The Park Bench

You Can't Feed Your Family for $99 a Week

I saw this "$99 a week" stuff featured on Yahoo, which has this glitzy celeb gossip tips sort of blog called Shine, but -- it's not realistic.

They must not live in New York City, and must not have the food prices we have. I was talking to a friend online who said his peaches in Alabama were 89 cents a pound; here at Gristede's they are $2.89 a pound. And they seem sort of weather-spoiled.

Still, even if you can't feed your family for $99 a week, you could try for, say, $150 a week perhaps?

Today for our family of three we spent $23 to buy, among a number of meal ingredients, the ingredients for this sweet 'n sour chicken recipe -- well, kinda-sorta. Take out all the expenso stuff like the chili sauce, the plum sauce, white pepper, oyster sauce and substitute soy sauce and ginger we already had, and some plain White Rose Apple Cider vinegar from the store. Corn starch no longer seems to come cheap in the box anymore but was a whopping $1.99 in this little jar like it was imported talc from ancient Mesopotamia or something. What's up with that?!

My daughter whipped up a really good version of this chicken dish with at least one serving still left over for lunch, and the entire $23 wasn't even all spent on that, since I also got yoghurt for breakfast and some Shop-rite tuna whole (why not just chunk it yourself and save money?) to try to make some casserole up with the kosher noodles I got for 99 cents on sale yesterday (also got kosher rye bread for 99 cents, too). 

Oh, and guess what! Once again, the idea that our store is "the most expensive place in the universe" -- foiled again. Even if I were to order this starch from a corn meal state I'd pay $2.19 without even the shipping. That Hoover's fine ground corn meal looks promising, eh?

Moving from All to All

 

We have a kind of urban legend here at Waterside that we're a hostage audience and the prices in the easily-accessible grocery store here are higher than they are "downtown" in the stores along E. 23rd Street and 1st Avenue.

I have to say I've long believed in this myth, but time again again, I'm proven wrong. In fact, I've been burned, time and again! I'll *swear* that the Odwalla is more expensive at our Gristede's, when I see it for $3.99 at the Walgreen's drug store on First Avenue, and then I get home, and whoops, it's down to $3.49 at the Gristede's. I will absolutely swear that the Tostito Lime chips that I can't live without are cheaper at $3.89 at the Morton Williams and then whoops -- it really is only $3.79 at our Gristede's.

OK, I said today. Ima beat this thing. Surely the detergent at the CVS will be less (so much at CVS *isn't* less, you know? Except the Coke but who wants to lug it home?). So *first* I checked the All clear and saw it was $8.99 for the jug I usually buy, the 2x concentration. I like to get All because it is free of extra chemicals I guess, and I'm allergic to Tide and others with harsh chemicals.

Headed over to the CVS on E. 23rd and -- yessss! It was only $7.49 for the same bottle. Finally, a score! I was so excited I...left it in the store after buying it, and a bunch of school stuff. Back up on the plaza, I realize I don't have it -- no rest for the weary, back I go. Then to the Gristede's again -- and now I cast a weather eye on the All and...whoops, burned again. The *60 ounce* bottle at Gristede's at $8.99 is .149 per ounce...the same price as the pro-rated *50 ounce* bottle at the CVS for $7.49.

You would think I'd get better at this after 23 years. I'm reminded of Randall Jarrell, "That's all. I'm old":

Where Are the Evil College Kids From Hell?

Stuyvesant Oval by Knile.

Like a lot of us, I read the story in New York Press about how these college kids were invading Stuy, and even getting 2 months' free rent and coupons for $500 and turning the Oval into a beach with sun-tanners, dope-smokers and even dog-walkers.

Looking out over Waterside Plaza, and not seeing anything much happening out on the baking tiles except two helicoptering moms with two summer babies squalling (don't worry, they will finally fall asleep this winter) and an elderly women tanning herself and smoking cigarettes who had no intention, ever, in her life, of dying of cancer....

...I realized I had to go where the party was.

Heading over to Stuy, I skirted the edges of what the kids call "the white projects". Traipsing through what our old nanny Larissa used to call belyochiy park (Squirrel Park) in Cooper, I caught up with...an old lady struggling along with her walker and a home attendant in tow. She didn't even have a transistor tuned to a classical station.

