新闻来源：www.nytimes.com
原文地址：Singles in Spain Look for Love in the Grocery Store, With Pineapples as Prop
新闻日期：2024-09-10
西班牙夏季即将结束时，恋爱情愫在超市的空调通道里弥漫开来。这里有一小时的时间，一个充满单身男女的地方。他们拿着翻转的菠萝购物车，向周围的陌生人传达自己已准备好寻找伴侣。
这源于一位喜剧演员维维·林（VivY Lin）和她的朋友卡佳·阿尔萨诺（Carla Alarcón）几周前在塞维利亚录制的一段视频。视频中，维维·林注意到，在西班牙最大连锁超市Mercadona，每天下午7点到8点之间，购物通道里总是挤满了漫无目的地晃悠的单身男女，几乎不买什么东西。
她笑着对镜头说这就是约会的最佳时刻——“ligando”，意思是寻找对象。她还给这种现象起名叫“Mercadona 的约会时间”，并将视频上传到了TikTok。
网友们纷纷效仿。一位棕发美女涂上了鲜艳的口红，站在一排货架旁摆出造型；身穿性感夏季短裤和T恤的女孩们在酒架边晃来晃去；一个穿着整洁西装、头发散乱的年轻人微笑着向其他顾客挑眉，表示自己正“寻找爱情”。
维维·林在接受电话采访时说：“我认为这更像是一种幽默现象而非真爱。”她还补充道，“我觉得这种‘搭讪’的借口是让大家出去玩个乐子，发些梗，拍些视频。”
如今社交媒体上数以千计的视频显示，大部分寻找伴侣的人都是在笑着而已，并非真在找意中人。
不久之后，人们开始把翻转的菠萝放进购物车里，作为一种不太隐晦的求偶信号。按照超市里的浪漫规则，如果你看中了对方车上的翻转菠萝，可以轻轻撞一下表示有意。
这个现象受到了年轻人们的欢迎，他们纷纷涌进西班牙各地的超市，用荷尔蒙在通道间穿梭。一些店员觉得这些人挡了道，影响了其他顾客。两周前，在西班牙毕尔巴鄂的一家Mercadona超市，员工们不得不叫来警察帮忙驱散一大群青少年。
为了应对菠萝需求量激增的问题，上周 Mercadona 的员工们开始在下午7点前不久从货架上取下一些菠萝，以免它们被顾客随意拿走。一位 Mercadona 的工作人员表示，在毕尔巴鄂的那起事件是个特例，并称其他超市没有采取额外措施。
19岁的莉迪亚·伊兹基耶多（Lidia Izquierdo）正在巴塞罗那学习成为一名教师，她尝试了三次在当地的Mercadona超市寻找伴侣。第一次被十几岁的孩子挡了下来；第二次没找到菠萝只好用罐头水果代替；第三次一位店员守着剩下的菠萝，她只得放弃回家。
伊兹基耶多表示她相信一见钟情，不管是超市还是公交站都行。她说：“这种感觉在App上找不见。”她发誓很快会再次回到Mercadona寻找真爱。
为了帮助超市里的恋人们找到意中人，西班牙的 daytime TV 提供了多种建议：站在冷冻食品区可能意味着“一夜之约”；而40岁以上的男士可以在葡萄酒区多碰碰运气。维维·林坦承自己并不擅长搭讪，但更喜欢嬉笑打闹。她提到在2017年观看西班牙版《第一约会》时得到的灵感：那期节目中有人表示超市的最佳约会时间是下午7点到8点之间，因为那时你很容易就能看到那些拿着啤酒和薯片的人。
有人问维维·林是不是做了市场营销活动。她说：“我希望是这样。至少能领些报酬。”
原文摘要：
As a scorching summer draws to its close in Spain, love is in the air in an unexpected place — in air-conditioned supermarket aisles. But only for an hour a day, and with an unusual accessory: an upturned pineapple in your shopping cart to let fellow lonely hearts know you’re available.The comedian Vivy Lin is being credited in the Spanish news media for starting the fad, after she and a friend, Carla Alarcón, recorded themselves shopping for groceries in Seville a few weeks ago.In the video, Ms. Lin said she had noticed that there was a specific window of time — between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. — when the aisles in Spain’s largest superstore, Mercadona, are full of single men and women wandering aimlessly without buying much at all.Ms. Lin winked at the camera and concluded there was only one thing they could be doing: “ligando,” which roughly translates to looking for a date. With a cheeky grin, she coined a new phrase, “the dating hour in Mercadona,” and uploaded her video to TikTok.Other users took it from there. A brunette dressed to kill applied bright red lipstick and posed beside stacked shelves. Girls in sexy summer shorts and T-shirts cruised the aisles and goofed around beside the wines. A young man in a sharp suit and tousled hair smiled coyly and raised an eyebrow at fellow shoppers.“I see it as being a phenomenon of humor more than of love,” Ms. Lin, the comedian, said in a telephone interview, adding, “I think the hookup pretext has been an excuse for people to go out and have fun, to make memes and record videos.”The comedic nature of what are now thousands of videos on social media suggests most would-be lovers are having a laugh instead of genuinely looking for a romantic match.Not long after Ms. Lin’s original video went viral, people started to place upside-down pineapples — a symbol used by swingers to show their availability — in their carts as a not-very-subtle mating beacon. According to the hastily developed rules of supermarket romance, if you take a fancy to someone else who has a turned-up pineapple in their trolley, you should let them know by gently crashing into them.The phenomenon has struck a chord with young teens, hordes of whom have invaded supermarkets all over Spain, flooding the aisles with hormones and — in the view of some store employees — getting in the way of real customers. Two weeks ago, staff members at a Mercadona in Bilbao called the police to help evict swarms of adolescents who had filled the store’s aisles on a Thursday evening.In response to the run on pineapples as dating props, flustered employees at Mercadona last week started to pull them from shelves shortly before 7 p.m. to avoid goods being manhandled and abandoned by customers with no intention of purchasing them.An official at Mercadona confirmed in a telephone interview that the incident in Bilbao was an isolated episode, and said that no extra measures had been required in other stores.Lidia Izquierdo, a 19-year-old studying to be a teacher in Barcelona, said that she had tried three times without success to find a partner in her local Mercadona stores. Her first attempt, she said, was thwarted by “too many 14-year-olds walking around with pineapples in their hands.” On her second outing, there were no pineapples so she improvised with canned fruit, but the stars were still not aligned. On her third visit, she said, a store employee was guarding the pineapples. She gave up and went home.Ms. Izquierdo, who is single, said she was a firm believer in love at first sight, whether in the supermarket or at the bus stop. “That doesn’t happen on apps,” she said, vowing to soon return to her quest for true love at Mercadona.To help supermarket daters find their perfect match, daytime television in Spain is now awash with tips. Hanging around the aisle with frozen products could signal a one-night stand, one program suggested. And for those over 40, the wine section may offer better odds.Ms. Lin confessed over the phone that she was “no expert in hooking up” but rather “an addict of goofing around.” She said she had gotten the idea for her video from watching a participant claim on the Spanish version of the television dating show “First Dates” in 2017 that the best time to find a soul mate in supermarkets was between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., when you can easily spot singles because of the “beer and crisps” in their trolleys.“People have asked me if it was a marketing campaign,” Ms. Lin said. “I wish. At least I would have been paid.”
