If you want to understand a culture you all you need to do is look at the cuisine. There's a small market around the corner from my house. It's located in a strip mall with a dance studio, a pizza place and a Japanese tapas restaurant. The Japanese appropriated the Spanish word, tapas (small plates) for the way they present their cuisine. You wait six weeks to get in.
The pizza place is run by a Sikh family. Not only can you get pepperoni but also tandoori chicken on your pizza.
The produce market is in the space that used to hold a liquor store. It's run by a family from Mexico. At first, it had the usual fruits and vegetables; tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli. Then the proprietor added tomatillos, a delicacy in his Mexican state. Then because a lot of Israeli families attend the dance studio and the parents shop while their kids take dance lessons, kosher items soon appeared. A karate studio opened up and asian produce followed. Now I can buy Russian yogurt, Greek olives, and German bread at my little produce market. The Indian moms like the mangoes and the 3 difference kinds of lentils our Mexican grocer carries.
The produce market now has video display terminals mounted on the walls that carry commercials in Hebrew, Mandarin, Japanese and Russian. The owner says it's an experiment one of his customers, CEO of a start up, wanted to beta.
Bottom line: even in the produce market the Silicon Valley spirit of innovation is alive.
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