All stories about "Safeway"

Whether or not they admit it, everybody in Washington shops at Safeway. No other grocery store manages to squeeze such a suburban practice into such a convenient urban package and with such variety. While focus groups might dictate what's on the shelf in any given locale, it's the experience of the shopper that crowns the store with its colloquial title. Somehow the names stick, despite Washington's super-transient populace and shifting neighborhoods. Safeway, Inc. rejects these nicknames -- though if they had any business sense they'd embrace them wholeheartedly and erect a hammer and sickle on 17th Street. Instead, they keep insisting how they're so down with the new millennium 'cuz they play (cough) Coldplay on the speakers. Meanwhile the internet's all aflutter with arguments about which store is called what. As someone who's lived in Washington far too long and shopped at every single Safeway in the district, let me to tell you how it goes.