- $12 Saturday
- Cold And Rain Invades
- Watching Patriots Game At Casino, Drinking Starbucks
- Preparing to Try To Send Christmas Cards Out
There we go, let a little light in...
I just returned from the casino where I had gone, hoping to see a broadcast of the Patriots/Broncos game, but discovering upon arriving there that the "Masquerade" (night club?) section of the casino had been set up for what appeared to be a Saints game-watching party, with every set at every angle tuned to a broadcast of that (ho) hum-dinger of a contest; that I really didn't care about.
I had a chance to glance around at some of the other people who were, in many cases, reacting to the action on the screen. "Why do any of us care about football?" I thought, before leaving.
Back out into the wind and the rain and the chill.
The rain was coming down moderately hard. Enough to soak a man in about 15 minutes, I would say.
I ran for the trolley, which I had taken to get to the casino, leaving my bike locked to the rack at the apartments in the wind and the rain and the chill.
It was raining too hard for me to consider hopping off at Broad Street, where I could avail myself to whatever is within a short walk from there, everything from Whole Foods at the extreme left, next to the Dollar General, and then the Family Dollar, across from the Walgreen's. An ambitious walker can extend in the other direction to get to the Ideal Market, which is clean and efficiently run, and then to the Banks Meat market diagonal from it, which is run.
The Ideal food is inexpensive, but comes with the caveat that it is basically ready to eat. Stocking up on produce from there is not wise as, even their mangoes can be eaten right out of the store. I've had to toss a jalapeño pepper or two out because of mold spots on them a few days after buying them.
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| Where Whole Foods customers come from... |
The Whole Foods is at the other extreme in some sense that is hard to pinpoint.
They are over staffed, to say the least. They not only have cheese-guy, but cheese guy is back there (behind the cheese section) with assistant cheese guys. Almost every aisle has an employee or three, busily stocking shelves and directing people to the chia seeds.
All these people are being paid by the customers who don't mind paying the Whole Food prices. I have seen mangoes in there marked at 3 times the price of the ones in the Ideal Market, a couple blocks away.
I think the Whole Food customers are also happy to be able to shop without having to rub elbows with the peanut butter and jelly sandwich set.
Judging by how much food I have seen on display in that store at just about closing time, and being pretty sure that they are going to make fresh batches of it all the next morning (it won't take that long with 30 people working on it) I have to shake my head over just how much excellent food they must destroy at the end of each and every day.
They will make a pot of something exotic, like a lobster gumbo or something and it will be like 22 dollars per pound and I will walk by shortly before they are to close, and see 80% of what they had made fresh that day, sitting there, a few minutes away from its date with the dumpster.
I guess the thought of homeless guys spooning the delicacies into their lazy mouths and washing it down with Steel Reserve is repulsive enough to them so that they employ a sealed off dumpster/compactor at the back of the store. I'm sure that it keeps rodents away, as well as homeless people.
Together Forever And Never Two Part
Meanwhile (right) I am studying, once again, the Bach Invention that I have played thousands of times.
I'm giving them a much more intense study now, paying attention to every pick stroke and going for maximum "cleanness."
According to an employee I talked to, they aren't allowed to take home food that would otherwise go to waste, either.
That is a shame in the sense that such a supplement could stretch the paychecks that they issue to those same employees and so those same employees could have a higher quality of life. It is spawned of a tacit suspicion that employees won't really try hard to sell all of that delicious stuff if they are hoping to take some home with them at the end of the night.
And the further irony is that the typical "earthy crunchy" type of Whole Foods employee would probably list "waste" as the gravest of human sin.
There was an excellent article years ago that has been disappeared off of the internet, about the links between Whole Foods and the Bush family and other right-wing types.
ReplyDeleteThe whole "health food" movement was always right-wing, pure food went along with racial purity and all that.
Somehow the hippies, the epitome of whom were Jim Morrison, whose father was an admiral in the US Navy, picked up on the whole-food-purity thing of their right-wing parents, while of course, for the most part, eschewing the racial-purity part (although that part still lives, just watch how the ex-hippies who have money now live in the whitest areas they can).
You can go to any farmer's market when they're packing up and get given enough free fruits and veggies to live on for a week, simply by hanging around and helping people pack up.
The Whole Foods in Charlottesville, (which for my part I visited with a huge backpack on)was very much more intense in this regard, where customers there often exhibited body language that bespoke, "what is he doing in here, he needs some new boot laces before he needs a small container of organic carrot-raisin salad at $14.99/lb.
ReplyDeleteYou see people in there who seem to feel that, for you to even speak to them, you should have been introduced, by one of their respected friends, first.
My opinion of Whole Foods is that there is, in me at least, a desire to see food of every variety imaginable in abundance. The maple syrup is not far from the orange lentils. Tires of plain ol' greenish brown lentils? There is always a lurking intuition in me that, if I could just get a good enough dose of some trace element, say through a few sticks of wild boar jerky, then I might discover a mental clarity and feeling of well being that is astounding.
But, I see a lot of people in there buying organic corn flour, exotic cheeses, oils of rare nuts, salt from the sea, exotic spices and a bottle or four of wine in an interesting looking bottle; and thus, they are doing better for themselves than the guy with the bag of Cheetoz and the pint of Wild Irish Rose, by trading up on all the ingredients;
So, yeah, I see a lot of earthy-crunchy Howards there; in my eyes LOL
Charlottesville is in the South in other words, hick city. And hicks loooooove to be snobbish. They think Starbucks is a mark of distinction. So yeah, to them, Whole Foods would be a big deal, and take every opportunity to give the stink-eye to anyone they think might not be as "sophisticated" as them.
ReplyDeleteHere in California, Whole Foods is just another store. Some things are cheaper/better than Safeway, some things not. It overlaps Safeway quite a bit. And frankly no one gives a shit how you're dressed.