To make a long story short, we lost the battery charger for the camcorder which I want to take to Soularize so I can videotape people swimming with man-eating sharks (Spencer tells me this is safe). After thinking about getting a cheap Aiptek camera (won’t ship to Canada or even accept a Canadian billing address) I decided for the first time in my life to check out some of the many pawn shops that are by the shelter where I work. Mark and I go to the biggest one and look around and I was stunned by how high the prices were. In many cases 15% – 20% over new and yet people were buying and I could not understand why unless for a certain percentage of people that don’t have cars and don’t use public transport, just shopping for basic items at inflated prices makes them poorer, like those that use 7-11 for basic groceries. For that reason I started shopping once in a while at Giant Tiger who moved into 22nd Street and provide new stuff at really cheap prices. I hate shopping at big discount places but they provide a great service to the neighborhood and they have cheap hockey sticks. It also got me thinking about Wal-Mart this summer when they had a selection of $1000+ patio tables for sale. Everyday low prices but for an entirely different more upscale market.
The good news is that there is a food cooperative going into the neighborhood but as several people I used to work with at Safeway have wondered, how are they going to sell enough volume to keep costs down in a small store. I hope they have a solution.
Back to the charger. I found one online for $20 and a day after it shipped, we realized my brother’s camcorder uses the same batteries (and charger) as mine so there will be footage of me being eaten by a shark.
