SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — The mini canvas tote cost two dollars and ninety-nine cents on Friday, and it has, since, become the most aggressively priced object in the American grocery aisle, in the way that a two-dollar-and-ninety-cent thing becomes a price: it stops being one, and starts being a number that other people will pay more than.
The bag — the small one, the colorful one, the one that went viral two years ago and has been, ever since, a thing that is “back,” which is a word the store uses for it the way a museum uses it for a painting — is, by the account of the people who have it, simply a bag. It holds groceries. It is canvas. It is, in the words of the woman who has four of them in her closet and a fifth in the back of her car, “a bag that holds a grudge, a resale listing, and a 6 a.m. alarm, and all of it for three dollars, so I’d say it’s a value.”
The Halloween version, the store has confirmed, is in the aisles now, in black, orange, purple, and, per the store, “a color we’re calling spooky,” which is, by the account of the man who has camped outside for the last two of the runs, “the color that’s going to get taken, and the color that’s going to get taken is the one I’m here for, which is why I’m here at 5:40, which is a thing now, which is a thing with a meeting.”
The resale, to be clear, is a number, and the number is not $2.99. A woman selling three of the summer totes this week described the price as “a thing I can do,” and a man buying one of them described it as “a thing I can do,” and the two of them, who met in a parking lot at 5:45 and had, by 5:50, come to an agreement, described the transaction, separately, to a reporter, as “between the buyer and the seller,” which is the most honest sentence the store has ever been on the record as saying, and the least helpful one.
The grocery, to its credit, has done what the grocery does, which is to put the bag on a shelf and let the bag be a bag. The bag has, in the words of the mayor of a neighboring town, “become a civic institution, and the civic institution is at 6 a.m., and 6 a.m. is a thing that has a schedule, and the schedule is the whole reason the town has a schedule now.” A high school kid, who had just, for the first time in three years of this, missed the 6 a.m. run, described the miss as “the thing I’m going to do again, and the thing I’m going to do again is at 6, and 6 is at 6.”
THE BAG, AS THE STORE AND THE PEOPLE DRAW IT
- Price: $2.99, per the store.
- Resale: a number, per the internet, that is "not $2.99."
- Colors for Halloween: black, orange, purple, and "a color we're calling spooky."
- Time the line starts: 6 a.m., per the people who are in it.
- Support group: one, per the neighborhood, with "a meeting."
- What the store says about all of it: "limited."
At press time, the store had not announced how many of the Halloween totes were in each location, but a spokesperson said the bags would, in the words of the store, “be available while they last,” and a person in line, asked what “while they last” meant, said, “It means I’m here. It means I’m here at 6. It means I’m going to be here at 6 again,” and then, to the person behind her, “It’s a bag. It’s the bag. It’s the $2.99 bag, and the $2.99 bag is, as of today, a thing, and the thing is at 6.”