So you probably already know about my love for the Fairway in Red Hook. But I got really mad at it last week.

The produce is awful. Associated Supermarket awful. It’s not just getting organic fuji apples that were mealy and leeks that were stringy, it’s that most of the perishable produce was visibly not fresh. Most supermarkets will sell fruit and veg that is unripe, knowing that most people only go grocery shopping once a week and the stuff has to last for a few days. Most of Fairway’s fruit and veg is ready to eat. You better take it home and eat it all that day because it won’t keep for more than a day or two (Kinda like that Chris Rock bit about meat from the ghetto supermarkets). I know that markets in Chinatown do this, that’s why I can get a pound of ginger root for $1 or a carton of mangoes for $4. But that’s Chinatown, I expect more from a supermarket that can offer me twenty different kinds of artisanal blue cheese as well as family packs of chicken thighs for $1.99/lb and has a view of the Statue of Liberty.

I don’t know why the Fairway produce sucks. Maybe they don’t keep it cold enough. Maybe they don’t have a mini-sprinkler system that mists it every so often. Maybe they just get one huge delivery every once in awhile as opposed to little deliveries often. Maybe they just don’t care. Maybe no one has complained.

But it makes me all like this little emoticon `,:(

(I think that emoticon, that I just invented [patent pending], is a good alternative to “WTF?!”)