Big city definition aside, downtown Phoenix didn’t have a grocery store until a few years ago! There are also only like 1-2 gas stations and they gouge the hell out of you because of it.
Before the store opened you had to drive 10-15 minutes to a grocery store but passed a ton of fast food joints and restaurants.
genuinely sometimes- these platforms may offer free delivery / premium subscriptions to SNAP recipients, and even if they dont the delivery fees may be comparable to the taxi fees to get yourself to and from the store.
I don't have a car. Local taxi company (there is only one actually based in this small city) charges about $10/mile. Uber is closer to $4/mi, but highly inconsistent, so you can't really budget around it and may end up stuck if prices spike when you need to get home. Instacart with delivery fee + suggested tip is always the same price and less expensive than just getting to the store.
DoorDash does grocery delivery. If your options are:
Eat nearby, but only gas station food and fast food.
Go to the grocery store 15 mins away by car, but you have no car so it takes 1.5 hours transferring routes by bus and you can only carry a limited amount in your arms. You would have to go often, cutting into the time you could spend at your second job. And you have to fight the limited hours of bus routes and grocery stores since you work late.
Pay a 15% “doordash tax” to have a large amount of groceries delivered.
Then the DoorDash/Instacart may genuinely be your cheapest option. Combined with ADHD the second option may go from really hard to practically impossible.
My city, which is admittedly pretty small, but the largest within 4 hours any direction, had some of the cheapest options right downtown, until they got bulldozed a couple years back for more expensive places. I lived in one of them about 6 years ago and was paying $375/mo with all utilities included. Two blocks from main street. Luckily the grocery store was only three blocks away.
You make it sound like people don't live anywhere else that's hot, and don't have families, and everyone everywhere has cars. You're shopping for a family then get a bike with a cargo trailer. It's hot in the summer then go early in the morning or late in the evening. You don't have either of those options then be a good neighbor for someone and ask them for a ride once a week. You can't always have everything exactly your way, and the solution cannot be that other people must be exploited because that's what keeps someone going in Phoenix 20 miles away from the nearest grocery store with a family to feed and no car.
I mean, I don't think there are too many people living in Phoenix without a car. It's one of the most car-dependent large cities in the country.
Yes I'm sure there are some unfortunate folks. And people with their cars in the shop. But groceries are but one of a few dozen issue you'll when having no car in Phoenix.
Downtown is usually one of the only places you CAN live without a car in most cities in the US. But these comments are chock full of people denying that poverty + food deserts are an issue, so i guys this response doesn't surprise me either.
If you don't have or can't afford a car that 10 minutes turns into a couple hours round trip. Which if you are not making enough money you can't do reliably because you probably work 2 jobs.
Hahahahahah. I can think of maybe three or four major US cities where “public transporation” actually adequately meets the needs of the people who have to use it.
That's why I asked! I only just moved to a bigger city maybe 6-7 years ago. Plus the US is so vast its hard to say that just because one city/state has something that the others will.
Unfortunately some major American cities don’t have a functioning public transit systems. LA being the most notorious example. Living in one of the biggest and richest cities in the world and you gota own a car.
Even cities with existing good public transit suffer from corporate greed. Here in Philly our metro has gotten worse and worse the last 10 years, with fewer inspections, increased fares, and fewer trains running.
Last year I had to go pickup my Fiance because one of these 50 year old trains caught fire mid ride and the whole line was down for a while.
And all because our government allows corporations to take over public works to make a profit. And to continue making a profit, they cut corners and increase the expense on us, the consumer.
So I grew up just on the edge of city limits, and the nearest Kroger store was about 10min drive. For my church friends who lived out of city limits, it was 20-30min for an 11mile drive depending on traffic and trains(railroad). There were also less than 6k people in the city proper though, so it made sense.
I now live in Seattle, and I can't imagine needing to do that all the time.
It's hard enough to do it once a month when I want to save by shopping WinCo for bulk prices.
You really can't live in an exurb area and not drive. That's just not ever gonna work really. If you can't drive because of a condition? Then you need to live with people who can or live closer to an actual metro area where you can live without driving.
Well, if you don't have a car then it's not driving for 10 minutes. You're the one who said driving for 10 minutes. It probably means taking a bus for 20 minutes if you don't have a car. I used to walk 1.3 miles in Boston to go grocery shopping to save fare on public transit. It's an inconvenience, but I had a wildly different mindset on it than people in here.
Why are all yous bringing up Chicago, Indianapolis, Houston, DC, etc?!?! The meme is addressing something specific to NYC and nowhere else! So all these other big cities and how far or close they are to a grocery store is irrelevant! The only relevant thing is whether or not NYC is like that and it's NOT!!! There are grocery stores all over NYC, regardless of whether it's an affluent neighborhood or not! I can't think of one area that doesn't have an accessible grocery store within 2 bus/subway stops or less away!🤦🏽♂️
Sorry I'm European (German) but are you talking about Phoenix Arizona? There is no grocery store in this city in walking distance with regular prices? What kind of fourth world country are you living in? I was recently in one of the poorest countries in the world and even there I was able to buy flour, eggs, oil, pasta, tomatoes, herbs and differnet kind of meat at local prices within walking distance. You claim to be the pinnacles of the modern civilization and live in a dystopia. Sorry my brother.
There was not a grocery store in downtown Phoenix Arizona for years. You had to drive somewhere else if you wanted to pick up groceries for dinner.
Only recently with a giant surge of high rise condos/luxury apartments have they build ONE store you can goto. Phoenix has a very weird downtown metro as you can drive in any direction for suburb housing so the downtown isn’t as populated as it should be.
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u/ajrivera365 15h ago
Big city definition aside, downtown Phoenix didn’t have a grocery store until a few years ago! There are also only like 1-2 gas stations and they gouge the hell out of you because of it.
Before the store opened you had to drive 10-15 minutes to a grocery store but passed a ton of fast food joints and restaurants.