safeway – Lee's Perspective

San Francisco – Safeway at Ocean Beach

Lee Heidhues 2.9.2025

UPDATE: New Orleans, Louisiana. The Philadelphia Eagles demolished The Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 and capture the 59th Lombardi Super Bowl Trophy. In 2026 the Super Bowl will be played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. Home of the 49ers.

The All-American pastime. The Super Bowl. And what more appropriate way to spend the time before the 3:30 kickoff. Shopping at the Supermarket.

We took a walk through the car free slow street near the Safeway a mile from our home. And an hour later boarded the bus carrying bags and backpacks full of food and household item.

**Getting ready to chow down on Super Bowl Sunday.**

The Super Bowl ads are always a signal of the current state of life in America.

The ads this year are light on substance with strong bows to the boomer generation. So, this photo montage concludes with the classic rock song by It’s a Beautiful Day, “White Bird.”

**The crow watches over Safeway at the Beach in San Francisco.**

**The Super Bowl sugar fix ensemble. Complete with the team colors of Kansas City and Philadelphia**

**It’s not all the sugar fix at Safeway. Healthy oranges and apple abound.**

Liz holds aloft a cabbage destined to be a marvelous Coleslaw salad. Check out that Erin Andrews 49ers sweatshirt. Maybe next February at Levi’s Stadium the home team will make another Super Bowl appearance.

**Aisles and aisles of San Francisco consumer staples**.

**The well stacked and surprisingly empty Safeway Deli section on Super Bowl Sunday.**

**For the non Super Bowl fan there are plenty of periodicals available to pass the hours.**

**Liz carefully looks over the organic chicken drumstick selection.**

**An abundance of organic produce at Safeway.**

“White Bird” the classic late ’60s song and appropriate for a beautiful day on Super Bowl Sunday.
It’s a Beautiful Day is an American band formed in San Francisco, California, in 1967, featuring vocalist Pattie Santos along with violinist David LaFlamme and his wife, Linda LaFlamme, on keyboards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Beautiful_Day

SAN FRANCISCO – WESTERN ADDITION

Lee Heidhues 1.21.2025

Capitalism devours it own. Never mind that The People need to eat.

**Empty and abandoned**. **Where will the Safeway Western Addition shoppers go now?**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertsons With 2,253 stores as of the third quarter of fiscal year 2020 and 270,000 employees as of fiscal year 2019, the company is the second-largest supermarket chain in North America after Kroger. Albertsons ranked 53rd in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. Prior to its January 2015 merger with Safeway Inc. for $9.2 billion, it had 1,075 supermarkets located in 29 U.S. states under 12 different regional banners

Whether it be Safeway corporate greed, an epidemic of non-stop shop lifting or the failure of San Francisco leadership to guarantee a place for citizens to shop the reality is a 40 year neighborhood dining room table necessity is gone.

I took a walk by the site in the Western Addition today and it is a depressing view, indeed.

A large Safeway which would be packed with shoppers at midday now stands forlornly empty.

**Empty deli shelves in the shuttered Western Addition Safeway**

Safeway planned to shutter the store a year ago. Then Mayor London Breed, born and raised nearby in the Western Addition facing a tough reelection campaign prevailed upon Safeway to keep the store open another year. It was a short lived victory for all concerned. Mayor Breed was defeated last November. The supermarket is now shuttered.

The biggest losers are the customers, many of whom no longer have a readily accessible supermarket to buy their groceries.