Was I too late?

Six-Pack of Coke only $3.00

OK. The Coke is 2 for $6.00 at the Gristede's -- stock up.

Because that means, they're likely going to raise the price much higher than it's been, which has been, oh, $3.49 or even $3.69 I think.

I may give up Diet Coke because I hear it's bad for you. On the other hand, I may not, because in the end, we're all going to die anyway and I see no reason to try to add 2 hours and 17 minutes of my life by not drinking Diet Coke.

They don't have the Lime Diet Coke anymore at the Gristede's which has been unacceptable, but I guess it doesn't sell.

@AnnCurry, How About Just *One* Woman's Rights?

Whenever I see these sort of blanket calls to solve global problems by mouthing global platitudes, I wince. Like this one by television journalist Ann Curry, where she writes, "@libbey Wouldn't it be something if women in America spoke up for equality for women everywhere? The world would change."

Following the herd, we're supposed to go to the Half the Sky link and...consume. Watch, click, watch, read.

Then we are to, er. somehow "speak up for equality for women everywhere". How? Ok, I'm for equality for women everywhere. Done. *Looks around*. Did anything change? Oh, I know she means well, and it's all good, raising awareness.

To be sure, @AnnCurry's answer to @libbey came in response in fact to Nicholas Kristof in fact writing about one woman in Pakistan. But he doesn't provide any suggestions for actions...nor do the people commenting on his column who lurch around from the topic of health care and the need to "educate" people in the U.S. about it, and trying to link this up with the problem of the feudal/tribal male-dominated culture of Pakistan. No concrete remedies here, just a lot of ranting, raving and...reading.

I guess I prefer trying to focus on more concrete cases and issues, however. For example, right now in Khartoum, there's a woman, Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein -- a former UN employee, as it happens -- who was jailed for daring to wear pants in an Islamic society where that is heavily discouraged. She faces 40 lashes of the whip for this bravery. Amnesty International has taken up the case -- but seems to insist that you first register with their site before they'll give you information and let you take part in an action on the case.

So how about going to the Government of Sudan's website yourself directly, which actually has a handy complaint form or contact the Minister of Justice or write the president or ministers on e-mail and politely express your protest against jailing a woman for what she decides to wear in public.

And I will research what could be specifically done for Mukhtar Mai besides merely being inspired about her and reading about her...until she is jailed or shot like other women leaders in Pakistan...

OK What's Up With This Supermarket Song

A simpler early version with a lot less show-boating...

I'll confess I may have been living under a rock because I never heard of Jason Mraz although I did hear this song in the supermarket, oh, only about 5,427 times before I realized wait...this isn't James Blunt, this isn't Bobby McFerrin, this is somebody else (say wouldn't those two or three songs make a good mash-up hehe).

So I then looked it up and I can see the appeal. First, the Hootie and the Blowfish black and white thing -- it's rare that you find black and white people making music together unless they are in an old staged John Cougar Mellencamp video named Paper in Fire from MTV in the 1980s. Then, there's the sort of salt-'n-pepper thing where the blandness of white people's dippy Randy Newman James Taylor sort of goofy romantic lyrics are mixed with black people's Jamaican beat -- and that cool, sharp, brisk gesture that the drummer makes when he makes a downbeat on the djeme or silences the cymbal.

What You Can Get For Only $759 In NYC

Loren Feldman alone is worth the price of the ticket.

I wish I had $759. Then I could do two things:

1) Pay $200 to go to The Nation event about what will become of the news media (hint: what will become of it  is that we will need to all pay $200 to keep it going).

"Toni Morrison, Tony Kushner, Walter Mosley, Dan Rather, Jane Mayer and Marcy Wheeler are helping to ensure The Nation's future."

Like The New Yorker and The Economist, I buy the Nation on a case-by-case basis. And like a lot of freeloaders on the Internet, I read the emails and the articles on the website for free. So now I'm supposed to make up for that with a $200 event, but it's just beyond me. There needs to be a way of leaving $5 really easily in a tip jar by first buying a monthly wallet of $50 that I spend on my blog and mainstream media reading. Why doesn't somebody invent that.

