Liars and Crybabies at Fairway

Finally, to Fairway for more olives. The woman ahead of me in the cheese line asks for "a quarter pound of your nuttiest Gouda." The cheese husband directs her to a section holding pre-sliced cheese. So I don't have to wait too long. The sign behind the cheese counter boasts that Fairway invented cheese 3000 years ago. I appreciate such conspicuous lying. Sounds like the Penelope character on Saturday Night Live. "I just gave birth to 6 babies and they all were born speaking three languages." Watching that skit is like getting a brain massage for some reason.

I know this cheese guy is patient because when I ask him what the best kind of cheese is he doesn't get annoyed with me. He patiently explains that there are at least 30 different classifications, what sort of thing do you like? I insist on knowing what the best kind is. He says Pyrenees, but he can't find the kind he prefers. So I get another kind. Tastes lots like the Etorki I already love. But I know my taste buds are too distresseed, in the home decor sense, to pick up much subtlety.

There's something going on at the fish counter. I hear a guy saying "they're all a bunch of cry babies," all the guys that work the counter are looking at him. The fish, laid out like tiles on immaculate ice, stare silently from glazed eyeballs. I demand to know who the crybabies are. They are professional athletes who have become prima donnas, in it for the money, not the game. That guy was in a snit. I get in his snit, modern people stink, we are such petulant softies, drowning in freedom of choice and convenience. Empowering our most self involved tendencies. Complaining about a few unpleasant odors when even 100 years ago people tolerated unbelievable inconvenience and unpleasantness because they had to. I can't tell you how often I've wished I could send a child of mine back in time for 15 minutes to see how many shows they had to fight over in the 15th Century.

Ok, I guess I'm still in that snit. I need a kinder perspective.

I finish shopping in gleeful mania, smiling at the panic attack I had when I went to Fairway the first time. I can tell the guy checking out behind me knows how to cook some whatnot. He carefully places cuts of meat onto the conveyer belt, things I don't even have names for. Behind them he piles fresh herbs, pinoli, other things. I wonder if he's the brooklyn bachelor. But I think he might be a vegetarian.

Extinct in South Slope

Baby Bird
Nest

and others...

I'm sad to see these 7th Avenue shops go, although I bought little in either so I have no one to blame at the moment but myself, assuming they closed for financial reasons. I'm having a lot of Rip Van Winkle experiences lately, I don't know where the time went. Seems to me like so many things are gone all the sudden. I was looking for Cafe Isabella. Apparently its been Parco for 2 or 3 years. People seem to love that place, the two outside tables are usually full. One of these day I'll try the Colombe expresso.

I still miss Lucky Bug. That place was first in the filet of the slope, and moved South around a decade ago when rents started to go nuts. Hung on there for awhile, left a few years ago. I once bought a cake of glycerin soap with a little hulk inside it for my sister's boyfriend there. Miss that soap.

Also went looking for the Musicians General Store, I loved that place, hoped to buy my daughter's student-grade 3/4 length nylon string guitar there. Gone. How long ago? Why?

Wah!

At least we still have the Jeff Bloch Guitar and Amp Wellness Center on the corner of 10th and 17th, where they didn't have a nylon string 3/4 length, although they did have a steel string, so I went to the Guitar Center at the Atlantic Terminal. Found something in the "Acoustic Corral" section of the store, more than I was hoping to spend but I guess I'll trade it up at Jeff Bloch's when girl child outgrows it. The part of the guitar center that sells the acoustic stringed instruments is funny. When you enter it feels like you're in some mountain cabin because of the way they configured their wood paneling. Once in the corral (there's pieces of harnesses on the wall in certain places, I guess that's what they are) you can choose to go into a very small wood paneled room that houses the classical guitars. Feels so much like entering a sauna that you wonder where the people in towels are.


Looks like there will be a Union Market opening soon in South Slope. For some reason I'd rather keep that business on Union Street, made it unique, but whatever, I've never even shopped there. I just read that the Bank of America is replacing Dagostino's, not news to most I'm sure but news to me. Too bad, it's hard to eat money. I wonder who will nest where Nest was nested? Baby bird's nest is now Parker's Place, a very pleasant looking play school, baby birds nesting where Baby Bird nested.

Saved on Fifth?

Not this time. It hurts a little when I see that the marble composition books which I paid $2.50 each for at the Krupa Grocery are 2 for a $1.00 at Save on Fifth. I knew $2.50 was steep, but the Krupa Grocery, on Prospect Park West, is a very special store, very individual, the best candy selection on the strip, durags, a few local "artisanal" t-shirts (look up) and the usual lotto heavy bodega fare. You can also get indian stuff there, mehndi paste and exotic kinds of hygiene products. It is adorned with metaphysical messages posted in odd places. On the door it says "That art thou, " which I take to mean "Thou art that," but I'm not sure. In my case, it would have to mean "Thou art that stupid that you paid $2.50 for something that goes for 50 cents somewhere else." Ow.

