Grocery Shopping

Sometimes when I grocery shop in New York I feel like I'm in a third world country. It may sound dramatic, but honestly, it's this weird m'elange of oddities that I never came to expect from a grocery store before I moved here. Not unlike Soviet Russia, there's only one brand of everything. Back home, if I wanted teriyaki sauce I could choose from a practically endless assortment of teriyaki sauces with various supplementary flavors like pineapple, rosemary, or in some more extravagant cases: cinnamon. I grew to prefer Mr. Yoshida's teriyaki sauce above all others. But nay, in Bay Ridge there is only one brand of teriyaki sauce. The name is unmemorable, but it comes in a little bottle with the same kind of lid as those fruit drinks we drank as kids; you know, the ones that were shaped like barrels and filled with that "fruit drink" that was loaded with sugar and had no nutritional value.

Another reason I feel like I'm in Mother Russia whenever I go to the grocery store is the music. They're always playing songs that were really popular for about five minutes 15 years ago like "Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith. Incidentally, has anyone ever noticed that that song is 18 minutes long, 17 minutes of which are chorus. I don't even know how that's possible, but I guess that's why they're rich and famous, and I'm just rich.

Editorial Note: That last statement is funny because I'm not rich at all.

It's either 15 year old Top 40 or popular songs from the 90s redone by foreign artists. I can honestly say that I have now heard "Unbreak My Heart" in Korean more than one time. Every time it plays I see all the elderly Korean woman swaying a little and muttering the words quietly to themselves. Note to self: elderly Korean women love Toni Braxton.

{Which reminds me of something somewhat unrelated but hilarious none the same. The week before Thanksgiving I was walking through Food Town when "My Heart Will Go On" came on in the store. As I walked around I noticed one middle-aged woman singing along, "eh, there's bound to be someone in every grocery store whenever this song comes on" I said to myself. Then I saw another woman not shortly after singing along as well. Then another, then another... then another. Then a middle-aged man with a mustache who, under different circumstances, might start a fight with me in a bar because I'm such a pretty man. I may have told this story in a previous update, but it had to be retold because it was just too weird. It was like being in the alternate, European music video for "My Heart Will Go On." Alternate European versions of music videos are always better--sometimes there's nudity and un-bleeped swearing.}

I got to thinking, as I walked toward the checkout counter, what will it be like when I go back to a grocery store in the West. Will I just go nuts and buy 14 varieties of Hungry-Man dinners, just because I can? Probably. Or maybe I'll buy my groceries at the in-store pharmacy, because they have those in Seattle, and they have to ring you up--even though they went to Pharmacy School for 6 years and hate people who make them ring groceries. Or maybe I'll just get drunk and push a cart around the giant aisles until they kick me out.

Here the aisles are so small and cramped, the carts are so tiny, and yet to defy logic itself the checkout lines are always enormous. I just, I don't understand how it's possible. Perhaps it's some kind of backwards effort on the part of the Bay Ridge City Council to build community or something. I've definitely made conversation with people in line before, even though this is New York and strangers are categorically, statistically adverse to talking to each other. I let a guy use my Food Town card the other day. Once, a man saw that I only had one item and let me go ahead of him in line. We had a conversation about I don't even know what, and for a second I forgot where I was, and everything I'd come to understand about New Yorkers turning themselves off to human contact as a survival instinct.

Editorial Note: Today I found a woman's wallet sitting forgotten on the counter. She was still in line so I walked it over to her. It took me three times, saying "Excuse me, Ma'am" to get her attention so I could give her back her very expensive wallet with about 14 credit cards in it. That's just how people are here, Mike has a good story about ignoring a blind man because it's been ingrained in us that everyone we don't know who approaches us is trying to scam us in some way. Hey, look at that I said "us" and "we" in regards to people in New York. That's probably significant somehow.

Today, I witnessed another man let the person behind him with one item go ahead of him. I know this is common grocery store etiquette, but I guess I just appreciated it more here because you don't see as many acts of simple courtesy. Everyone's running around all the time, head down, trying to get where they're going without getting swept away. And you never know where they're going, any of them, and it boggles your mind to think about how all these people all have their own destinations, and their own lives, and their own errands to run.

I have no insight on where all these people are going, but I'll tell you where they're not going. They're not going home to cook something with Mr. Yoshida's Teriyaki sauce, because you can't fucking find it anywhere in New York.