Wine-Swilling-From-Pringles-Can Texas Woman Earns Fans

NORTH AUSTIN, TEXAS — It's one thing to commit to drinking wine out of a Pringles can at Walmart while on an electric shopping cart in solidarity with a Wichita Falls, Texas, woman who was banned recently from her neighborhood superstore for doing just that.

It's another thing to actually drink wine out of a Pringles can.

Austin residents organized a Facebook event page for a rally at a North Austin Walmart parking lot in the Norwood Crossing location off Highway 183 that was appropriately titled "Drinking Wine From A Pringles Can In Walmart Parking Lot." The event was meant to express solidarity with the North Texas woman whose wine-suffused, electric scooter-propelled excursion in the parking lot of her neighborhood store got her banned from ever entering its doors again.

The turnout for the wine-guzzling shopper in Central Texas was impressive, with nearly 10,000 people clicking they were "interested" in attending the Austin event. Another 2,000 indicated they would for sure be there to rally for the right to swill wine from a Pringles potato chip can while on an electric scooter.

"We’re gonna meet in the parking lot of this Walmart and drink wine or whatever you like from a Pringles can," the event description read. "You wanna ride an electric scooter while you drink from a Pringles can? That’s cool. You wanna sit on the tailgate of your Ford F-150? That’s fine too."

The event was organized by Austin Luxury Limousine, according to the description on Facebook. Organizers wrote, "Just be sure to bring your Pringles can, empty of chips, and full of your favorite beverage," the post read.

This is Texas, after all, where the pioneering spirit of its early halcyon days is embedded into the DNA of those born, bred and buttered in the wide open spaces here. This is Texas, where everything is bigger — including, as mentioned, showing support for the right to swill wine from a Pringles can while riding an an electric scooter/shopping cart.

In the end, though, only three people showed up to the event, plus KVUE news station crew, which was sent with the expectations of a large crowd. The Austin Police Department reportedly knew of the event, but their law enforcement savvy that may have informed them the event would be a bust prompted no action on their part.

Police reportedly didn't bother to show up to the event, but subsequently told the news station drinking wine from an open container — the closest approximation to a violation centered on drinking out of a Pringles can while shopping on an electric shopping cart at a Walmart — is a misdemeanor carrying a $200 fine.

The woman who inspired the event apparently had been riding in the store parking lot when police received a "suspicious person" call at around 9 a.m. on Jan. 11, the Times Record News reported. By the time store security officials found the woman, she had been riding a scooter while drinking wine (again, from a Pringles can) for three hours. She was asked never to return.

The Austin event may have been a bust, but the three guys who showed up made up for it with their confident wine-swilling from a Pringles can. KVUE interviewed the trio who endorsed the activity while demonstrating, albeit without electric shopping carts.

“How does it pair?” the reporter asked one of the oenophiles about his beverage suffused with fragments of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles in a Facebook Live video. “Quite well,” the wine drinker replied with palpable earnestness. “It’s fantastic,” he added.

Notwithstanding the underwhelming attendance in Austin, similar (and more successful) bursts of solidarity are being seen throughout Texas. In Spring, Texas, just outside Houston, a bar named The Branch served wine in miniature cans of Pringles with a choice of chablis or merlot at $3 a pop made chunky with the intermingling potato chip fragments and with incongruous salty undertones adding to the nuance.

Participants proudly posted pictures of them sipping wine in this new fashion on the bar's Facebook page while expressing gratitude for the opportunity to have done so.

The unidentified woman who's inspired such displays of solidarity may have been banned from her Walmart, but she's gained a legion of supporters throughout Texas. She's now something of a mysterious folk hero worthy of emulation, a pioneering firecracker who loves what many of us in Texas do — wine, Pringles potato chips and Walmart.

Long live Wichita Falls Woman Banned From Walmart For Sipping Wine Out Of A Pringles Can While On An Electric Scooter. She is a maverick, the real McCoy. She is us. And we'll drink to that.

Get Patch's Daily Newsletter and Real Time Alerts

>>> Uppermost image: (AP Photo/Pat Wellenbach, File)