's very confusing.

I remember feeling like this picture looks when I came back to the US after living abroad where there were not supermarkets, only grocery stores and produce stands. I walked into a Walgreens and turned round and round trying to get oriented. I finally found the toothpaste, and then I stood there staring, fascinated, because there were more kinds of Crest alone than there had been toothpastes total at the last drugstore I shopped at. Finally a clerk asked me, "Do you need help?"

"You have a lot of stuff!" I replied. I think she thought I was deranged.

This picture looks very very similar to a modern art photograph that's hanging in the Pompideu Museum in Paris. I think the difference is it's a (unknown) 99-cent store, but it's got the same look and feel; same angle, colors, everything. I'm not sure what it's called. Has anyone else seen that? Was this photo an homage to that?

Looks like my grandmother's pantry!

Steve_Holt, I think the photo you are talking about belongs to German photographer Andreas Gursky and it's called "99 cent".

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2001/gursky/

From someone who just got home from work at a grocery store...Thanks...yeah, thanks a whole lot.