MOVE WHERE THE FOOD IS!!
Posted on 12/31/2006 12:44:18 PM PST by rhema
Excuse me if I am terribly confused here at the end of another daffy year. I try to keep up with our cultural and socially imperative trends. I really do. Sometimes I even think about embracing some of the most pressing sensibilities, like global warming, just to avoid getting so much poorly written mail.
But the other day, we had something in the news that turned me upside down. I read about a guy who I would have thought is a modern urban hero, only to discover that he is a victim of, I don't know, the usual, I guess: corporate greed, capitalism, social injustice.
I am referring to a fellow named Leon Davis, 54, whose photograph, seated on a bus, we featured on the front page with an accompanying story about grocery stores. Davis, it turns out, has no car and takes the bus to a grocery store in St. Paul when he needs milk and bread. Furthermore, it was reported that Davis is consigned to such an ignominious fate because of a shortage of big suburban-style grocery stores in St. Paul and in Minneapolis and that this is known as an "urban grocery gap,'' because Davis lives in a "food desert.''
Yes, right here in the heartland of the greatest country on Earth, we have food deserts, or block after block of urban landscape where there are no major grocery stores. This forces people like Davis to use public transportation to go to small markets where they buy their goods and make the return trip home by means of the same public transportation.
Worse, people like Davis pay a premium for these goods.
"It's almost scandalous,'' said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, meaning the lack of big grocery stores with fresh grapefruit.
"This certainly is a social justice issue,'' said Dianne Blaydes, a researcher who studied access to healthful food in Hennepin County.
St. Paul's mayor, Chris Coleman, was spoken for by Nick Shuminsky, who said, "Studies overlook the gems.''
By "gems,'' Shuminsky meant small ethnic shops and farmers' markets.
In other words, it is now offered to us as a problem that urban people, without cars, pay premium prices to shop in small stores where they might not be able to buy the kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables that would pass muster with the elites who tell people how to eat.
Can anyone blame me for being confused? The same people — academics and politicians mostly — who champion a vision of European-style village living featuring small shops with little bells on the door that you get to, stop after stop, by means of mass transit, all the while clutching your NPR book bag, are now telling us that it is scandalous that we don't have large supermarkets and just as scandalous that the urban dwellers are less likely to have automobiles and thus are confined to the very public transit that the great thinkers tell us is the only way to go.
These people are quite literally incapable of linking one thought to another, which is another way of saying that they don't understand that they can't have it both ways.
Of course there are not big suburban-style grocery stores in many of the urban areas. They have been made unwelcome by our elected and unelected visionaries. Our visionaries don't like cars, don't like parking lots, don't like big-box retail. They are predisposed, as a result of their inadequate education, to distrusting the profitable ring of the cash register. These are the people who have told us they much prefer the ring of the little bell over the door of a little shop.
These are the people who fought tooth and nail to try to prevent Target from building a store — with a large, competitively priced grocery section! — at University and Hamline, only relenting when Target agreed to plant trees and provide bicycle parking.
These same people can't wait until we are all out of cars and using the train.
But now they are telling us that somehow it is an example of social injustice and large grocery chain corporate irresponsibility that a guy named Leon Davis takes the bus to buy his groceries at a little shop, where, understandably enough to sane people, the owner has to charge exorbitant prices just to keep his lights on.
No matter which fruitcake division you fall into, from global warming to grocery stores, you hypocrites cannot have it both ways.
"It's almost scandalous,'' said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, meaning the lack of big grocery stores with fresh grapefruit."
Somebody's begging for a Super Wal-Mart. I'm betting they don't want them there, though.
Here in Seattle they have just figured out how to reduce the traffic and parking problems. New buildings don't need to worry about providing parking for their tenants, but will be REQUIRED to provide "green space". This, OF COURSE will REDUCE traffic and parking problems because people will then have to use mass transit.
(Or stay in the suburbs which I currently do.)
Maybe boy-mayor R.T. should start his own "Simon Delivers"
type grocery delivery service, but that would have to also be subsidized mostly by taxpayers.(kinda like rail here)
Guess I better not give him any ideas.
They can just do what many New Yorkers do and go to the FreshDirect website. Get all of your groceries delivered. It's not rocket science.
That "NPR book bag" line was brilliant. This guy would probably do better at stand-up than most of today's so-called "comedians."
He is pretty fast on his feet doing a radio show five days a week. You can listen online.
Soucheray has been taking alot of hits in the editorial replies and from e-mails due to his poking fun at global warming and Algore's movie.
It's been warm here in Mpls. (40 degrees) most of December. My bird bath is filled with water instead of ice.
Minnesota - the new vacation spot! LOL
Go Joe!
MOVE WHERE THE FOOD IS!!
Good rant.
I remember as a city kid visiting my country cousins out in Suffolk County, LI, around 1946. My aunt sent my cousin and me out for milk and bread. Well, I was used to running down the corner to the Mom and Pop store for these items. I thought my cousin and I would NEVER get to the store. It was two miles away.
Meanwhile, we got lots of fresh air and exercise going to and from.
By the looks of our "inner city poor", most of them could use more exercise and less food.
ROFL... So I wasn't the only one hearing that voice in my head!
A good friend of mine is a store manager for a major grocery chain.
They have left EVERY 'urban' market because EVERY store was unprofitable due to shopper and associate theft and 'shrinkage.'
The market was unprofitable. period.
Worse, people like Davis pay a premium for these goods.
Wait, I thought that these Mom & Pop shop owners were the poor people being ground into dust by the Wal-Mart beomoth. Now I find out that they are the capitalist exploiters of the urban poor. Maybe we should just outlaw big stores and have the Federal Department of Grocery Prices force the Mom & Pop stores to sell at Wal-Mart's prices.
We have that, only it's called Simon Delivers. Apparently it takes a rocket scientist to use this service, and Leon Davis, Limpwrist Rybak, and Commie Coleman just can't figure it out.
"See this Haji? It's sand! What's it going to be in a hundred years? Sand! Food doesn't grow here! Move to where the food is! We have those places in America, we call them deserts, nobody lives there becuase there is NO FOOD! AAAAHHH! AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!"
self-ping
Soucheray's column is the best thing about the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Maybe the only reason worth buying the thing. They have a large number of unfunny, loony, liberal scribblers at the Press. Typically Soucheray finds the idiocies in lib fantasy land but frequently makes fun of himself too. The lib scribblers have little or no sense of humor.
After the riots of 1968 (Martin Luther King assassination), many supermarkets in urban areas left for safer pastures. Other rioting, like the O.J. verdict and Rodney King, confirms the futility in keeping stores in risky neighborhoods.
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