Monday, November 05, 2018

Name that Kroger, again

The Chronicle, ever in need of clickbait, recently put up a slideshow revisiting a topic both the Houston Press and myself had considered several years ago:
Believe it or not Houston-area Kroger locations have special nicknames.
This phenomenon has been covered in the past but this week's talk about Houston-area grocery store history brought it back out.
Most every Kroger in the area has an additional moniker, a playful name developed by shoppers that describes its place in the local fabric and its basic clientele. There is a Hot Mom and Hot Dad Kroger, known by younger shoppers for its handsome customers.
Disco Kroger, in Montrose, is named as such for its soundtrack and attitude near some of the area's most popular clubs and bars. Just two miles north sits another Kroger, dubbed "Bro-ger" by some for its male post-collegiate shoppers. It can also be referred to as Party Kroger for the run on party supplies most every weekend.
The list includes other obvious ones, such as Combat Kroger on Polk, Zombie Kroger in the Heights, and Hot Mom/Hollywood Kroger on West Gray. But a few of the names in this slideshow are rather dubious, in that they were probably just made up in the newsroom.

For example, I have heard of the Kroger I normally shop at (at least, whenever the parking lot at the HEB across the street is too crowded) at the corner of Buffalo Speedway and Westpark referred to as "Buffalo Kroger," "West University Kroger," and "Spanish Kroger" (referring to the faux-colonial architecture of the shopping center in which it resides). But before I read this article I never heard anybody refer to it as "Blue Hair Battle Zone Kroger."

Which is funny, but perhaps a bit too much to get off the tongue when the point of these local Kroger nicknames is to be pithy.

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