Chronicles Continued

Why do cigarette smokers get to toss their cigarette butts willy-nilly along the sidewalk, curb or out the window of their car.  They don’t appear to ever be busted for littering or fines, like dog owners who don’t pick up after their dogs.  Anybody have an answer to this?

Kitchen sink sponges this summer have been turning rancid.  This is new to me. I buy the packets of ‘real-sponge’ from Trader Jo’s.  They have always worked exceedingly well.  However this summer not so, so I went to my local drug store and paid a lot more to buy ‘anti-mildew-sponges in a package of two.  Purple in color, not the mild natural color, but if that will stop the mildew, so be it.  Only it didn’t.  Did not seem to matter what I did, the mildew problem continued.  But then I bought a ‘pack of sponges wrapped in a white netting’ in Chinatown.  Problem solved.  Do not know what the difference is, and whether it is that the what-appears-to-be-netting lets the water wick away, but my sponges are now mildew free!

Clearly I was so riled up in writing this… lots of errors..  so corrected:

…is the price for ONE orchestra seat [main floor seating] for the stage play Hamilton, January through May of next year,  This is outrageous.  This price is not for ‘after-market’ resale tickets;  this is the price of a pre-sale offering.  If you want to see this play, †his is what you will pay.  [The other two sections mezzanine or back mezzanine, at $179-$199,  were sold out within the hour.]  This is not right; theatre was meant to be for the  enjoyment and edification of the community.  Now, productions that are whipped into a frenzy by the media are only for the very rich.  We have lost our way

Accompanied by lots of thunder, blown umbrellas and racing people over the sidewalk.  Cabs must be made of sugar, they all disappear in the rain as if melted away.

One of the unexpected discoveries… walking along and suddenly there is a trove of history at your feet.

Anne Kadet – WSJ -[thank you to reader AdT for forwarding this!!]

“Last week, while shopping at a tiny produce market on Mott Street, Giselle Isaac found a crazy bargain: fresh ginger for 50 cents a pound.  She promptly stuffed a plastic bag to bursting with the pungent root….  Ms. Issac… lives way up…in the Bronx but she is one of many New Yorkers who frequent Chinatown for fruits and vegetables.  ‘..Fresher… and way cheaper.’

[The author -Anne Kadet-says she has never given Chinatown produce markets a chance, assuming the cheap prices were because the selection is all C-grade…’ She tours the markets with an economic botanist who has spent more than a decade researching the community’s produce supply chain.  She discovers that Chinatown’s 80 plus produce markets are cheap because they are connected to a we of small farms and wholesalers that operate independently of the network supplying most mainstream supermarket.  Chinatown’s green grocers…buy their stock from a handful of small wholesalers operating from tiny warehouses right in the neighborhood.  Because the wholesalers are in Chinatown, they can deliver fresh produce several times a day, eliminating the need for retailers to maintain storage space or refrigeration…

Indeed, Chinatown’s green grocers make Costco look like Dean & DeLuca. Some are mere sidewalk stands renting space in front of a nail salon or a drugstore.

Shelves are typically made of plywood and lined with newsprint; prices are hastily marked on strips of cardboard. Shoeboxes serve as cash registers. The scales are still analogue, and good luck using a credit card.

All this translates into low overhead for the retailers—and low prices for shoppers. The typical Chinatown produce markup is just 10% to 12% over wholesale, said Wellington Chen, executive director of the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corp.

The markets, Mr. Chen said, further reduce prices by negotiating bulk discounts from wholesalers. “They chip in together and split a truckload,” he said.

Ms. Imbruce introduced me to two of her favorite destinations: the 40-foot sidewalk fruit stand on Mulberry Street just south of Canal Street, and the vegetable stores on Mott between Grand and Hester streets.

I made a little chart to compare prices with my neighborhood Key Food. In almost every case, Chinatown’s prices were less than half what I would pay at the supermarket. Among the bargains: broccoli for 85 cents a pound, $1 each for pomegranates, oranges for a quarter.

After 5 p.m., impromptu vendors haul cartons of cauliflower and cherries from graffiti-covered vans out to the sidewalk, hoping to sell excess inventory before day’s end. I saw just-ripe bananas selling for 50 cents a pound.

