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January 22, 2005
Snow rhyme or reason.
Okay, it's snowing in Brooklyn. It's snowing quite heavily, and it's very cold. Right.
But such things are far from unknown in New York. We have a big snowstorm at least once or twice a year. Some winters we've had several.
So what explains the behavior of people who flock to the corner supermarket and stock up on food as if it were their last chance to eat before the apocalypse? The Donner Party, in their wildest fever dreams of abundance, would have shown more self-restraint.
I went to our small local grocery to buy a quart of milk, and the tiny place was crammed to paralysis with neighborhood families, mostly quite plump. They were wild-eyed, grabbing things I had a feeling they never would have dreamt of buying if it weren't snowing -- buckets of cottage cheese, enough frozen shrimp to cater a wedding reception, canned tomato paste by the half-dozen -- and their pushing carts choked the aisles.
I quickly realized that the supermarket was un-navigable. Horrifyingly, I was left with only one alternative:* Go to one of the other half-dozen places to buy food staples within a 3-block range of my house. For GOD'S SAKE, people! Every other storefront in Park Slope is a place to buy food! Granny will not starve, you have my word!
*Or I suppose I could just take my coffee black for a day, if necessary, but apparently that's the kind of sacrifice that could kill us all, leaving Park Slope strewn with the corpses of the starved, her streets piled high with withered bodies, dessicated skin tented over dry bones, half buried in drifting snow, with no one left to weep for them but the moaning wind.
Posted by EtherPundit at January 22, 2005 03:35 PM Category: Brooklyn & NYC , Personal stories