East Side, West Side, All Around The Town

I just read in the Observer that the Whole Foods supermarks are opening a huge three level store in Union Sq in the ole Bradlees space.. Whoo hoo as a foodie am real happy about this..!

Indeed! Here I sit by my computer munching on my Water Buffalo Milk Yogurt (with an organic sliced banana), thinking "Do we really need another Whole Foods Store in the city? I know they're good, but they're so coporate, sorta like Starbucks.

I DO hear ya.. but its real nice to see ANY store in what has been an empty space for so long.. especially a 'useful' store...

Corporate or not, I can't stop loving whole foods! I walk in and am like a kid in a candy store. It's really quite ridiculous, but I just adore shopping there.

**The Fabulous Miss Helen Jones**

I would rather see Bradlees back. So many bargains and not quite as low quality merch as K-mart. Garden of Eden is much friendlier than Whole Foods whose organic produce is overpriced. But I guess its better than having another movie multi-plex or Disney outlet, I guess.

Now CNN and AP have gone and *discovered* Williamsburg!

CNN

That's like discovering french kissing.

Anyone who has ever been to the original Whole Foods in Austin, TX would join me in spitting on the baby vegetables for sale in these superstore aberrations. There it was all about buying in bulk: flour, rice and granola scooped from large bins yourself, cheap prices, and best of all, the ability to sample furiously before you bought. Here you would be shot on sight if so much as a grape goes in your mouth before it's paid for.
For me, it's the Essex Market and good ole Western Beef!

And as for Williamsburg, isn't it full of hired actors dressed in old-fashioned clothes pretending to do quaint outdated things? Oh... that's the one in Virginia?

Three and a half years ago, when the Wholefoods store was opening on 7th Ave. and 25th St. I sent them a resume. On my cover letter I informed them that I was transgendered. They called me in for an interview, which I had to rush to from Healthy Pleasures, where I was then working. They wouldn't give me any extra time to get there. When I got there everyone I encountered was quite rude to me. There was a really rotten attitude among those folks. At that time, I was working for Healthy Pleasures, as a cashier. Healthy Pleasures was run by very sadistic people who were extremely mean to their workers. Yet I gladly returned there to work rather than at Wholefoods. I have since cringed every time some one gushes about Wholefoods, and have never once shopped there.

Strawberry Fields on Bleecker St. and Lifethyme on 6st Ave. (between 8th and 9th) supply me with decent prices on good produce. They are also very friendly and treat me like a person.

I've never understood the thing about 'organic'
produce, or anything else, costing twice as much as non-organic produce. What's the point of eating healthy if you don't have enough cash left to pay your phone bill? I mean if the growers aren't using all sorts of pesticides and fertilizer shouldn't that mean their costs are less, and subsequently the price tag at retail should be less? Total scam.

The thing about organic is that it costs more because the growers aren't able to produce it in the same volume as the big companies that do use pesitcides. But of course they use fertilizers, just not ones that have all kinds of chems in 'em to stimulate growth and so forth.

True organic farming is no scam, but apparently there are a lof of producers out there billing their foodstuffs as organic while still using pesticides and chems and whatnot. There's apparently a grey legal line between what we think of as "organic" and what the FDA considers "organic". Shop wisely.

As for the high costs of eating right...well, it is *your* body, and what you put in it you're going to be. Just eat less if it pinches your purse; everyone can stand to lose a little weight, it's almost Summer.

It's not a scam, just capitalism's supply and demand in motion. Unprocessed food like brown rice always cost more even though it should be cheaper to produce. If people would just eat better healthy food would be cheaper.

People are easily fooled by marketing. They think Snapple is healthy because of marketing campaigns. It's not much different from Kool Aid. When I was a kid the "healthy" drink was Hi C because it was sugar water with a teaspoon of "REAL JUICE!". Now we have sugar water with "NO ARTIFICIAL COLORS OR FLAVORS!"

I admit Ioccasionally down a diet Snapple when I'm out, but when I'm home I just make a pitcher of real iced tea. It takes 5 minutes and it's so much better (and cheaper)

I don't eat.

talking of new healthy options in the hood... they are opening a new Dunkin donuts/Baskin Robins on First Av/12,13th... urgh thats all we need.... lord have mercy (on my thighs)..

I must admit that DD's coffee is surprisingly good for a fast food joint. Who knew?

And Missy, things like "instant" iced tea are concepts I just don't get. And bottled salad dressing. Salad dressing takes 15 seconds to make from scratch. 2 seconds more than it takes to unscrew the Wishbone's cap off. That's convenient?

'ear yer are... something to make you even more gobsmacked about the East Village!

MORE YUPPIE SCUM NYU dorms - a new TOWER block to be built Tomkins Sq
http://www.lockhartsteele.com/blog/archives/2004_04.shtml#000835

Have always thought that they should stick these students in the kind of areas that I lived in when I was a student (basically any no-go area for most folk as it was the only place we could afford)... eg there are some amazing empty lots in East New York... or Bronx or pockets of Harlem... make the NYU scum put their money into those areas... not areas where working people are struggling to afford to live in... doesn't make sense... bah!!
Think I have to give my pay check to Class war now.

Erasing Charas/El Bohio is one of the most overt racist acts by the city in recent years, regarding real estate. No one in the current administration probably is old enough to even remember that E. 9th Street was totally burnt out, a no man's land in the 1970's. It was the people behind El Bohio along with other homesteaders who actually took over the block and began to redevelop it. And it was Charas' commitment to keeping the building as a community center without big money backing that preserved its many community-based programs for so many years. There was theater, a film series, all sorts of classes in art, writing and marshal arts, all taught by and for people- and mostly young people- in the neighborhood. They pulled off endless projects with practically no budget. "I think some of the best things were when we decided a project would cost $75,000, but we did it with nothing." -Chino Garcia, Charas. This was all founded on a kind of community ethos imported from the island, an ethos of leadership and protection based on a drive to have the neighborhood be self-determining about the socio-cultural health of the people who live there. If NYU moves in it is nothing but a kind of ethnic cleansing capitalist-style. Horror.

Oh, and as for DD, they have a new outpost on E. Houston near Ave. B. I think they are like the Starbucks of the low-income zones.

Lex, with what everyone has heard about your oral massage talents, no one should be surprised that you have no time at all to actually EAT.

A steady diet of nose candy gives one that extra "jolt" of energy and no calories, darling! I mean, look at Mackenzie Phillips.

Do you think it's time the British tabloids got wind of my oral massage talents, Seven? (PR, PR sweetie). Maybe Prince Harry reads.