The amount of money generated over the word “organic’ over the last decade is insane. By far, the largest contributor to the ‘organic’ pot of gold is the hipster. These morons have eaten it up badly. They try to conceal it but they can’t hide their glow from me after entering a subway car with $900 worth of groceries in two brown paper Whole Foods bags. I just glance over, grin, and say to myself ”damn you’re a stupid fuck”. I mean, I always compare completely ridiculous hipster behavior to teenage behavior. Who else but a teenager could be sucked into something so easily like let’s say smoking cigarettes? It amazes me that all these ‘converted to organic’ people don’t realize that they’ve eaten mass produced, chemically sprayed and engineered fruits and veggies all their lives and they’re perfectly fine!
I’m telling you. I’m really really really close to venturing out and selling something absolutely useless and ridiculous to these mouth-breathing, rent raising, Brooklyn invading sheep. I truly believe there is a fortune to be made. I also believe finding the idea is not that hard either. Hummus flavored gum. Bacon-scented Converse shoelaces. Recycled sustainable Q-tips. Local dog food. Kharma-flavored natural sodas. Absinthe-based deodorant etc, etc.
Link – GothamistNY: ‘Organic” Label automatically means healthy.
this is what really fucking pisses me off, and i have a number of people telling me that im absolutely INSANE in thinking this, but ive seen it going on for a VERY long time now and my wallet has felt it…
Store Y opens up to Store X. Store Y is “organic” aka an organic fauxdega. Store X is your typical bodega. Store Y charges insane amounts of money for stupid shit causing store x to say, hey they are charging insane amounts of money for stupid shit let me try it to? BAM! you go from having a store on your corner where you can get cheap shit (im not talking about grocery shopping here for food, im talking staples like beer and cigs,etc). Now you have stores X & Y charging crazy amounts of money and one upping each other with really fucking stupid ass “local brooklyn beer”s and 18 dollar a pack American Spirits. NO FUCK YOU ASSHOLES! i hate having to travel further and further just to get my beer and smokes at a non moonface price.
okay, so maybe only stupid people smoke, whatever. it’s my guilty pleasure, but i hate how fauxdegas around here charge like 14 dollars a pack just cuz josh and megan get their american spirits for 14 dollars a pack at the organic fauxdegas, so now every bodegas is like hmmmm YES…. let’s charge as much as we can. HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE! it’s the same with beer, tho i dont buy any of those stupid beers with nothing more than some mollyjarsh photoshopped stickers stuck on a bunch of recycled bottles claiming to be local for 17 dollars a 6 back… but i have noticed that the second they come in and demand their artisinal beers that all the good shit is cleared out of the way for them!
sorry, had to vent.. i get a lot of flack for telling this economic reality to people who just flat out refuse to accept it.
*rob*
Just…THIS. Thank you, Rob.
I can’t agree more, and all I can do is add to it. I’ve watched a lot of places out here do the same exact thing. The goofballs walk in and demand that the store carry specialty cigarettes or vegan snacks or Jones Soda or whatever. If the store owner says “Sorry, but it just doesn’t sell,” then the Josh will stamp his widdle feet about how he’ll be forced to go elsewhere for his seaweed wraps. (The Meghan will pose and preen and wheedle “Couldn’t you do it for me?”, as if she’ll blow the guy if he says “yes”.) So long as the owner or manager says “no”, they’ll keep coming in, whining and pissing and moaning and telling everyone they know about how this store is soooooo run by haters.
If the manager says “yes”, though, that’s where the fun really begins. Half of the time, Josh and Meghan won’t come back at all once the owner/manager points out that he conceded to the little darlings. If they do, it’ll be to whine about carrying something else, telling the owner “I don’t want that any more.” With the other half? They’ll either claim that they found some mythical store down the way that sells the same items for much less, or they’ll snort “Well, I can get it cheaper online.”
Isn’t it 9 so dollars for a pack smokes in NYC anyways?
11-12 outside of manhattan, about 14 in manhattan. yeah i gotta quit.. but i get them most of them from someone at an army base for 8 and messenger dudes who bootleg them from out of state.
*rob*
ewww is it really up to 9 bucks for a pack of smokes out there? holey shit…
i love your site, but organic food is not a bad thing and you can buy it quite cheaply if you are not wasting your $$$ at Whole Paycheck…maybe you should study what the fuck Monsanto is doing to the food in our world and you might consider going organic. anyways, i fucking hate hipsters but i thought this particular rant was a bit to black and white, although i suppose that is what you do here. keep up the good work and maybe next time i am in NYC i will take a nice smelly organic dump in front of your house
serves you right for smoking
oh yeah, and people who move to areas where the rent is slight cheaper only to complain and whine waaaaaaaaaaaah waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah why isnt there a WHole Foods a block away from me waaaaaaaaaaah waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. bitch(o), shut the fuck up! the second whole foods comes in the rent gets jacked up hard, but i guess it’s people who already own overpriced taaaaahhhhhwnnnhaaaaussses (barf) who want that shit in their neighborhoods. wholefoods = the BIGGEST FUCKING SUPERMARKER RIPOFF THAT HAS EVER EXISTED! and then you get apologists who will say something stupid like, well you just dont know how to shop their sales. :-/ okay….
as if people have all fucking day to wander around whole foods looking for sales and comparing prices. the most disgusting place in the city, officially, is the whole foods on houston street on the LES.
*rob*
quote:
They try to conceal it but they can’t hide their glow from me after entering a subway car with $900 worth of groceries in two brown paper Whole Foods bags.
oh yeah, see this ALL the time on the R train.. and they set it on the dirty ass subway floor between their STD infested legs. :-/ half the times, i should just get up and snatch those bags and ill have dinner for a few days on their dime only to realize, barf.. it’s probably nothing worth eating anyway!
