Dash stands out as the only white and red shopping cart at the Woodinville Costco, surrounded by its newer gray stablemates. Legend has it that the cart’s longevity is the result of serendipitous oversights through a series of design updates, but Dash survived the cart fleet purge because it was abandoned, then “discovered in a nearby ravine in 2017 and placed back in service.” Dash embodies Rusty Blazenhoff’s post about The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.
In that taxonomy, Dash was a B/16 (Edge Marginalization) or B/21 (Naturalization), a cart long past its projected termination date and became legend to a growing cadre of initiated Woodinville Costco shoppers. Here we switch to David Attenborough’s voice to narrate a scene commonly seen multiple times throughout the day:
The shopper tiptoes through the parking lot with spine erect, vigilantly scanning the surroundings in a hopeful search for the white shopping cart unicorn known to some as “Blanco”, and to many as “Dash”.
Dash has its own Facebook page, updated frequently with pictures of it and devotees, peppered here an there with nuggets of insight gleaned along the road of life. Dig down a layer or two into Dash The Legendary Costco Cart FB page, and one can find treasure like Todd Peach posting about this chance encounter with Blanco:
I must confess I had a slightly awkward exchange just before this. I was walking to the entrance, and a woman was exiting with very little in her cart. She makes eye contact and offers her cart to me. I said “Sure.” While she’s picking up her box of stuff, I see Blanco six feet away between me and the entrance, unclaimed. “I’m going to take Blanco.” AITA? Oh, and the Dash group admin took my photo.