Here's something else that hurts. I pocketed the coin I had fished up for the meter when we got to Save on Fifth, it appeared we'd inherited a sweet 35 minutes. We must have been having too much fun shopping, because later I found a ticket on the windshield. $35 dollars. Time and space has nailed me again, as it will all of us. Meter time and parking space.

(here, a brief interruption from my inner numerologist/schizophrenic: 3+5=8, 3+5=8. Hello again 88. What are you doing here?)

What sweetens these injuries to my feelings of competence and thriftiness? The memory of the free candy they put in the bag when I bought the school supplies at Krupa. They are some of the most friendly store owners in Brooklyn, go see for yourself. Just don't get composition books there. I wonder if they still have that interesting and fun music selection and those $2 packages of pungent spices.

For anyone who cares, notice that a man wearing clothes that coordinate with my subject once again enters the picture. What's going on! Oh, Brooklyn, I love you so. Are you a White Stripes video? My inner skeptic points out that red and white are popular colors. Well, they are no doubt the colors of the week for me. I took home some of the red and white carnations from the altar of the meditation session I went to last night at Devi, thanks Buddha, and after went to Amin around the corner, a sea of red napkins on white tablecloths. And delicious Indian food.

School Shopping

It went OK. Had to park in the P2 level of the underground garage at the atlantic center. my daughter kept asking me if it was called the atlantic terminal, I kept saying it was the atlantic center. children are fun. we found a map that allowed us to share a sense of authority, turns out the building that houses the Old Navy, etc. is the atlantic center, and the building across the sky bridge, as I like to call it, is the terminal.

3 kids in one dressing room is daunting. But luckily since the beginning of the summer my smile has improved so it helped me win the kindness of the fitting room attendant, who gave us the minivan version of the dressing room. everyone was so excited to try on their pants, i got embarrassed after a while, they had come up with some kind of a new variety of song about butts, which everyone could hear them singing, so i told them they were probably scaring everyone out of the store. this didn't make a difference.

I don't know who to thank for my improved kindness, maybe the buddhists, maybe the shaman, maybe some invisible guide. I don't know. maybe my therapist(s). maybe its the fact that i'm not working (aside from 25/7 mommierge service). maybe i should thank my enemies for teaching me generosity and humility and compassion. whatever the cause I enjoy the look of relief on people's faces when they see I am not fake or distrusting person, a look that says, OK, I guess you are all right, i don't think i have to hate you. still, i know it is as if i am the tiniest figment in people's dreams, an insignificant detail in the momentum of their struggles. but that's fine. i hope each story turns out beautifully. sometimes i think god created the world simply because s/he enjoys a good narrative, a quest story. me, i'm in the mood for vampire tales.

Greening Pains

We've fallen into a bit of a rut. My son loves the vending machines, the ones at Key Food, the ones outside the deli on the corner of 16th and Prospect Park West, the one down from Thai Tony's.

I can relate. There's the joy of fitting one, or even two carefully designed and minted quarters into slots that fit them perfectly, metal to metal. Then the turning of the handle, the gears working slowly, a reassuring bit of resistance against your hand. After the gears have turned fully and the works release, you hear the little bundle of surprise bump down behind the door (hopefully). When you lift up the little metal hatch, there's always that hint of anxiety - will it really be there? The reward for the effort is retrieved (mine!) and then, usually, there's... disappointment. But still, there's the hope, the myth, that really cool stuff will come out of there next time.

Cool stuff, poisonous stuff. That's what I had to tell my son. We should no longer spend any quarters on these little prizes that may well be painted with lead and other poisons, that most likely come from factories that dump some pretty evil chemicals into their local water supply. Places where people are so desperate they have to blind themselves to the effects of their actions. For that matter, I tried to convince him, we should pass on the gum, too, because not only is it bad for you because of the sugar but it could be tainted with whatever poison residues might have been left in the machines from other things.

Yesterday was his last time to get a trinket at Key Food. He got a fake gold chain, which I took from him immediately, saying, that's exactly the kind of thing you have to watch out for. Fool's Gold. On the way to the ATM, we pass the magazine rack. I see that on the cover of the New York Times there's a story about the tainted trinkets brought here from China. I read the headline to him, a little too loudly.

Sometimes, it stinks to be right.