*rob*
Back in the Eighties, I had a roommate who could be described only as a proto-hipster. Obsessive knowledge of bands you’ve never heard of, gigantic collection of obscure comics, whining about how there weren’t enough gigs for up-and-coming deejays to go around, the works. At the time, I was desperate for a roommate, so I let him and his girlfriend move in because they were desperate for a place to stay. (I discovered later that he had become so obnoxious that his mother kicked him out of her house, but that’s a different story entirely.) I finally had to kick him out after three months for any number of stupidities all at once (leaving used condoms on the floor, assuming I could cover his share of the rent because he had to catch an Echo & the Bunnymen show, and inviting friends who literally pissed on the bathroom ceiling and then getting butthurt when I insisted that they clean it up, among other things), but the real clincher was food.
Both The Poof and his girlfriend were Whole Foods addicts, and on an aspiring deejay’s pay, that was one of the reasons why he couldn’t make his rent month after month. Worse, since they’d blow their cash on artisanal oatmeal bread and the like, they rapidly started depleting the groceries I’d bought for myself. His idea of fair and equitable food sharing was to cook up meals with my groceries while I was at work, and leave me the leftovers “because I wanted to share,” and buy shit he knew I wouldn’t eat and then claim that he’d made his contribution. (The final straw that got him kicked out was when he tore through a gallon of homemade spaghetti sauce I’d made for a dinner date because “there wasn’t anything else in the house that I wanted to eat.”) He’d constantly complain about the lack of organic and environmentally responsible (i.e. overpriced and crappy-tasting) food at the corner grocery store, but he didn’t have any problems with eating it when he wasn’t paying for it.
I didn’t know Special Edd was that old.
yea, having roommates in general sucks, it’s far worse when they are hipsters. that is some straight bullshit.
if it wasnt for these people, some of us normal people wouldnt NEED roommates! hahahaha. having roommates isnt a bad thing tho.
*rob*
sorry, i didnt mean to barf all over this thread like this, but you struck a cord with me with this topic. most of the time i can ignore them and do, but when it comes to simple things like grocery shopping and the thing that is most simple to human survival, EATING, it sets me off…
How are we, as a society to get people weened off big macs when now we mock people and make fun of those who can’t 15 dollar tomatos!?!
*rob*
(cant afford 15 dollar tomatos)
*rob*
tomatoes?
But it’s SOOO much better to buy ONLY organic and be starving than ***fat***
BTW Barbara Ehrenreich provides a convincing argument as to why the working poor are not skinny in her book Nickel and Dimed.
Fuck hipsters and FUCK their organic shit.
Wait, why should only hipsters be able to eat food not full of pesticides? Decent, healthy food is not a hipster issue, or it shouldn’t be.
The poster above is right–look into what monsanto and giant food and chemical corporations are doing to our food supply. Yeah, we were raised on this garbage, and we’re not dead yet, but people are getting cancer earlier and earlier.
Fuck whole foods – find a farmer and get your food from him. Localharvest.com. Grocery store packaged food is mostly made of commodity corn, soybeans and chemicals (made from corn and petroleum). The meat and dairy is pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. If you want to grow hairy breasts and die young, just keep eating factory farmed shit.
You know what, with these moonfaces turning the whole city into a lame ass version of Nazi occupied Paris (but equally insidious), their jacking up prices of many of the necessities of life, and the current economic crisis (which I think their parents helped cause), I’ve been thinking of relieving the chicken fuckers of mommy and daddy’s cash via mugging or some sort of scam. Any ideas?
i have many. the problem is that law is totally on their side. youll be all over the internet and blogged about it from here to moonfazistan!
*rob*
i know it’s trashy, but i do smash my cigarette butts out on expensive bicycle seas in soho. oh well, yeah that’s HORRIBLE. i dont give a shit.
*rob*
(seats)
*rob*
Slash there fixed gear bike tires instead of just putting your cigarette butts out on there seats. it will be easy at night, just make a habit of carrying a knife on you.
Believe me, I’m making my share off these fucksticks, but getting ripped off constantly doesn’t faze them because they didn’t earn their money. Bruising their egos and exposing their contrived bullshit lives is more painful and permanent with these narcissistic dickbags. But multiple muggings and ass kickings may work best.
yeah why worry about it when mommy and daddy will just replace all your expensive shit no questions asked? this is why i think sometimes (and im no mugger and think that stealing IS wrong) but you know why not just go up to someone be like, give me that… i feel like 9 times out of 10 they will just hand it over no questions asked. am i wrong? ugh. when this computer dies… i know what im doing!
*rob*
Unfortunately, this is one area where, in theory, I break away from the torch-bearing mob. Of course, the hipster-flaunt of anything is justifiably worthy of ridicule, but I think there’s something to be said for organic stuff.
Think about it…there’s a direct correlation to the crap being pumped into foods and the general bulking-up of society. Take female development, for example — just a few decades ago, and the medical texts from the ’30s and ’40s bear this out, the average girl became a woman in her early-to-mid teens. Now, there was just a study released that says it’s happening closer to age 7.
Meanwhile, there’s that historic site bullshit about “people were shorter 150 years ago.” Fuck you, no, they weren’t. The change in AVERAGE HEIGHT you perceive just isn’t so; otherwise, by that math, Jesus would’ve been a yard high, and that pesky requirement of being 5’10″ in the Roman Legion would’ve been impossible to meet. What IS true is that overall mass was necessarily less. If you take two people of the same height, one who eats processed and junk-injected food all their lives and another who avoids it, which of them do you think is going to be Lou Ferrigno and which will be the average healthy figure as it stood for hundreds of years?
In other words, if it was good enough for the generations of people who lived in Williamsburg when it was still an independent village before being folded into the City of Brooklyn, then it’s good enough for me. I’ve dropped 20 pounds this year, and whether or not some of that’s due to cutting out the hormones inherited from a freakishly oversized chicken breast, I’ll eat on the side of caution.
that’s cool and all, but when it raises the cost of my food by over 50% and raises rent over 5000% in one’s lifetime, then really i dont give a crap if organic or non organic chicken will make possible gentlemen suiters 5 foot 10 or 5 foot 11.
*rob*
ok, how about cancer? Do you give a crap about that?
