We couldn't believe it ourselves, at first, when John Vlahides posted the above photo to Instagram. A $39 dollar jar of pickles, sold at Hayes Valley's Arlequin Cafe? In a time when you can find pickles for free on Craigslist?

But it's true. According to the Arlequin staffer who answered the phone when SFist called, originally the cafe had put bottles of their house marinated cukes out for mere decoration. As more and more patrons asked if they could purchase the accessory fruits, Arlequin's staff went to its head chef, who, factoring in materials, time, and labor, came up with the price of $39 per jar.

As Alice Waters so famously said, "I think the biggest impediment to fixing the food system in the United States is that we expect food to be cheap. We want to buy other things with our money."

Perhaps we should just view this jar, which Arlequin says contains about 30 pickles, as a step toward fixing that problem. Or maybe we should just grab some Tupperware and head to the Mission.