Everyone has priorities in life. Me, I took a day off work to check out the new Fairway in Red Hook. I almost spontaneously gave my notice yesterday, which would've been severely stupid since I have zero job prospects at the moment. The only thing that kept me from walking out was the promise of a shiny, new Fairway to visit the following day. Seriously…I never claimed to be un-pathetic.
It's odd because in a car, it's only like five minutes to get to the end of Van Brunt St., but walking it seemed like more of a haul, maybe 30 minutes or so. I took the BQE foot bridge that's across the street from my apt. and then proceeded to get twisted around and ended up over off Lorraine St. where all those busted stores and laundromat are, at the end of the projects. Even the nasty now shuttered Court St. Key Food that the entire (blog) world hated would be an improvement over the Red Hook grocery situation. The Fairway is like a massive jump from shitty to super with never having spent any time in the mediocre middle.
I'm guessing I made it there around 10:35am and I was completely surprised by the lack of massive crowds. Not that I'm complaining, I'm severely pushy people-phobic. Of course, there was lots of rampant shopping cart banging and blocking and the usual slow movers and gawkers. But it was manageable. For a while, there might've been more press than public.
I got overwhelmed and only ended buying a Vitamin Water (lemon-lime perform because you know, I'm a high performing individual). Now that I'm back home and settled in, I wish I would've bought some snacks (there aren't any real grocery stores in Carroll Gardens proper since the Key Foods went bust. Jeez, I can't believe I've managed to bring up that abominable store twice in one post).
I've posted more images on Flickr (yes, I've started buying into the whole Flickr mania–though I could still take or leave You Tube) if you're interested.
The parking lot was about 85% full
They had just wrapped up a stirring rendition of "New York, New York"
The Brooklyn Eagle and either a co-owner or the landlord (I've seen this same man with two different names attributed to him in newspapers–maybe the landlord and owner are both large gray-haired men in overalls?).
ho I tCheeses of the
world
A cute alternative to the typical laughing cow cheese. I think the text was in Hebrew.
I'm not cheese obsessed, I was just trying to find something for price comparison. Blue Castello, one of my middlebrow favorites, was $4.29 (or $4.59–my mind is blanking) which seemed spendy. It's only 99-cents at the East Village Cheese Shop, but then theirs is also half-rancid half of the time.
The bakery scene. I managed to abstain from the free cookies
No crowd for meat
Awesome. The world has totally gone squeezable crazy. I mean, is there such a high demand for convenient cranberry sauce?
Bounty of produce. They had some nice looking heirloom tomatoes, but I wasn't on a mission to buy.
Just a lone mopper on this aisle
In case you were interested. I've always been scared of grocery store bathrooms so I didn't go in.
Firemen love dry aged meat. Isn't there a beefcake joke in there somewhere?
There was a mob for free samples of jumbo shrimp, off to the left.
No lines at checkout–I wonder how long that'll last.
Why are women's suits so goddamn ugly? Unless you have a couple thousand dollars to spend and are a size 2, you're shit out of luck because it's poly-blends and weird silhouettes otherwise. It's tricky enough trying to find something stylish and inoffensive in any size, but once you get into the plus territory it's big, big trouble. Whatever you do, don't get fooled into clicking on womensuits.com (well, you can just this once). I never even knew there were categories like Church Ensembles and Mother of the Bride. The website claims that the beauty on the left can't be done justice in a photo. Maybe I should check it out in person? 
And the whole misses/women thing is confusing. You'd think misses would be large sizes because it sounds so hideous, but it's not. Women's means large which makes no sense because aren't most adult females women, regardless of size? I guess the opposite is juniors, which is an odd moniker too. 
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Phew, I knew if I waited long enough someone would've gone nuts with Union Square 
New Yorkers have been crapping themselves over the 