The food is not the problem. We need self control and vigorous exercise. I don’t eat organic, I eat fast food on occasion and I’ve lost 40lbs.
Theres a lot of gray area for and against this. I don’t mind organic food. I understand it does take more land with lower yields which explains its price. I do like the fact that their apples and cherries to swell my throat like the non-organic stuff.
And as for the obesity rate…okay, were all adults over 25 here. We didnt have all these distractions that kids have today. We go to friends houses… we hung out at malls and movie theaters. We still played sports before our knees broke… Our mothers (at least mine) were more strict about us eating more vegetables.
But if you see the trend today, the complete opposite is happening…
My 5-14 year old nephews jsut sit around ALLLLL DAAAYYYY long with their Gameboys (I blame my brother/parent) Mothers are less strict because Child Services might break in their house. Kids today “go to friends houses and interact” through facebook and texting and “hang out” by watching unlimited Netflix streaming!
So my thing is, food has gotten bigger through the crap our food eats. Kids are eating less vegetables and eating more “Triple Cheese Hamburgers with extra Omega-3 and Potassium”. And the amount of distractions have increased 10 fold than the amount we had when we were kids.
Thank you. Now Go tell my organic chucklehead of a sister.
As you may have read in my previous posts, my eight year old is on a swim team. They practice between an hour to 90 minutes a day – this does not include lessons. In the summer it’s six times a week – 90 minutes a day.
Ever see a bunch of 8 year olds hit the buffet after swimming non-stop for 90 minutes? It’s not a pretty sight – it’s enough to make an earth mother’s head explode: Burgers, soda, cakes, pasta, hotdogs, candy, cookies, bagged salad, ice cream….THEY CHOW DOWN.
And you know what? Not a fat one among them. All lean and mean. I bet there isn’t a kid on the team that couldn’t take down a Josh and beat the living crap out of him.
Oh and these Organic turds do get their panties in a twist when someone starts poking holes int their ideology.
Like Michael Phelps. While training he ate Frosted Flakes and six ham egg and cheese sandwiches – for breakfast. His daily caloric intake was around 10,000 calories.
Then everyone went ape shit after he won eight gold medals and Kellogs put his mug an a box of Frosted Flakes.
HE’setting a bad example!!! EIGHT GOLD MEDALS AND HE’S
PITCHING SUGARY CEREAL!!!! AWWWWGHHH!
10,000 calories, and he’s still rail-thin. God forbid that he should, you know, consume enough calories to replace those he’s burning off during that level of intense training.
A long while back, I had the opportunity to volunteer for a palaeontological dig in Antarctica, about 200 miles from the South Pole. It’s a tough gig, considering that the safe season to be digging only lasts about three weeks in the Antarctic summer (the winds out there are incredibly dangerous for aircraft, and trying to get to an outpost by ground vehicle when a whiteout hits is a very nasty form of suicide), the high temperatures are still around minus-40, and any rescue for emergencies may take days to get there. One of the things that really kind of scared me, though, was the daily food intake necessary to stay warm out there. They go very heavy on butter and other fats for one really good reason: no matter what you’re doing and how good your cold gear is, you’re going to burn off almost all of that fat by shivering your ass off. Between that and the amount of work you put in lugging and packing fossils and gear, any beer gut you had when you started will be GONE.
” but I think there’s something to be said for organic stuff.”
Sorry, there isn’t.
“Think about it…there’s a direct correlation to the crap being pumped into foods and the general bulking-up of society. Take female development, for example — just a few decades ago, and the medical texts from the ’30s and ’40s bear this out, the average girl became a woman in her early-to-mid teens. Now, there was just a study released that says it’s happening closer to age 7.”
And this is the result of what? Conventional food? This claim is flimsy. Do you know how many factors could have played into this? Why are you assuming it is a direct result of people eating conventional food? Do you have evidence of a correlation?
“If you take two people of the same height, one who eats processed and junk-injected food all their lives and another who avoids it, which of them do you think is going to be Lou Ferrigno and which will be the average healthy figure as it stood for hundreds of years?”
Okay, some science. The external appearance of the food does not actually matter. I repeat, the external appearance does not matter. You could be perfectly healthy even if you ate only fast food, if you do not exceed the healthy calorie intake. “Junk food” is not intrinsically unhealthy, it has high calorie content and people just take too much of it that is all. You can moderate your caloric input while eating fast food to equal that of someone who only eats fruits and vegetables.
Secondly, you are aware that the organic market is almost negligible right? What this means is that MOST people who are healthy DO NOT eat organic food, but rather that “processed, junk infused” crap. So if you see a healthy person with rippling muscles walking down the street, the overwhelming chance is that they do NOT eat organic food.
“I’ve dropped 20 pounds this year, and whether or not some of that’s due to cutting out the hormones inherited from a freakishly oversized chicken breast, I’ll eat on the side of caution.”
Anecdotal evidence. Have you by any chance also been exercising? Or watching your rations? Could those be the reasons why you have dropped weight? I assure you if you stuffed yourself on organic food you *would* be portly, just as you would if you stuffed yourself on any normal food.
Another thing, stop using weasel words like “processed” food. Or saying they insert “junk”. You seem not to be bothered to do any research but rather parrot the values of pop cultural fads.
Also, i do not think you understand how hormones work. Look genetically, an organic chicken is the SAME as a non organic one. Same for plants. Biochemically, there is no difference. How you grow the food does not affect it’s genes, which is what determines the nutrients it contains if you did not know.
Organic food is a scam. Eat Macdonalds every day if you wanted, but if you count your calories, you can be as healthy as anyone.
Organic agriculture to me is less about vitamins and more about not polluting. We’ve got dead zones in the gulf of mexico from pesticide runoff from the mississippi river and all the farming all the way up the country.
You may not be an environmentalist, but want to stand face to face with the fishermen and shrimpers whose generations-old livelihoods are ruined because we insist on doing things the dirty way? Talk to the farm workers who have breathing problems from pesticide application.
Conventional agriculture just doesn’t make sense when you think about our grandkids and what they will inherit for a place to live.
