Shopping Carts

Tina Cassar spent last week watching rain flood her backyard and overflow from her pool. So when the sun came out Sunday morning, the Los Alamitos resident took her family for brunch and a stroll along Seal Beach. There they encountered a stretch of sand littered with mangled shopping carts, bicycle tires, tennis shoes and thousands of plastic cups and bottles. "It's awful," Cassar, 37, said as she walked along the shore. "It just shows what kind of pollution comes through the river system."

Ernest Jimenez Jr. pulls alongside an abandoned shopping cart nestled against a palm tree a few feet from a "No Dumping" sign in a quiet neighborhood. "I got one here; it's from Ralphs," he says, hopping out of his pickup truck to lift the metal basket onto the bed, where it joins a red plastic trolley from Office Depot. "They use the ones with green handles." Jimenez knows his shopping carts. And he should.

Frank Mitts, 40, wakes up to find at least three abandoned shopping carts in or near his carport each week. It's an ugly sight in this Van Nuys neighborhood of modest, single-family homes and neat lawns. "People dump them on our property," said his wife, Marisela Mitts, 30. "It's a mess." Abandoned shopping carts, sometimes filled with trash, are a growing problem in Los Angeles. Residents and community activists say they are irked by the eyesore and nuisance.

Miguel Pineda watches the streets like a hawk, scanning Anaheim's alleys and avenues until he spots his prey: those stray shopping carts that clutter neighborhoods. He starts early in the morning to avoid heavy traffic, and his handy technique for getting a cart onto the back of his flatbed is to pop a wheelie with it.

The caller was outraged. "It is criminally irresponsible and a pernicious waste of money to give shopping carts to the homeless," he said, "and I intend to hold you personally responsible if one of your carts is used in a theft from my business." It's OK for Catholic Worker, a lay Catholic organization that provides services to the poor, to run a free soup kitchen.

Fed up with abandoned shopping carts scattered throughout neighborhoods, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to institute strict new regulations that would require supermarkets and other stores to get them off the streets. "You see them all over the place," said Councilman Greig Smith, who said he recently counted 12 carts during a 1 1/2-mile drive through his San Fernando Valley district.

Microsoft Corp. is bringing digital advertising to the grocery cart. The software maker has spent four years working with Plano, Texas-based MediaCart Holdings Inc. on a grocery cart-mounted console that helps shoppers find products in the store, then scan and pay for their items without waiting in a checkout line. Starting in the second half of this year, the companies plan to test MediaCart in Wakefern Food Corp.'s ShopRite supermarkets on the East Coast. Customers with a ShopRite loyalty card will be able to log into a website at home and type in their grocery lists; when they get to the store and swipe their card on the MediaCart console, the list will appear.

Last month my sister, a wine enthusiast, was visiting from Canada. We happened to be shopping at Trader Joe's when suddenly there was a "Charles Shaw" rush. Employees could not truck in the stuff fast enough for the throng of people loading multiple cases into their shopping carts. My sister could not believe the wine was selling for $1.99 a bottle, and asked one of the throng if she had tried the wine. "Oh yes," she said with great enthusiasm, "the Merlot is excellent!" We could not resist buying at least one bottle each of the Cab, Merlot and Chardonnay to try. We got home and tried some immediately, thinking we might have to rush back and buy more.

Call me a cynic, but if America has changed so much since Sept. 11, then why do grocery store parking lots remain cluttered with abandoned shopping carts? Why do telemarketers continue to call at dinner time? And why do second-rate singers at sporting events still insist on rewriting the words and music to the national anthem? Ralph Shaffer Pomona

Re "Irvine Stalks Parking Spot Scofflaws," Sept. 16: I can relate. Twenty months ago, I had a near-fatal ski accident. Since then, I have been confined to a wheelchair or crutches. If I have to go any distance, I am forced to use the wheelchair, and if it is something I can get to close by--by using these wonderfully close handicapped parking stalls--I can use my crutches. Before the accident, I am sure I was among the millions of Americans who felt put out, unfairly inconvenienced and perhaps even unreasonably jealous of those who got to use these primo spaces.

