Life in the Big City these cold cold days consists mostly of scurrying from home to work and work to home again, with an occasional scurry around the corner to the bodega for bread or a 22-ounce alcoholic beverage, or if I am feeling brave or especially needy I will go the few extra blocks to the local grocery store or a bar.
Today fell into the needy classification: it being Sunday I felt it was essential to get out to the grocery store to buy some supplies for the coming week. And I was out of coffee.
Grocery stores in New York City are frequent, tiny, and over-priced. It takes a certain amount of stamina to prepare yourself for the maze of grocery carts and small children and deadlocks nearly as fearsome as those you can find on the FDR. And don't forget we are dealing with the typical New Yorker sensibility of "me first" and "Oh, am I in your way? Well f'uck you." Now, living on the lower east side, grocery stores are not as over-priced as in many other areas of Manhattan. However, these are still important pricing choices to be made. Equally close to me are two different grocery stores: Key Foods (= white people) and Fine Fare (= not-white people). At Fine Fare you can find some decidedly cheaper groceries and decidedly more interesting groceries (my cream cheese is Tropical Queso Cream) but the amount of mental preparation involved can be practically insurmountable at times. Rather than navigating around hipster couples trying to decide which brand of tofu is better, one may find oneself helplessly waiting for a toothless old woman(?) to stop shouting and dancing in the middle of an aisle. Trust me, saying "excuse me" in these instances is utterly futile.
Today, due to the aforementioned lack of coffee, I decided to go to Fine Fare. Fine Fare has an amazing selection of cheap and delicious Espresso Coffee, which is just like regular coffee only much stronger. This is something that not-white people apparently know all about and always drink. One of these coffees goes so far as to declare itself "the Latino style coffee" or something of that sort. I am afraid to buy this brand because I am afraid that a Latino person will see me carrying it and say, "this is not for you" and take it away.
As I had been dangerously low on coffee all week long, I had been planning for a week to go to Fine Fare this weekend. I woke up this morning with a cold and that peculiar sense of floating confusion that always accompanies illness for me, and so it seemed a particularly ill-fated day for the madness known as grocery shopping. However, not going was simply out of the question. I mean, there was NO COFFEE in the apartment. So I bundled myself up well with a hat and scarf and a thick layer of impenetrability and set out for the grocery store.
Luckily, Fine Fare was relatively uneventful today. The worst part was the checkout. The guy ahead of me in line refused to bag his own groceries, so the cashier had to do it, and she was disgruntled about having to do it, so she bagged in slow motion. I have never seen slower bagging. I'm sure Fine Fare employees must be some of the poorest paid in the world, so I say cheers to her. Her bagging was so slow that eventually the guy behind me in line (who was plagued by a little boy who kept putting all the junk food he wanted into the cart) said to me "What happened? What's taking so long?" to which I replied, "She's bagging his groceries." He said "Yeah but it's taking a REALLY LONG TIME" and I said "Yes it is."
To illustrate the dangers of trying to do anything fun this time of year, I will tell a story from last Sunday. I had a couple of friends visiting from upstate, and they wanted to go to Chinatown, which is a relatively short walk from my apartment. It was snowing out, but warmer than it had been in weeks. This resulted in sidewalks covered in slush and a gigantic puddle at every intersection. We slid and sloshed our way to Chinatown. As we walked the streets of Chinatown shopping for cheap hilarious items (which is what one does in Chinatown) a remarkable mishap befell one of my friends. The sidewalks in this area were not only slushy but also narrow, sloped, and crowded. We were passing by an outside stand where the owner's car was parked across from the stand and there were tree branches (lotus branches?) propped up against the car for sale. My friend slipped, slid into and under the car, and knocked over a few of the tree branches, one of which fell into his face and sent his glasses flying. Now really, when faced with dangers of this proportion, who would not rather spend an afternoon tucked into bed with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate (with perhaps a dash of peppermint schnapps in it)?
And now my friends, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll do just that.