We need to quit acting like kids and trashing the house…and instead of cleaning it up, just shoving shit in the closet or under the bed. Yes, the stereotypical hipster is childish, but there’s a great deal of childishness on a really grand scale in the way our society is set up these days in america. It’s time for us all to start being responsible.
Over the years, most of the privileged, suburban Whitebreaders who become part of some commercialized “counter-culture”, lemming group of “creatives” are usually in their Teens-20s. But, this current shit flow of clichéd, pompous, pseudo urban, fauxhemian assrags go well into their 40s. This is the group of “never wanting to grow up.” They will be remembered as the lowest of the low in the history of American Pop Culture. They are as vile and despicable as date rape frat boys and Ted Haggard. But they are dumber and more worthless than the worst of the worst. They really are the scum of the earth.
Meanwhile, good ‘ol Walmart has decided to ditch the “green”/”organic” fad.
“After suffering seven straight quarters of losses, today the merchandise giant Wal-Mart will announce that it is “going back to basics,” ending its era of high-end organic foods, going “green,” and the remainder of its appeal to the upscale market. Next month the company will launch an “It’s Back” campaign to woo the millions of customers who have fled the store. They will be bringing back “heritage” products, like inexpensive jeans and sweatpants.
Few may recognize it as such, but this episode should be seen as a cautionary tale about “progressives” and social engineering experiments on low-income Americans. This morning’s Wall Street Journal article is blunt:
‘That strategy failed, and the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant now is pursuing a back-to-basics strategy to reverse the company’s fortunes.’
The failure, in large part, can be pinned to Leslie Dach: a well-known progressive and former senior aide to Vice President Al Gore. In July 2006, Dach was installed as the public relations chief for Wal-Mart. He drafted a number of other progressives into the company, seeking to change the company’s way of doing business: its culture, its politics, and most importantly its products.”
Sometimes you just need cheap socks and underwear, and no-name granola bars.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/wal-mart-goes-back-to-basics-a-cautionary-tale-for-the-left/
It’s funny how the genius doesn’t see anything wrong with this:
“For leading the failed experiment, Dach was awarded three million dollars in stock and a hundred and sixty-eight thousand stock options, in addition to an undisclosed base salary.”
Imagine a worker at a Wal-Mart tried an “experiment” that resulted in a broken piece of merchandise under $20. I wonder if they would get such generous treatment. Look at how Wal-Mart treats its workers, and then you will see the real problem with that business. It is certainly not a bad thing to have everything one needs in one shop and for low prices- which seems to be the typical hipster/liberal argument.
I remember having a similar discussion with a liberal friend whose main complaint about Wal-Mart is that it destroyed his town, which used to have a lot of small businesses, and people often knew each other. Well that does sound tragic, but we both live in a country where one often has to go to several shops on the way home just to get a few items.
Imagine that people with their normal 8-10 hour work schedules should be forced to go to several different shops on the way home, just to fulfill some fantasy of a Mayberry, USA, where you have to stop at the baker, the butcher, the pharmacy, and the fucking blacksmith several times a week. But of course you will know all of their names!
The supreme irony about this “small-town” nostalgia is that it is incredibly similar to conservative fantasies about some wonderful, distant, non-existent past. One cannot say they are for progress, while at the same time supporting lifestyles which make working people’s lives harder all for the sake of some nostalgic fantasy.
And just as with the hipster fantasy, this fantasy doesn’t hold up under economics. Just try to set up a small storefront in small-town America. Anywhere: just try setting up a small grocery store. Unless it’s got some serious gimmick, everyone will coo and giggle, and promptly return to shopping at Wal-Mart. Then, when you go under because you have no customers, those same people will cry and blubber about how unfair it is that you’re shutting down, because “I’m in there all the time.”
Incidentally, that’s why bookstores are imploding right now, too. We can talk about the merits of independent bookstore versus big-box superstore until our eyes bleed, but the reality is that most bookbuyers aren’t going to pay $19.95 for a new hardcover at a standard bookstore when they can get a barely used copy for 99 cents on Amazon. (The fact that most indie bookstores resemble the bookstore in “Portlandia,” both in appearance and in staff attitudes, doesn’t help.) And when they get customers who wave their iPhones and demand that the stores match the price of ShittySurplus.com, trying to explain the need to make enough to cover rent and payroll is like showing a dog a card trick.
A while back a Bookstore opened in my parent’s town. Two problems:
Small town.
No readers.
When they opened I supported them because the closest B&N was 35 minutes away.
They sold everything to make their “dream come true. Snotty, pretentious jerks.
Within a year they had sell candy, mainstream magazines (yup including Penthouse and Hustler) and lottery tickets to keep the lights on.
They closed up shop. Borrowed more money from mom and dad.
And opened an organic bakery – complete with a custom built 50K stone hearth oven that runs on firewood.
That failed too. Samll town. Working class. Bread was something like 8 dollars a loaf.
Ass wipes.
I swear, I see so many businesses that pop up like that, where the business plan consisted of “Well, I think this would be really cool.” The proprietors then blame the community when they fail. (A couple of years ago, I read about an organic bakery and grocery that opened up on the outskirts of Boston. The nearly universal complaint was “Who the hell can afford those $9 loaves of bread?”, but that didn’t stop the dweebs from borrowing every last bit of money their parents had to keep it going. When the landlord finally kicked their delinquent asses out, they left a typically passive-aggressive letter on the front door, bitching out everyone in the neighborhood for not supporting “local business”. The universal response that time was “Don’t let the gates of Hell smack you on the ass on the way in.”)
“Look at how Wal-Mart treats its workers, and then you will see the real problem with that business.”
Really? And exactly how does Walmart treat its workers? Is it any different from how any other retailer treats their employees? Why do you assume Walmart is necessarily some sort of concentration camp?
All entry-level, unskilled retail jobs seem unappealing to me, too — but that’s why those jobs are easy for people to get. They don’t pay much, and the work can be tedious. But I’ve never heard that Walmart treats their employees particularly unfairly.