Tina Cassar spent last week watching rain flood her backyard and overflow from her pool. So when the sun came out Sunday morning, the Los Alamitos resident took her family for brunch and a stroll along Seal Beach. There they encountered a stretch of sand littered with mangled shopping carts, bicycle tires, tennis shoes and thousands of plastic cups and bottles. "It's awful," Cassar, 37, said as she walked along the shore. "It just shows what kind of pollution comes through the river system."

It's not all doom and gloom in the U.S. economy. Some products are bucking the recession and flying off store shelves. Sales of chocolate and running shoes are up. Wine drinkers haven't stopped sipping; they just seem to be choosing cheaper vintages. Gold coins are selling like hot cakes. So are gardening seeds. Tanning products are piling up in shopping carts; maybe more people are finding color in a bottle than from sun-worshiping on a faraway beach. Strong sales of Spam, Dinty Moore stew and chili helped Hormel Foods Corp.

"Pretty ... is only pretty. . . . There are a million ways to make a nice physical impression." So begins "Ken Roht's 99-Cent Only Calendar Girl Competition" at the Bootleg Theater. Even longtime fans are unprepared for what follows. Irreverent musical theater visionary Roht achieves absolute synthesis with this marvelous gloss on beauty pageants and the politics of image. Conceived and created during the presidential election, "Competition" takes the price-conscious aesthetic elements on a runway strut to another realm altogether.

Ernest Jimenez Jr. pulls alongside an abandoned shopping cart nestled against a palm tree a few feet from a "No Dumping" sign in a quiet neighborhood. "I got one here; it's from Ralphs," he says, hopping out of his pickup truck to lift the metal basket onto the bed, where it joins a red plastic trolley from Office Depot. "They use the ones with green handles." Jimenez knows his shopping carts. And he should.

Microsoft Corp. is bringing digital advertising to the grocery cart. The software maker has spent four years working with Plano, Texas-based MediaCart Holdings Inc. on a grocery cart-mounted console that helps shoppers find products in the store, then scan and pay for their items without waiting in a checkout line. Starting in the second half of this year, the companies plan to test MediaCart in Wakefern Food Corp.'s ShopRite supermarkets on the East Coast. Customers with a ShopRite loyalty card will be able to log into a website at home and type in their grocery lists; when they get to the store and swipe their card on the MediaCart console, the list will appear.

Frank Mitts, 40, wakes up to find at least three abandoned shopping carts in or near his carport each week. It's an ugly sight in this Van Nuys neighborhood of modest, single-family homes and neat lawns. "People dump them on our property," said his wife, Marisela Mitts, 30. "It's a mess." Abandoned shopping carts, sometimes filled with trash, are a growing problem in Los Angeles. Residents and community activists say they are irked by the eyesore and nuisance.

A growing number of cities that have struggled for years to keep shopping carts out of neighborhoods are forcing retailers to solve the problem. Cities that have spent thousands of dollars a month to impound carts -- some charging stores as much as $15 per cart to get them back -- say old methods aren't working. As stray carts pile up, so are city ordinances across Southern California requiring stores to install security systems or collect the carts themselves.

Fed up with abandoned shopping carts scattered throughout neighborhoods, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to institute strict new regulations that would require supermarkets and other stores to get them off the streets. "You see them all over the place," said Councilman Greig Smith, who said he recently counted 12 carts during a 1 1/2-mile drive through his San Fernando Valley district.

Last month my sister, a wine enthusiast, was visiting from Canada. We happened to be shopping at Trader Joe's when suddenly there was a "Charles Shaw" rush. Employees could not truck in the stuff fast enough for the throng of people loading multiple cases into their shopping carts. My sister could not believe the wine was selling for $1.99 a bottle, and asked one of the throng if she had tried the wine. "Oh yes," she said with great enthusiasm, "the Merlot is excellent!" We could not resist buying at least one bottle each of the Cab, Merlot and Chardonnay to try. We got home and tried some immediately, thinking we might have to rush back and buy more.

Re "Irvine Stalks Parking Spot Scofflaws," Sept. 16: I can relate. Twenty months ago, I had a near-fatal ski accident. Since then, I have been confined to a wheelchair or crutches. If I have to go any distance, I am forced to use the wheelchair, and if it is something I can get to close by--by using these wonderfully close handicapped parking stalls--I can use my crutches. Before the accident, I am sure I was among the millions of Americans who felt put out, unfairly inconvenienced and perhaps even unreasonably jealous of those who got to use these primo spaces.