Food Fight Grocery is more than just a vegan market—it’s a community outreach center, dealing in social conscience as much as in soy cheese. Some events at the market have included screenings of documentaries, parties in which letters of support are written to imprisoned animal rights activists, and monthly bike rides to a vegan dinner somewhere in town. Fans include dreamboat artist Kurt Halsey, who recently designed a shirt for Food Fight depicting a precious cartoon lamb wondering, “What kind of asshole eats a lamb?” We do, and now we feel terrible about it—one shirt, please.

Actually, for a bunch of people whose reptilian brains are so rarely lit up by a mouthful of flesh, Food Fight is refreshingly punk, bringing a level of Henry-Rollins-like energy to veganism. The sign out front sticks it to the Geo-driving-hippie days of animal-friendly lifestyles by declaring the store is “open every fucking day.” Where once the object was to guilt non-vegans into this way of life, the new approach—which is working on us, anyway—seems to be scaring the bejesus out of them.

But step inside the store and the Spree-candy-colored walls and hand-drawn signs suggest that this sort of tongue-in-cheek heckling comes from a place of great heart. After all, these are people who demand a world in which no creature suffers for man’s appetite for food, prestige, vanity…even sex. Allergic to latex but horrified at the idea of a lambskin condom? Food Fight’s got your back.

Also, you can find vegan items many people don’t realize are even made vegan: marshmallows, jerky, and pet food. Yes, pet food. Veterinarian and philosophical concerns aside, it’s there, and although the prices are a touch high, by shopping here, you’re making a locally conscious move as well as a cruelty-free one. Oh, the good feelings!