Hell, if it ever came down to it, and I desperately needed a job like that, I’d be quite happy to wear their blue smock and be glad of it.
You seem to be making a lot of unfounded assumptions about Walmart.
“The supreme irony about this “small-town” nostalgia is that it is incredibly similar to conservative fantasies about some wonderful, distant, non-existent past.”
Well, yeah, that would be ironic, if your scenario actually had any basis in reality.
Unfortunately for you it seems pretty clear that liberal “progressives” have typically been the ones to protest against Walmarts — not political conservatives.
But we get it. You don’t like hipsters, and you don’t like conservatives — and you’re falling all over yourself to make bizarre comparisons between the two things you don’t happen to like, in a ham-fisted attempt at “irony”.
Wait … irony?
Uh-oh, now who’s the hipster?
“Really? And exactly how does Walmart treat its workers? Is it any different from how any other retailer treats their employees”
Pretty badly given the amount of fines they’ve paid for labor law violations, as well as class action lawsuits. And since many large retailers don’t have that record, I think we can say that Wal-Mart excels in that field.
“Why do you assume Walmart is necessarily some sort of concentration camp?”
I don’t know where you get “Walmart is a concentration camp” from “Walmart treats its workers like shit,” which is basically what I wrote.
“All entry-level, unskilled retail jobs seem unappealing to me, too — but that’s why those jobs are easy for people to get. They don’t pay much, and the work can be tedious. But I’ve never heard that Walmart treats their employees particularly unfairly.”
Gee, instead of running around proclaiming your ignorance on the subject, you could have taken the time you used to write this post, and spent it far better by doing a quick search on Wal-Mart and labor relations.
“Hell, if it ever came down to it, and I desperately needed a job like that, I’d be quite happy to wear their blue smock and be glad of it.”
Yes, we all would, which is why we need to ask why most of the population needs to consider decisions like that, whereas a tiny, non-productive minority never has to even think about such a scenario.
“You seem to be making a lot of unfounded assumptions about Walmart.”
Since you’ve basically admitted that you don’t even know, why don’t you look into that and get back to me.
“Well, yeah, that would be ironic, if your scenario actually had any basis in reality.
Unfortunately for you it seems pretty clear that liberal “progressives” have typically been the ones to protest against Walmarts — not political conservatives.”
READ….SLOWER. The “progressives” are basically promoting a similar core idea of conservatives, namely “it was so much better way back when.” This idea is not progressive by definition and it a dead end.
“But we get it. You don’t like hipsters, and you don’t like conservatives — and you’re falling all over yourself to make bizarre comparisons between the two things you don’t happen to like, in a ham-fisted attempt at “irony”.”
Who was interested in “irony”? It is a fact that many who call themselves “progressives” share many core ideological assumptions as conservatives.
I canremember when eveything used to shut down at 5 or 6PM. I don’t know how we ever got anything done.
But I guess we altered our schedules to suit. The bulk of all this stuff got done on the weekend.
Frankly, it’s a blessing for me. When your kid comes up to you at 8:30PM and says,”Oh dad I need XYZ for art class tomorrow” you can head to WalMart.
Having my supermarket open until 9PM is a great – especially since they have a pharmacy – AND a bank.
When I was young, the shopping got done on saturday or my grandmother sent my grandfather or me out. I got home at three. My Nonno was a longshoreman so he’d be home anywhere from noon to 3 PM.
We bought what we needed on a daily basis for meals (from the butcher ,baker, etc.) and everything else wss done on Saturday.
In hindsight it was hectic. But we didn’t think so because that’s the way it was.
That’s what pisses me off about hipsters. So
much of what they want isn’t attainable or practical unless one has a shitload of free time on their hands.
As I said, my only problem with Wal-Mart is that it hasn’t been expropriated by the working class yet. Other than that, Americans should be grateful that it is possible to get anything you need at low prices at any time of day- all in one shop. These idiots who talk about “small town America” with the butcher, the baker, the green grocer,(and all that shit which went out of style more than 30 years ago anyway) don’t know what it’s like to have to stop at four different stores on the way home after work.
The ability to get virtually every basic good one could want, in one place, at a low price, is an indisputably positive thing.
I just wish Walmart worked with more American, Canadian and Mexican manufacturers and sell their products. Sure prices would be higher, but we wouldn’t give money to China.
Manufacturing jobs spread across the country reduces the pressure to concentrate to large cities. Perhaps, in theory, this could even help reduce the hipster migration to Brooklyn!
Honestly, a lot of this came down to Wal-Mart trying for the Whole Foods dollars. You could get away with this back around 2005, when it seemed like every yuppie idiot was using home equity as a personal credit card. Today, when you’re looking at price and price alone, paying that much more for “certified” organic becomes less and less of a priority when you’re wondering if you’re going to be a food bank regular in six weeks.
Well, I think it was an experiment that Walmart tried, and found that it wasn’t working for them. Hindsight is 20/20 vision, as they say, but I can see how trying for a piece of the yuppie snob market might have been worth a try.
Unfortunately, I think they misunderstood the primary consumer motivation for “organic” bullshit. Obviously, to smart guys like us, at least, it’s got nothing to do with it being in any way a superior product. It’s really all about the snobbish perceived exclusivity of magic organic food items.
Walmart found that out the hard way. If “organic” food becomes inexpensive and readily available, so that any peasant can afford it — then why the hell would the yuppie/hipsters want anything to do with it?
Personally, I think what Walmart *should* have done, is spun-off a seperate retail chain and called it “Mister Greensleeves” or something. Then they could use their super-efficient Walmart supply chain, but still be able to fool the punters into thinking they’re purchasing from some sort of chic, upscale “organic” food boutique, like Whole Foods.
No hipster/yuppie wants to be caught dead buying their magical “organic” shit from a lumpen-prole retailer like Walmart. That would spoil the fantasy! But they *would* buy from “Mister Greensleeves” (a division of Walmart Inc.).