2) Pay $559 for the early-bird ticket within the next 1d 12h 52m to go to The Audience which is a high-powered new-media event you find out about by being a Facebook friend of @1938Media, one of the most witty and insightful dudes scorning social media you will find on...social media lol. (Hint: and the way they pay for all the freeness on social media is by $659 events like this one LOL).

That's news media on the first one, and new media on the second one, see, they dropped the "s," it was taking up too much space on Twitter. Maybe it's become new media only seems to have one piece of news on it so far, which is "Hello, we are new media and boy are we cool".

So-So Street Fair in Jubfor

 

Photo (c) by Hals

So there we were walking along just below 14th Street in that neighborhood that is called...uh...what *do* they call that area? You know, where there's the Strand and Grace Church and some crappy pizza places and that one shoe repair store remaining for 50 miles and that guy's bagel shop that used to have the Internet but doesn't anymore? You know that area, right? Let's call it "Jubfor," the "Jumble Below Fourteenth Street" until somebody corrects me.

I didn't catch the name of the organizers, but it was an exact cookie-cutter stamp of every single other street fair we've seen for years. The funnel cakes. The momo caps. The $1.00 Thai food that turns out to be only a $1.00 because it's microscopic. The Pashnina scarves. And the New York State Lottery with a roulette wheel. Wait, is that *legal*? That, and the Kettle Cooked Corn were the most popular booths, but you know, something is missing. I tried to think what it was as I drank the fresh-squeezed lemonade that I watched the guy make out of a huge containor of ice and liquid, and predictably, it gave me stomach cramps about five minutes later.

Used to be, street fairs had more "character" and weren't all identical. There'd be somebody with funky little antiques or used books, real finds. Somebody else would have homemade granola cookies. Yet another person would have unique art made out of old pieces of broken pottery. Your hardware store might come out and sell flashlights. The whole reason you'd go is because the off-brand remainder socks with the minor flaws, 6 for only $1.00, and who would notice the flaws?

September 15 Elections: Vote for Yassky as Comptroller

 
David Yassky is running for NYC Comptroller.

September 15 will be election, and if you are like me, you're getting mighty sick not only of all the robo-calls, but the mounds of junk mail.

I think nowadays, like a lot of people voting, I pay more attention to email and Facebook than junkmail which aggravates me. So I pay attention to the Freelancer's Union e-mails, which say:

"Christine Quinn has been a strong ally for independent workers, championing our Unincorporated Business Tax proposal, which was just signed into law, and she will continue to fight for us to meet the needs of freelancers."

She's in the Murray Hill area.

In our area, a candidate who also supported reducing the harsh impact of the Unincorporated Business Tax on freelancers and home workers was David Yassky.

Says the Freelancers' Union:

"We’ve endorsed David Yassky for Comptroller for all that he has done—like tax reform—and all that he will do, like creating unemployment protection for freelancers."

The flyers are geting bigger and more colorful and glossy and more frantic about the "hate" in "negative campaigns" of the other guy (itself a kind of hate) -- and the cost in designing and producing and mailing it would likely be enough to put some people without health insurance like me on at least some minimal plan...

What Used To Be Here?

Mapping Project #3 from nicholas fraser on Vimeo.

Walking over on E. 14th Street across from the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary I came across a guy who was methodically sticking up little post-its on the wall of what looked like an abandoned or closed store-front painted in lime green.

Somehow, I could just tell that this was one of those "art happening" conceptual things, ya know?

I went up and peered closer and saw the notices, which had little stock sayings like "What used to be here" or "I went to the owner's funeral".

These were stories that you were supposed to select and mail or email to this artist, who is collecting ephemera of closed sites. His name is Nicholas Fraser and we discussed some closed and seemingly closed in the area and he pointed me to his website. If you find an empty storefront in this area or find his art work/installation on E. 14th and 2nd, you can write [email protected] with your thoughts.

He handed me one of the cards, that said, "Did you leave your keys in your apartment?" -- because that would be the story that would connect to the storefronts in one of two ways, I surmised -- either you'd get to know the guy downstairs who ran the candy store so well that you'd leave him your keys in case you ever lost yours or locked them inside OR he would run a hardware or stationery store that would have a locksmith that could come and pry open your door for you.