black bag

What do you think of when you hear the words black bag?  I think of Marcus Welby, M.D. or other famous doctors who carried around cure-all potions and instruments in a leather black bag.  Or other times I might think of a really expensive purse that a co-worker or friend purchased that was pretty but not worth sacrificing that utility bill I really need to pay or that dental appointment I really ought to keep.

But now, after living in the hood for a time, I realized that there's a true market for black bags - black plastic bags that is.  Every beer and liquor store in town delivers one's purchases in these little black bags, usually from behind a bullet proof window.  Cheap wine, beer, Jose' Cuervo, Wild Irish Rose and probably even the occasional bottle of Manischewitz (shameless nod to Passover) have no doubt seen the inside of one of these ubiquitous black plastic bags.

I've often wondered why alcohol is passed across the check-out counter in this way?  Is it because we are supposed to be ashamed of what's in them? Like no one else on God's organic, chicken composted, grain fed, free range, green earth ever drank directly from a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill tucked away in a recycled brown paper bag?  Call me a snob, but a black plactic bag is just not the same.

And if we're to be ashamed of these purchases, why doesn't Publix offer us little black bags for wart removal cream, jock itch powder, dandruff shampoo, Harlequin romance novels, pork skins and Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey?  These questions are beyond me. 

Also beyond me are the two men on the MARTA train this morning who decided to re-purpose their black plastic bags as "lunch containers".  I kid you not, one man got on at my station and the other got on two stations later and sat his sweatpant-covered butt in the seat right next to us.

Wait, maybe this wasn't their "lunch"?

Cheers to you no matter what you drink out of....

Black Bag "lunch" number one

Black bag "lunch" number two

Speaking of alcohol - check out my friend who has just relocated to Las Vegas from ATL - two VERY funny blogs she writes that I read religiously - or perhaps I should say spiritually?

www.mybigfatvegas.blogspot.com/

http://www.sevenbellsandthreesheets.blogspot.com/