Hey, that’s what McDonald’s did with Chipotle. The only funnier thing than watching a yupster freak out over Chipotle’s old corporate parent is explaining to a pseudo-vegan gulping down Jell-O shots where gelatin comes from.
Organic is just a rip-off. When capitalism was still developing, small farmers who couldn’t afford modern technology were driven out by more efficient farms. Now that America has been developed for some time, and most of the population has become retarded, you can suddenly make something in a very inefficient way(e.g. vegetables, grilled cheese sandwiches, etc.), and charge more for it because it’s “organic, hand made, artisanal, etc.”
I don’t even like using this word artisanal because it’s inaccurate; an artisan is someone whose whole life centers around some craft, which they might have spent most of their youth learning. Baking bread from scratch does not make you an artisan- millions do it all the time.
The thing is, that people forget that modern industry actually can mass produce many items of much higher quality than morons like say, Masterbation Bros. Italian, German, and Russian chocolate companies could easily flood American markets with higher quality chocolate for much lower prices.
The “good news” for the moment is that as the economy gets worse, things like “organic” and “local” will lose their magic ability to pull in money. Also, as more people come to realize that organic food doesn’t actually bring any benefit, they will switch back to normal, efficient food.
What’s funny is that I’m just old enough to remember when “scientific” was the buzzphrase when it came to food. As soon as agriculture became agribusiness, then suddenly we had a return to “all-natural”.
The militant attitude At Whole Paycheck often surpasses logic and common sense.
They have these recycled, paper containers
for takeout. They suck. The “snap on” lids
(also paper) don’t fit or stay on the container.
Not a problem. They put rubberbands on the containers.
Well they used to.
Not too long ago I went there for a salad.
I asked for a rubber band. I was told that rubberbands are band for the environment so Whole Foods stopped using them. It was clear that the lid would not stay on.
So the dumb bitch puts the container in a bag and spills the entire salad into the bag.
And hands it to me.
I complain to the manager. Did not want to hear it. Rubberbands are BAD!! POO POO!!! YOU ARE EVIL!!!
The asshole did not want to hear my logic:
You give me a huge, heavy duty, handled shopping bag for a FUCKING salad. I can take as many napkins and utensils as I please.
All this shit gets thrown out at work. But people tend to save rubberbands.
Then there’s the goddamn trash cans – they have what five, six of them for recycling?
People don’t pay attention – they just dumptheir trash wherever they want.
Get your jollies like I do: Go to Whole Foods and start switching produce.
You are 100% correct about the Whole Foods thing. These snarky fuckfaces always have the most self-satisfied smirk when they tote around their groceries on the subway, like they are the enlightened and the rest of us are some sad uninformed locals.
I feel like driving over to Whole Foods, clanging 3 empty beer bottles together with my fingers, and bellowing out;
“Hipsterrrrs, come out to play-ay”
“Hiiiiipsters, come our to playyyy-ay”
“Hiiiiipsterrrrrs, come out toooooo puhhhlllllayyyyyyyyaaaayyyy”
I still think an adult crib on the corner of Bedford and N.7 is a goldmine – set it up with an iPad docking station, free wi-fi, tell the Joshes that the sheets are locally crafted, and charge $100 per hour for “personal contemplation time – in an artisinally created environment of multimedia productivity”. Hipster gets what he wants most – look at meeeee attention, and we get a little of that trust fund money into our own pockets and away from Ethan’s Ye Olde Brooklyn Soy Latte Collective.
“There he is! That’s him! That’s… the Hipster! He shot Cyrus!”
Ummmmm…. The Warriors” right?
But of course we should charge $200 per hour during high demand hours when the hipsters have most of their free time – Monday to Friday, 11AM to 5PM
LOL It’s incredible how many useless people you see just lounging around during those hours doing nothing but looking like a Scooby-Doo character.
How about selling them fort kits – some PVC pipe, string and smallpox infested blankets?
How about a show like “Ghost Hunters” only with hipsters? Polish landladies call Hipster Hunters. You pack the van up and head out.
They arrive at a Brownstone in Brooklyn. The land lady comes out and states her case:
“It just feels creepy. I walk up to the loft and hear “Arcade Fire”. Last week I felt someone brush past me. It felt like flannel. Sometimes I walk around and get hit with the odor of Free Spirits, Ethiopian Blend coffee and body odor. Last night I went to the kitchen to get a snack.
there was a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox on the table and hummus in the fridge”.
(SHAKY INFRA RED FOOTAGE FOLLOWS):
OK..we’re heading into the loft…Hey Chuck look….
OH MY GOD – IS THAT….
Yeah..oh man….crumpled Mast Brothers wrappers….Ayn Rand books…..shit stained underwear – yup – both sides…and…
Is that a…
Yep- Ironic T-shirt…”Winger ’89 World Tour”.
Shh….
Did you HEAR that?
Yeah…shhhh….
HELLO? IS THERE ANYONE HERE? IF THERE IS PLEAS TALK TO US…WE WON’T HURT YOU..
(disembodied voice)…Yahhhhh…Yahhh….Whatever….YaaaYaaaaa….check out my tats…on my cankles….I have a blog…
hahahaha
*rob*
Sounds like a hit to me! Great stuff, I’m still laughing!!
I have to play both sides on this.
And Im sure Im not the only one. Now Im a big hater of hipsters but I do support some organic foods.
Everytime I have cherries, apples and some other non-organic fruits my throat closes up and and cheeks swell. But when I have organic fruits or go apple picking in upstate NY, I get no ill effects. So I have to vote for organic on this subject.
Throw your non-organic lettuce at me if you must
Hey, allergies are a different situation. If you have no choice, you have no choice.
I’m no doctor, but I diagnose you have an enlarged hypochondrial gland.
Come on, if I handed you a regular apple and convinced you it was “organic” — you’d be perfectly fine. Not even the most advanced chemical analysis could detect any differnce.
Therefore, I am prescribing an extra large dose of homeopathic Placebex™.
