The Sassiest Albertsons in America
The Albertsons on 30th and Hilyard in Eugene was one of my first solo destinations as a kid. It was one of the few places I was allowed to walk to by myself.
Albertsons was only a block away from my house on Kincaid Street, a red and white Fifties rambler with a palm tree out front, and a loft above the living room dedicated to my Barbie village, a fantasy landscape of Malibu Dream Houses, sports cars, and subversive sex between dismembered Barbies. I continued to play Barbies through seventh grade, though it remained a secret that only two close friends and their mothers were privy to.
Often, I walked to Albertsons for the express purpose of getting a free cookie from the bakery. Even though the cookies weren’t very good, they were free, and my mom wasn’t there to regulate my sugar intake. I’d been known to hide candy under my mattress, like the Lemon Drops I’d buy for ten cents at the pharmacy that once existed in the Albertsons parking lot.
Albertsons was where I fueled my Sweet Valley High obsession in fifth and sixth grade, competing with a friend to see how quickly we could tear through the tawdry series. I made it through sixty-something titles; I want to say The Secret of Fantasy Forest was my last.
In many ways, Albertsons was more important to my development as a reader than the Eugene Public Library. After I acquired a late fee for a book on Calamity Jane, I avoided the library until I moved back a few decades later. Happily, the fine from 1984 eventually fell off my record.
Most significantly, Albertsons was where I discovered Sassy magazine in the spring of 1988. I was in sixth grade. It was the third issue, and the May cover offered the promise of “How to Be the Best Kisser.” I still remember the featured photos, which included a girl blowing a gigantic bubble with gum. Shockingly, the magazine advertised a future issue that would cover the truth about masturbation. However, the next month, when I sheepishly went to pick up the June issue, the feature had been nixed, no doubt by advertisers.
Time slowed down and expanded inside the pages of the magazine, which was full of secrets from the older sister I never had, or perhaps my future self, introducing twelve-year-old me to new music, fashion, and stages in sexual development (e.g.: how to kiss).
I thought a lot about kissing that summer. My friend and I covered our mouths in Kleenex and experimented with the mechanics of kissing, a dry and unsuccessful run. I’d recently started wearing a Calvin Klein A-cup bra purchased at the Emporium, although I didn’t actually get boobs until the following summer.
Sassy filled me in on everything I needed to know about the opposite sex, including “five types of guys to avoid at all costs.” I was also heartened by the article on “five virgins tell you why it’s cool.”
Sex was cool; being a virgin was cool. That’s what was so freeing about Sassy magazine, which I discovered shortly after outgrowing the Sweet Valley High series, in which money, popularity, and perfection were everything.
In those pre-Internet days, Sassy helped readers accept themselves — whatever their sexual orientation, their past, or their desires. The magazine also fueled our fantasies. It was when reading Sassy that my New York obsession began, as the city was featured heavily in every issue.
Sassy provided insight into young people’s lives that were markedly different than my own: a fifteen-year-old boy who had survived a dozen foster homes; a girl who’d become a stripper at her mother’s insistence; another girl on death row. The magazine broke taboos by publishing stories about incest, suicide, abortion. The forbidden themes made me pick up the magazine clandestinely every month, a secret I shared with only my few closest friends.
In a Gen X, user-generated content kind of way, Sassy gave us the chance to spill our secrets in a reader’s poll, to ask questions in the advice column, to submit words we’d invented, to publish an “It Happened to Me” column; and to apply to be the Sassiest Girl in America (I once drafted an application but never sent it in).
It’s only a slight exaggeration to state that this Albertsons helped introduce me to my first career. Just six years after discovering Sassy, I turned eighteen and moved to New York City. The fall of my first year of college, I wrote Sassy magazine to inquire about internships, but the time commitment was too extensive for my full-time load. Instead, I interned at Paper magazine, where I learned my way around the various subway lines by acting as a courier, picking up and delivering art and photographs.
After graduation, I got a job at the Hearst Corporation as a web producer for CosmoGIRL! magazine, which was pitched to me as the new Sassy during my interview. It was decidedly more mainstream, but I got to write quizzes, edit horoscopes, and scout attractive guys for our Boy-O-Meter feature. My twelve-year-old self was pleased.
I didn’t think much about my old neighborhood Albertsons over the years, although when I’d look back on this time of my life, it always lurked in the background of my memories, like a satellite of the mall or my school.
As it happens, this Albertsons was the first place I stopped when I moved back to town in 2017, leaving the U-Haul and my towed car in the parking lot to see if they had kombucha. Two staff members helped me find the kombucha, and generally made me feel like I’d made the right decision to finally move home.
This Albertsons is also where my husband picked up salmon for dinner the other night. No free cookies for us — they don’t offer them anymore, and we’re no longer kids, just two people who grew up in the same town and met once we’d returned home after seeing the world.
I’ll always regard this Albertsons as the place that gave me my first taste of independence, and first brought me Sassy magazine, offering me a sneak preview of the life I was leaving home for in the first place.