Some of the best bargains can be found on day-old produce, at the sidewalk stands on Forsyth Street in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge. Here, $8 buys a 20-pound box of mangos.

Bargains also vary from day-to-day. On Monday, the market was flooded with cartons of fresh raspberries for a buck each.

For Ms. Imbruce, the fascination isn’t the low prices but the incredible variety—more than 200 fruits and vegetables including jack fruit, fuzzy squash and her favorite, baby Shanghai Choy. Where does it come from?

Rather than contracting with large, industrial farms, it turns out, Chinatown’s wholesalers often buy from small, family farms specializing in Asian vegetables, including backyard “home gardens” in south Florida, and oxen-plowed plots in central Honduras.

Ms. Imbruce knows shoppers often equate low prices with exploitation, but that isn’t what she saw on the more than 75 farms she visited. The farmers, she said, were pleased to be growing for the Chinatown wholesalers because they could cultivate an array of crops, leading to economic and agronomic stability.

“Some said it was the best situation they’d had in a long time,” she said.

That is reassuring, but my favorite part of shopping in Chinatown is the adventure. I bought a single cherry from a sidewalk vendor selling Bings for a quarter. I got a kick out of the Asian clerk who told me the leafy green choy I asked about was “Chinese lettuce.” I bought spiky dragon fruit and woolly rambutan that served as scary additions to my fruit bowl.

“It’s just a fun, happy place to go,” said Ms. Imbruce. “And it’s always bustling.”

Write to Anne Kadet at Anne.Kadet@wsj.com

 

‘Suddenly Last Summer was written by Tennessee Williams not Edward Albee’

–of course it is, thank you for pointing out the apparent mistake.

-the discussion of this play came up in the class on Albee, is what I meant to convey.

In acting, I have these ‘ah-ha’ moments.  They arrive because I have neither a background in English literature nor Theatre.  The phrase ‘Suddenly Last Summer’, was well-known to me, but had no depth.  Took  the ‘work/play’ apart in a class with Austin Pendleton in discussion about the playwright Edward Albee.  I had never seen the movie or the stage production.  I am not sure I would have gotten the full impact without all the interpretations as lead by AP.  This is what makes theatre so vibrant.  Subjects of a taboo nature are brought forth for dissection.

 

Reading a new book written and published by a friend, she had a quote in the story she said everyone knew: ‘Revenge is like taking rat poison yourself and waiting for the other person to die’.

Went on-line to see if I could find an attribution.  Could not.  But read a lot of interesting quotes on revenge.  The one that came the closest to her quote was: ‘not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die’.

But these caught my eye:

Revenge is possible, only if you spare the enemy – Raheel Farooq

“I want revenge, but I don’t want to screw up my karma.”
― Susane Colasanti, Take Me There

If I ask God to punish my enemy with vengeful prayers,
then He is fair to allow the enemy to do the same for me.”
― Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

Walking along 14th Street with K after a jazz concert at the  Scandinavian House, to a West Village restaurant, on a hot night, I called for a stop to buy a bottle of water. Right outside the deli was an ice bath with bottles standing up to their necks in ‘cool’.  As I turn to enter the shop, a panhandler calls to me for a ‘little something’.  My response is, ‘Would you like a bottle of water?’  His size is large and he is far more bundled up than is called for by the weather and my assumption is that he must be ‘hot’.  ‘No water,’ he says, ‘I’ll have a soda.’  ‘I don’t buy sodas, for myself or anyone,’ I respond.  ‘But that is what I want.’ he retorts.  ‘Sodas give you diabetes and other dread diseases, would be pleased to buy you a water,’ I say with a feeling that I am not reaching him.  ‘No thanks.’ he says.  ‘You sure?’ I ask.  ‘Yup.’ he replies.

I grab a water, enter the store and pay for the water.  $1.25.  ‘Offered the guy outside one, but he didn’t want it.’ I say, expecting no response, just have this impulse.  No response comes but when I come back outside the panhandler says ‘What did he say about me?’  ‘He didn’t say anything,’ I say, ‘I told him I wanted to buy you a water, but you said no.’  I join K and we walk away.