There’s a very funny book that came out a few years ago called The $64 Tomato that went into detail on the writer’s experience with farming in upstate New York. He started out just as a gardener, fixing up an old farmhouse for his wife and kids, and rapidly went out of control in his efforts to produce all sorts of foodie porn. (The title refers to his working out that, based on time and money spent protecting his heirloom tomatoes from woodchucks and deer, each tomato cost about $64.) One of the most illuminating pieces was on his efforts to grow organic apples, based on the memory of his father doing so. He finally realized that, thanks to various pests, there’s really no such thing as a pesticide-free apple.
And if you want to scare the shit out of yourself, Google up information on Black Leaf 40. This shit is pretty much pure nicotine sulfate, rich enough that it was used as a contact poison for contract killings, and anybody spraying that crap without a full body suit and high-grade respirator is going to DIE. (Nicotine is a nerve agent, and the only reason we don’t die quickly from smoking cigarettes is due to our body mass compared to the dose inhaled. Black Leaf 40 takes care of that issue.) It’s nasty, nasty shit, and until the mid-1990s, it was perfectly legal to use as a pesticide on organic farms. (Pyrethrum, distilled from chrysanthemums, isn’t much better, but it was hyped to hell in the Nineties as a safe environmental bug spray within the garden. Discussing whether pyrethrum is safer to humans than Black Leaf 40 is a bit like taste-testing dog shit.)
Whole Foods…People who buy their products from WF call it whole paycheck, yet continue to shop there.
Remember this article a while back, how they sold organic food imported from China?
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2010/02/whole-foods-365-organic-made-in-china-an-abc-expose/
Another WF one is coming to Gowanus thank goodness. At least Park Slopers won’t have make a trek to Whole Foods in Manhattan. I was getting concerned that they wouldn’t have access to fresh food.
I don’t know what the Whole Paychecks are like out there, but here in Dallas, they’re meet markets. Specifically, you have a whole crew of golddiggers (many are former journalism majors, interestingly enough) who hang out at our big flagship store in order to snag a rich husband. The assumption is that if you’re in there and don’t have a wedding band on, you’re fair game. (The wedding band doesn’t stop some of them, as many don’t have problems with having a rich boyfriend who’ll go home sooner or later.) And now you know why the Meghans so desperately want jobs out there.
The Whole Foods near me actually has “Singles Nights”
I think if anyone going to a singles night at a grocery store must be thinking to themselves: “I’ve hit the lowest of the low”
Actually, they’re thinking “Maybe I won’t die alone after all.” Attending a Single’s Night at a Barnes & Noble, now, is “lowest of the low,” because the people that attend are both desperate and broke.
Nahhh. there’s a sub-basement: singles night at the local bead shop. I’m not kidding.
I think in order to attend you have to prove you don’t have a nut sack.
To use a common Texas phrase, “Now that’s just sad.”
I’ve seen the women (and men) who attend those singles events. Truly pathetic. The mean age for the women is around 50, they all think they’re Carrie Bradshaw and Mr Big is going to sweep them away, and as far as going home with one goes, I’d sooner spend the rest of my life jerking off to pr0n.
I have friends who brag that they get laid every weekend there. Go ahead if you want Beavis’ mom.
Hell, if I’m going to get syphilis, at least it’ll be from some young East European blonde or some young Japanese snapper that I can really brag about.
*rob*
ooooh…. they pretty?
The hipster co-op grocery here is ridiculously overpriced.
I just go across the street to the Mexican market and get twice the amount of food for half the price. Literally.
Plus, no attitude.
Co-ops aren’t real businesses. They’re workfare programs for otherwise unemployable English Lit majors.
I was shopping on Saturday and passed by a grand opening for a Korean market. The owners must have worked 24/7 to get this place ready. Phenomenal produce and fish.
Cheap too – less than the local Shoprite and FAR FAR less than Whole Paycheck.
God bless ‘em. they’ll put the hipsters into a tailspin. I’m sure there will be a UN conference this weekend:
“Like Yaaaa ummm Whole Foods is like Organic and good for you…buuuuut…the Korean market – is…sooooo..ethnic…and the owner wears flannel…I mean – which is cooler?”
I have several markets like that close by, and I’ll agree with you on the produce. Both in quality and price, they have Whole Foods beat, and the hipsters also stay the hell away.
I was at Key Food today in Greenpoint. When I got to the meat section, there was some filthy, red/gray bearded piece of shit with Buddy Holly-glasses and shin cut Dockers with a big chain hanging from his pocket. He was towing around a unicycle with filthy tires making a mess everywhere and demanding to talk to a butcher. The busy butcher came from behind the counter to listen to this worthless fuckface nasally whine and quack about them not having the organic meats he was looking for. The obviously fed up butcher looked at me and rolled his eyes and then shrugged him of. Since this clown’s demands weren’t answered he huffed and puffed out of there leaving a filthy tire trail behind him. The butcher then looked at me and said, “These idiots are Un-fucking-believable”. Every normal, working person in Brooklyn hates these fucks and their despicable, pompous, entitled attitudes. I hope a truck ran over him when he left the store.
Why was he even at Key Food?? Now you know whats gonna happen.. He’s gonna talk to his friends and theyre all gonna do some sort of legislative push to close down Key Foods
Hey I used yo unload the trucks at the Key Food on Avenue X back in ’83. My uncle was a butcher there (recently retired).
He used to go in on Sundays anf whatever meat was left over, he would unpackage it,
flip it to put the grey side downand re-wrap it.
This beardo going to Key food for Organic produce is like going to Walmart for Foie Gras.
Why not make a multi-purpose Organic Tampon? Meghan can use it one day and Josh can make his tomato soup with it the next!
Use organically grown cotton or hemp and you got a winner.
Well, when Josh wants to figure out how those bedbugs got in his soup, there will certainly be no mystery whatsoever.
Those were crabs.
Sustainable, locally grown, free range, organic crabs.
now we are thinking as a team. Mix in some of Joshua’s roommates semen ( You know Meghan dig’s him more because he is in a band ( single member playing keyboard and bongo ) and fucks him behind Joshy’s back ) and then you can have some nice seafood chowder!
