quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

http://www.hellohenry.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/jbflag.jpg

black flag logo will no doubt outlive all memory of the band

xp to myself: heh ok i was just making fun of her name, looking at other bylines it looks like she (?) is a p basic city beat reporter mostly

kind of tangentially related but it always seems college profs and now, nyt writers have the weirdest names

It's an amazing name tbh.

and republican senators

the worst style writers have these irritating vaguely european names like george gurley and guy trebay

I guess maybe I don't "get" the Park Slope Food Co-op but what's the idea here? Why not just pay for delivery from Whole Foods if you're not going to actually take part in the ethos that is supposed to define a co-op? I mean if you're paying someone to do it anyway it's probably not less cost-effective (although I guess the implication is that nannies are on salary anyway and aren't getting extra comp to do this task).

oh the coop is more than a supermarket

A girl I went to HS with posts about her shifts there all the time. It's really boring and I'd just hide her but she posts pics of her funny looking kid wearing ridiculous outfits that make me laugh.

^^ half the reason of being friends with ex-schoolmates who have kids

More money quotes at the end:
Jeremie Delon, 31, an on-again, off-again member, admitted to taking some pleasure from the thought that co-op members might sometimes misbehave.

Mr. Delon said he had dropped out of the co-op five years ago, after a woman yelled at him for leaving his cart in the checkout line while he went back for an item he had forgotten (another violation of co-op rules). He rejoined recently after becoming a father.

He said the co-op had asked for a birth certificate as proof of the baby’s existence, and was now chasing down the baby’s mother, demanding that she join and put in her time, because all adult members of a household are required to work shifts.

“I’m a punk rocker at heart, so rules are tough for me,” Mr. Delon said. “Sometimes I ask myself if the co-op is really worth it.”

Some members conceded that having the nanny do the work was tempting. “In my fantasy, I’d have my nanny cover my shift,” Sarah Rivkin, 39, said. But she added that she knew that would be “inappropriate.”

Anyway, she said she would be too intimidated. A friend of hers had married a Cuban immigrant, who summed up why Ms. Rivkin felt that way.

“His assessment of the co-op is that the co-op is worse than socialism,” she said. “Because at least in a socialist country, if you know the right people, you can get out of it.”

i was at the co-op market today and a member ahead of me spent like 20 bucks and got 16 cents of their purchase. actually i don't remember what they spent. something around 20 bucks. they had a bunch of stuff. anyway i'm never joining cuz the people annoy me too much. the members. not the people who work there. although some of them too.

i feel like i read so much about how terrible the co-op is and nothing about the mysterious people who are such sticklers about the rules

'i know a cuban.' --ms rivkin

“In my fantasy, I’d have my nanny cover my shift,” Sarah Rivkin, 39, said. But she added that she knew that would be “inappropriate.”

Wait, so the fantasy wasn't that she would be able to have a nanny, but that her nanny would cover her shift.

I'm going to be permanently o_O about the Cuban socialism comment

kinda sucks when members are working too cuz they are so slow and look dazed. i kinda wish they had their nannies doing it instead.

As a cuban immigrant, he clearly has perspective on life. I mean it's not like he might have been a member of a wealthy, spoiled elite or anything.

kinda sucks when members are working too cuz they are so slow and look dazed. i kinda wish they had their nannies doing it instead.

― scott seward, Tuesday, June 21, 2011 2:05 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was at a friends last night who had just come from the coop and she was complaining abt how the guy whos job it is to tell you which checkout counter to go to was p much incapable of identifying available counters

i was at the co-op market today and a member ahead of me spent like 20 bucks and got 16 cents of their purchase. actually i don't remember what they spent. something around 20 bucks. they had a bunch of stuff. anyway i'm never joining cuz the people annoy me too much. the members. not the people who work there. although some of them too.

― scott seward, Tuesday, June 21, 2011 2:03 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pk slope coop is kinda unique in that you have to me a member to shop there and it does actually have good prices/selection - but id never join cause fuck working at a supermarket just have access to cheap kale

people who join co-ops and don't want to do the work can blow me a million times.

that market is the only place in town where i get visibly agitated. it can be hard. the customers are very very oblivious to their surroundings. people are constantly knocking into me or not seeing me trying to get around them as they have long conversations in the middle of aisles. but i like the stuff there. even if 3/4 of the surrounding "community" could never afford to shop there very often.

well also it isn't that hard to have access to cheap vege in CA so whatever, you NYers are just lost causes.

A better solution to the shift problem would be for members to pool their money and use it toward bringing 'perma-shift-workers' to take over all of the shifts -- a far more efficient way to manage the work. The "perma-shifters" could be brought in from outside the co-op membership -- say, for example, from nearby low-income communities, and they ccould be compensated with "hourly shift compensation fees" in exchange for their work.

its true vegetables are less expensive in california

do you want to hear something weird and sad?

yes

YEAH!

or maybe its just sad. or maybe its...i dunno, anyway:

at the market they used to sell these big glass bottles of local milk and they stopped selling them there because people were coming in and buying them with food stamps and then going into the alley and dumping the milk and going back in the store to get the $2.50 deposit for the milk.

that is sad

sad but . . . creative

those people should be working on wall street

yes! that's the combo i was looking for.

x-post

Wait, there was $2.50 bottle deposit?

~economics~

those people should be working on wall street

― mh, Tuesday, June 21, 2011 2:18 PM Bookmark

food stamp arbitrage

I mean wait, couldn't they just sell the milk to some co-op member at cost instead, like Wynona Ryder with her gas card in that shitty movie?

yeah the deposit was big cuz the bottles were huge or whatever. great bottles.

that's what you get for being super-restrictive about how food stamps can be spent

way to go, legislatures

hey you yuppie lady yeah over here a minute in this ally, wanna buy some artisanal milk

i think the people's pint growler bottles are $2.50 deposit too. just around the corner. also nice bottles.

http://beergeekdude.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/p_2048_1536_42D0F9AC-1F31-4E32-A680-C2BFAFF899A2.jpeg

IT IS CALLED REALITY BITES DAMMIT

haha erica i knew you'd take care of that for me <3

;)

I speaketh not its name

guy who owns the people's pint is so locavore that he actually doesn't like the idea of people driving to his restaurant. ideally its for local people who walk or bike there.

does he screen the customers or what? that seems... spiteful, somehow.

park around the corner imo