You can get all the gas you can handle for $1.50 at their lunch counter, beverage (with free refills) included.

Mmmmmmm... Costco dogs.

Sinai 48's too. The real deal.

You eat them, then they take you Mt. Sinai Hospital.

Wilsonville Costco
regular gas $2.59

What's wrong with all these links. Nothing about Costco gas apart from the picture.

Wilsonville Costco
regular gas $2.59

I'll see you that and raise you $2.53 at the Arco at 39th and Main in The Couv. The guy at the pump across from me (we pump our own, don't you know) remarked they were practically giving the stuff away. I said it would be a lot nicer if it were $1.53 instead, but we agreed those days are long over.

Who would have ever thought we'd be excited to see a gallon of gas creeping toward $2.50/gallon?

Starbucks and McMenamin's Pubs have a sort of post-modern sense of community about them. They attract people "as if there were part of a community"

Sorry about borrowing this from an earlier post Patrick,...but Costco "members"? And "wholesale?" Isn't that a truly "post-modern sense of (false) community? (And false advertising..."wholesale?")

Aren't folks just paying for the privilige of shopping at a retail store?
You pay just to walk through the door! (What a deal!)

Sorry...the whole attraction of the Costco experience just doesn't resonate with me. You want REAL wholesale go to "Cash and Carry." OK, so there aren't any lines (that sense of community?) and the stuff's REALLY cheaper, but Costco I don't get. You want good sausages --and I've a buddy who inexplicably LOVES those Costco doggies, too-- why not Good Dog/Bad Dog for the real thing?

Frank,
Costco may or may not be "wholesale" -- if you watch what's going out the door, it's obvious that retailers shop there. Costco offers high-quality merchandise at good prices (yesterday, for example, I saw a 6' Bösendorfer grand piano offered for a mere $50,999 at the Wilsonville store). Something I especially like is that, at the Tigard store where I usually shop, there is great continuity of employment. This suggests to me that employees are well treated. Their return policies are liberal, too. Contrast REI: yesterday I selected a couple of T-shirts from a rack labeled 30% off at their fancy store in the Pearl. At the register (after a long wait on line), the price came up $3.19 higher per item than 30% off would have been: 16% off, not 30%. The cashier's response: "Take it or leave it."

Frank,

4:15AM???

Maybe you'd "get" the Costco experience if you got some sleep.

Jeez....I'd be happy as a clam if my gas got near $2.50. Cheapest I can get around here is about $2.95 (Bend). I was jumping for joy when I was in Sandy last weekend and filled up for $2.65.

One thing I did notice, driving through Madras (a town less than a tenth the size of Bend) actually has cheaper gas than Bend and Redmond -- by about ten cents.

"""Who would have ever thought we'd be excited to see a gallon of gas creeping toward $2.50/gallon?"""

I did, because a year ago it had droppped below $2.00 at Costco.

Maybe you'd "get" the Costco experience if you got some sleep.

Yeah...well I was really tired this morning at 7:30am standing in Waterfront Park waiting to do my 5K Race for the Cure. No Costco...but Starbucks came to our rescue handing out free pumpkin spice mini-lattes and "free" cups of good black coffee (well, they were asking for $1 donations to go to Race for the Cure, but I didn't have any change on me, so they'll catch me later on that).

Not to mix threads, but I know a LOT of card-carrying Costco-ists and Starbuckites and think there is more to this than "coffee" on the one hand or "cheap prices" on the other. It's plugging into a "culture" where you're comfortable and lined up with like-minded comrades.

"Cash and Carry" has way better prices, and its fun --if a little chilly--wandering in the walk-in coolers and freezer, but their "wholesale only" admonition on the door may scare off some folks...but's it's really wholesale pricing, and no one's ever challenged me. (In fact, they're always very nice.) No gas, though. And no hot dogs. So what do I know. I'm not trying to rain on anybody's parade.

I wanted to rain on The Race for the Cure this morning when I ended up stuck in traffic downtown on the way to pick up some cats in NE Portland to take to the Feral Cat Coalitions monthly spay/neuter clinic. I had forgotten it was this morning. Last time, I got stuck in traffic on RFTC day I was with my sister, who told me that some of the companies that sponsor it have been linked with potential chemical causes of cancer. These kinds of events are good, fine, and I am sure do help to raise awareness of serious problems and efforts to solve them. But if they just make people feel comfortable and smug (I wouldn't accuse Frank of this at all), then they don't do enough, and might actually deter deeper problem solving. ( I wondered how many people stuck down there today might have been on their way to do some hands-on problem solving.)

I go to Starbucks, since they are always convenient and do have good chairs and music and pleasant employees. But like with the neighborhood associations, "visioning" and all, there is a danger of loosing true community when it becomes a commodity. You loose it when you try too hard to grasp it.

We did get the feral cats into the clinc on time after much drama. Afterwards, I went into the Overlook Restaurant in North Portland near this month's clinic location and a friend's house. It is almost always full of a real mix salt-of-the earth Portlanders. That is what I like. Lack of pretense, smugness. Real people. A yuppie wrote an article crtiquing the food; my friend, a regular, wrote something contradicting it. Places like that are not about gourmet food, which is not to say it doesn't have its place. This place runs the risk of being taken over by yuppie values; if that happens, we lose much of what makes a city interesting, and liveable, imho.

I don't know what I would do without Costco. Seriously.

As someone mentioned earlier, they do treat their employees well. From the accounts I've heard,this old NYT article is an accurate depiction.

Now if we could just get people to pay attention to what they're doing with those giant carts (parking in the middle of aisles, not watching where they're going, etc.) but I guess that's too much to ask for...

These kinds of events are good, fine, and I am sure do help to raise awareness of serious problems and efforts to solve them...

Seeing 50,000 people in the street is an awesome sight. It gives you a sense of our power when united together that way. And we raise LOTS of money, but, more importantly, we share our individual stories. (I've done the Race for the Cure ever since they let in men...including walking several of them with my Mom, whose breast cancer eventually claimed her.)

And, yeah, it screws up traffic big-time, but there's also something to be said for walking down the middle of Broadway like you owned it.

Sorry about your Mom, Frank. I guess I am fortunate to be as old as I am (as old as you and Anne) and still have both parents in pretty good health.

The sharing,support and memorial parts of RFTC are pretty neat.

Is it true that WalMart wants the empty lot adjacent to the Tigard Cosco? Does WalMart have a lunch counter too?