Working at a grocery store where there is a choice between regular milk and organic milk, we frequently sell out of the organic whole milk gallons well before the regular. A majority of the purchasers are parents. When I ask them why they are feeding their kids whole milk and not, say, 1%, they typically say, “Well, it’s organic, so it’s healthier for them.” They have no idea that, organic or not, whole milk’s not good for you in large amounts. They think that, since it’s organic, their chubby little kids can drink as much as they please with no ill effects.
Sell them some gasoline, acetone, latex paint, transmission fluid, or any other chemical compound containing long chain carbon molecules. By the correct definition, ie., the definition that actually means something, those are perfectly “organic”.
Oh, but the yuppie hipsters have their own definition. “Organic” — latin for grown in pig shit.
And don’t forget that just because it’s “organic” doesn’t mean that milk isn’t passing on all sorts of vile shit that the cattle ate. Lead, cadmium…I even seem to remember that if they start eating Jimson weed, the resultant milk will give you the worst bad trip you’ve ever had.
we give our kid whole milk since he doesn’t drink much – about 10 oz. per day.
But we always know when he’s hitting a growth spurt because he sucks milk down like it’s going out of style.
Oh speaking of chubby – when are these idiots going to realize that fat is fat?
Every time I read the NY Times or watch the Food Network they’re endorsing some 32 OZ Kobe beef burger slathered in butter and Mayo and and stuffed with goose liver.
But watch the fucking knives come out over McDonald’s or Soda.
Every look at the fat and sodium content of organic products? I eat Granola. The organic stuff is like 250 calories for a quarter cup. The regular stuff is between 80 and a 140 for the same portion.
You want “organic”?
Here’s your damn “organic”:
Hey, there’s a business idea for hookers to cater to the hipster market — organic wet nurse, $500 a session.
If you think about it, it really presses all the hipster demographic buttons, on so many levels.
the dyes in those tattooes leaking thru her breastmilk… probably 100x worse than cows milk. actually im not sure that’s even possible, im not a scientist, but ugh. is there even a video for taking videos of this stuff? at LEAST keep that shit off the internet! im not a prude either… but when you are doing something like breastfeeding that a gazillion mammals in the history of the Universe have done since the dawn of time cuz it’s a natural thing, just do it, why do you have to make such a spectacle about it? oh that’s right… just look at the trashy tattoos (and i love tattoos and have them) but those just scream out for attention, much like this video.
*rob*
You did notice the kid being breastfed is THREE AND A HALF YEARS OLD, right?
Boss rack!
I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. People who are around pesticides get cancer. Simple as that. It is healthier to eat organic. I think the author of this blog is the stupid one if he can’t see that.
Um nope, people get cancer for a lot of reasons.
Mary, you do know that “organic” is not really organic right? You are aware that the FDA regulations on organic are not all that strict, since it has become a money making business?
Do you think that organic food does not use pesticides? Are you really that ignorant? This is what annoys me, most people who buy this stuff just buy the marketing lines that fit with their world view hook line and sinker. Also, WHO told you pesticides cause cancer? Are you kidding me? DO you have a source or is that what you heard from your local hippie ?
Man, idiots.
You’ll die a lot quicker from E. Coli than cancer caused by any pesticide.
I have only one word to add to this: “pyrethrum”. Completely legal, and it’s a completely organic pesticide. It’s also a probably carcinogen.
I knew someone who never smoked a cigarette in her life and got lung cancer. The same type of lung cancer, btw, that smokers do.
My 4 gen farmer neighbors use 7 dust on their own food all the time. Obviously, one would wash their fruits and vegetables, wherever they get them from, first..right? I can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t wether it was fresh picked or from the grocery.
The worst thing, imho, about massive scale farming is what it can do to the soil over time. But that sort of thing isn’t exactly ignored either.
I totally support people growing their own food wherever they are. And drop off the excess to your elderly neighbors who aren’t fit enough anymore, or the disabled, or to the hard strapped families with out of work parents. But if it’s all just to show off pictures of your organic life on FB, piss off.
you know what makes me giggle? Not only do they buy overpriced organic crap thats basically the same shit with a label (for more info visit the FDA websites for organic label requirements), but then they (2 or more of them) will stand in the grocery store and pick out 1 pepper. ONE GODDAM PEPPER! Maybe it’s me, but who in the hell buys one pepper and picks it out for over 20 minutes? It is a pepper, pick one and go home. If you were eating peppers as a main part of your meal, you wouldn’t be buying just one. It is obviously going into a dish of some sort, so the “quality” of pepper doesnt need to be godly. Then they charge this single pepper on their mommies credit card. It is sad, infuriating sometimes, but it is a pretty funny event if you are not in a rush. I think next time, I’m going to video tape them.
Two things from a working class truck driver. Not all the produce in whole foods is organic, but the quality of their produce is consistently much better than you find in your local supermarket. It costs slightly more (and sometimes it doesn’t) but you are paying for quality, which is a smart shopper thing, not a hipster thing.
Second, everyone should watch the documentary “Food Inc.” and look at what big industry has done to our food production. It’s fucking scary.
That scene where the baby chicks are going through a conveyor belt was horrible!
I used to inspect the fire systems at a Butterball turkey plant. The way they kill the turkeys is a little unnerving, but having seen every nook and cranny of that plant, I eat Butterball products with confidence.
There’s no possible way to feed all the people in the world using humane and sustainable methods, and anyone who thinks it can be done is turning a blind eye to the obvious outcome: mass starvation, ridiculously high food prices, etc.
I’m wary of the GenMod stuff, but there’s no arguing that increased rice yields in China have led to an improved quality of life for China’s poor.
Elitists don’t care about poor people, though…
We’re already in the ridiculously high food prices.
The soil bled dry by big Agra, in other countries, combined with a few spells of seriously bad weather caused massive food problems overseas we haven’t come close to seeing stateside. One of the things America does well is farming. That’s a good thing because the world’s always going to need to eat and in some countries one bad season can seriously cripple food availability.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/04/19/a-whole-foods-fight-in-boston
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