In a 1967 collection of small essays, Joan Didion wrote of being accosted by a large woman in a muumuu at the Ralph’s on Sunset and Fuller. Her crime? Wearing a bikini while perusing the produce.

“‘What a thing to wear to the market,’ she says in a loud but strangled voice. Everyone looks the other way and I study a plastic package of rib lamb chops and she repeats it.”

Forty-two years later, I wondered if this woman’s daughter might have sniped at my boyfriend when he recently wore a pair of black Vibram Five Fingers to the Ralph’s on Wilshire and Hauser for milk and eggs. He had discovered them during a morning read of The New York Times. Three hours later they were inexplicably on his feet.

“They’re comfortable,” he said to my neighbor and me as he modeled his basically barefoot look in the driveway with pride and no further explanation.

Comfortable, apparently a hit at Runyon Canyon, and a colossal sensation at Burning Man, where he spent Labor Day weekend.

But what a thing to wear to Ralph’s.

[nytimes.com]