A strange event occurred recently. The 24-hour sign at the local Metro was suddenly replaced with an hours of operation sign. 7AM to Midnight? That's much more like 17-hours a day than it is 24, a practice the grocer started a whopping 6 years ago, back in it's days when it was known as Loeb (see a photo taken some 4.5 years ago, when two friends and I had a sudden desire to make Banana Pancakes). I'd often wander in there at outrageous times during the night, forced to walk through the exit door with "DO NOT ENTER" stickers. Grocery shopping at 2:30 in the morning was probably the best time to do so. The strawberry yogurt bowls from the day before were marked down, leftover bits of baked goods offered together for next to nothing, and aisles were impossible to walk down as graveshift personnel blocked them with palettes of food, ready to be stocked. You rarely had to worry about any in-a-hurry soccer moms narrowly avoiding ramming into you with a cart filled with