Meet The Chicago Instagrammer Who Made Us Love Aldis At Sunset
By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 11, 2016 4:28PM
Isabel Calder, 23, doesn't work at Aldi. Calder, the Logan Square resident who runs the weirdly beautiful Instagram account @aldisunsets, just... really loves to grocery shop there.
"I’m almost on an all Aldi diet," she told Chicagoist.
Last August, on one of her many Aldi runs, she first got the idea for her account. She took a photo of the sunsetfrom the parking lot and texted it to her boyfriend. “The way it’s facing, it has a really big open parking lot, and you can see the sky really well.”
The photo turned into a joke between her and her boyfriend, "like oh, you should make this a blog," she said. In March, she finally went for it, and started her Instagram account. It's still a joke, kind of. Aldi is Calder's man crush Monday and her woman crush Wednesday, according to her captions. Her hashtags are full of jokes, too, and there's a Where's Waldo-ish fun to finding the Aldi sign in each picture. But the account is also serious business. Calder seriously loves Aldi, and her photos are seriously pretty. (There are also some jokier shots, lol.)
In less than four months, Calder posted more than 100 Aldi photos to her account, a mix of shots she took herself, largely in the Midwest, and follower submissions from places including Germany, Spain and Australia. (In Europe, the Aldi logos are different!)
Calder says two-thirds of the Aldi photos she's taken are of her neighborhood Aldi in Logan Square. We asked her about the best Chicago Aldis, though, and she also called out two other ones: the one on the Red Line, in the Andersonville area, with a green roof (her #wcw), and the Wicker Park location, currently closed for renovations. "I’m sure that will be nice when it’s rebuilt," she said.
Obviously, you're here at least in part for some sexy dusky Aldi pics, so we'll close out with some of her best shots of Chicago Aldis. This swirly one reminds us of Van Gogh's Starry Night (plus Aldi):
Then there's this one, featuring a baby moon:
This shot of a technicolor sunset:
This shot, where Aldi and traffic lights are beautiful:
Last but not least, there's this shot of an Aldi's parking lot slash the most romantic wedding venue in all the Midwest: