Blinded by the Light 20: Thinning Skin

A generic NYC building with AMAZING stories within

Hi, I’m 64 years old and unlike many of my friends, I’m not thinking about retirement, not even close. Instead, I work two jobs, and for the first time in nearly two decades, I awaken every morning free from deep, haunting existential economic fears. I think this means that after 20 years of intense struggle and depression, I’ve returned to the bottom rungs of the Middle Class. This blog is an exercise in figuring out what that means.

I don’t know if it’s like this for everyone, but for me those weeks and months in between getting my collegiate acceptance letter and charging off to school were one joyous blur. Yes, I still went to my job in the deli section of a grocery store, and yes, I finished my classwork and graduated high school, but I don’t remember any of it in the granular detail that I remember the stressful days of filling out college applications and the giddy anxiety of discussing my hopes.

There is one thing I do remember from those months in 1978, and I remember it in vivid detail. I was making my annual summer trip to Chicago, and it involved more than seeing friends and family. I had been accepted into both Northwestern and the University of Chicago before ultimately choosing to attend Columbia University. This trip offered a chance to reflect a little on what might have been. Those reflections were deepened by lunch with my Godmother, an accomplished educator who had attended both of elite Windy City institutions while accumulating her degrees. She had long been a hero of mine for the way she held forth at our kitchen table on matters of the day, Vietnam, Chicago politics, and Watergate. I think she was the one who introduced me to the term “Tricky Dick” in reference to Nixon. During my visit, she offered to buy me lunch. I thought this was some sort of confirmation of adulthood. We had burgers and beers (drinking age was only 18 back then), and as we were parting, she pulled me close, looked me in the eye, and told me that while I was about to learn a lot of great things in New York that there were two things I needed for success, “thick skin, poker face.” Then she laughed her usual laugh and repeated advice my Dad had already made about letting my white friends do the weed buys.

My Godmother retired in her 50s and spent the last quarter century of her life yacht racing in the Pacific Northwest. To me this reinforced the value of her advice though when I reached her age of retirement, I was working a minimum wage job at a grocery store and wondering what had gone wrong in my life. Recently, I’ve started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, I had allowed my skin to thicken a little too much. Perhaps I was putting up with too much BS.

These thoughts came racing to me a month ago when I was interviewed for a documentary film. The subject of the movie was about New Yorkers who lived in rent stabilized or rent controlled apartments and how below market rate rents had enabled their creative pastimes. I wasn’t a perfect fit for this thesis, but as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m not shy when it comes to talking about myself. She left her information with my crew at the store, and we arranged for a video chat the following week.

The interview got off to a shaky start when she referred to one of staffers as my boss (I get that sometimes, since my three staffers and white and I’m not, but I expected more due diligence from a researcher). Then she mentioned that she likes to come by the shop and sample our cheeses. I asked her which ones she buys regularly, and she said she never buys them and recoiled when I asked her how we were supposed to stay in business like that. Yet the conversation quickly regained its footing and before long I was regaling her with stories of living in a rent stable apartment in “the poet’s dormitory,” a legendary East Village building. My neighbors included legendary writers like Allen Ginsberg and punk rock pioneer and writer Richard Hell as well as less heralded but great poets and authors like John Godfrey, Greg Masters and Lorna Smedman, all of whom lived in rent control apartments. We talked for an hour.

Afterwards, I reiterated that I probably wasn’t the ideal fit for the thesis but some of the writers, I mentioned in the interview would be. Shall I reach out to them? Her response enraged me. She told me that she was interested but only if they lived in rent stable or rent controlled apartments.

I’ve known for a long time that a daily part of being Black (or female) is that you’re going to get your intelligence insulted often. In the late ‘60s, when I was growing up, both of my parents were the only African-Americans in their offices; some of my cooking skills stem from doing the prep for dinner while they had a martini to decompress and vent—and they liked their jobs, but still. The idea that I could invest as much time in her project as I did and not understand the thesis had me shaking my head. My skin wasn’t thick enough to absorb this, and maybe that was right. I decided not to recommend my former neighbors. Baseball rules, three strikes and you’re out. I’ve begun to apply this to other circumstances, and I’m feeling better about it. I don’t see myself retiring and yacht racing any time soon, but I am drinking less for medicinal purposes and that’s something.

Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Tidal, Bandcamp, Wine Enthusiast, Jazz Times, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Huffington Post, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com

Blinded by the Light 19: 40 Years!

Not the usual place to start a culinary career

Blinded by the Light 19: 40 Years!

How It Started

Like most people in the artisan cheese business, I stumbled on to it, but I wanted to be on the path that I was stumbling. It was summer of 1984, I had just begun writing professionally, but it seemed as if it might be a little while before my articles generated real income, so I needed some sort of side work. I had worked in the deli department of a grocery store when I was in high school in Dallas, and I’m from a family that cooks enthusiastically, so some sort of food work seemed like a logical choice. I saw an ad in the Village Voice for Bloomingdale’s Fresh Food department. It seemed like the right ticket. After a brief interview, I had a start date, July 17, 1984.

I was assigned to what was known as the pit, a four counter section that had prepared foods, gourmet cheeses (the word artisan hadn’t entered the lexicon back then) and cured meats. The prepared food was fairly obvious as were the cured meats (ham, turkey, salamis and this new Italian delicacy called Proscuitto). I quickly learned that the way you made a difference in the pit was knowing cheeses. I sampled everything and discussed it with my mentors. At the time I had no clue that you could make cheese from goat’s milk, but the fresh chevre from Interlaken NY, was tangy and light yet creamy in a seductive way. I thought it was Haagen Dazs vanilla without the sweetness. Basque sheep cheeses from France were buttery and subtly herbal. Many of my coworkers were also new to cheese and equally enraptured. We bought pocket guides to cheese and compared notes. After Bloomingdales, I landed at Petak’s, a small specialty food store on the Upper East Side, which was very, very ‘80s. In addition to the excitement of creating a new business; there was blow, lots and lots of blow. It was a positive experience, though, the steady stream of runners coming in from Central Park (the store was a block away from Engineers Gate) motivated me to get into fitness. I was one of those nerdy kids who yearned to be buff. The decade’s democratization of exercise enabled me to develop a healthy alternative to the inebriants at work. My day began breaking neatly into three segments: writing, fitness, and retail. In fact, it still does, though the fitness segments are shorter and less ambitious.

What Happened Then?

In the ‘90s, I began interviewing more often for full time journalism jobs. I had interviewed straight outta college in ’82 and was infamously told by the Times that my Ivy League degree notwithstanding, I wasn’t cut out for journalism because it required hard work. I wonder if that HR representative is alive to see the lazy, putrid reporting that passes for journalism today. I got some of the same BS in the ‘90s even though I had been working six days a week—and often seven—for years. An editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer told me that my hard working experience “doesn’t count; it’s freelance.” I enjoyed some schadenfreude in recent years as former staffers discovered how hard it is the live article to article, but only a little. I rued the chance to build a better brand and network via a staff affiliation. Meanwhile, since a staff job loomed (or so I thought), I turned down opportunities to sell cheese in places as far flung as London and Florida.

By the late ‘90s, dotcom accounts provided the income to make me self sufficient for a few years. When that crashed, I went back to splitting my professional time between retail and journalism. The journalism continued to go well. I began writing about sports and movies, but neither beat proved sustainable. I get it that I was no Richard Brody on cinema, but I’ll go to my grave wondering why this article didn’t catapult me to greater heights in sportswriting. I didn’t just call a title; I called a dynasty, yet it was one of my last major sports assignments.

By the mid-2010s, I focused on building my network, but It was hard. Everyone in cheese was young and many were snotty. I plugged an importers cheese in this wonderful NY Times article only to have him tell me to take a minimum wage gig a year later when I was looking for job leads. Many of my colleagues in music journalism zealously guarded their turf too. I moved my retail action to craft beer only to find advancement was a labyrinth spiked with glass ceilings.

Yet This Has a Happy Ending, Right?

Yeah, kinda. Via a series of pop up cheese tastings I did in the 2000s, I wound up doing the cheese programs for several wine bars. A teammate at one of the wine bars went on to become a buyer for a prominent wine store. When said store wanted to open a cheese shop, she sent me an email. Her boss and I corresponded, and three meetings later, I was rolling up my sleeves to open a cheese shop. And now, the shop is somewhat successful, and I can envision much more success ahead.

Am I happy? Sorta. I do wonder why it had to be so hard. On the other hand, there’s the satisfaction of having been given a needle to thread and having sewn a fashionable suit. And I often recall something Sonny Rollins said 39 years ago when I first interviewed him. “The glory isn’t in grasping the ring; the glory is in reaching for it.”

40 years after I stumbled on to this path of a career split between journalism and retail specialty food, I wake up every morning and reach for it. I’m fine with that.

I didn’t sew this suit the folks who work for Jean Paul Gaultier did. I occasionally wore it to work on cheese counters

Blinded by the Light 18: The Heat

Blinded by the Light 18: The Heat

As summer settled in, most New Yorkers could talk about only one thing, and it wasn’t President Biden’s debate performance and his qualifications going forward, or at least, it wasn’t just that. Most New Yorkers were talking about the heat. The Summer of ’21 was hot; the Summer of ’22 was hotter, the Summer of ’23 was hotter still, and this summer seems to be driving people off the deep end.

I’m observing with measured sympathy. New Yorkers don’t like extreme weather. All winter I repeat a shtick when locals complain about 38 degree chill in February. I tell them that I was born in Chicago, and you know what we call 38 degree weather? Spring! I’m tempted to vary that routine and tell my neighbors that I went to high school in Dallas, and you know what we call 95 degree heat in the Lone Star State? Spring! I don’t because I fear pushback that the heat is why too many Texans support politicians like Governor Greg Abbott or Senator Ted Cruz.

Instead, I nod sympathetically and go on about my way, warmed but not defeated by the heat, and Texas has a lot to do with my tolerance. In August 2004, I went back to Dallas to help my father. My Mom was having knee replacement surgery, and my Dad was well, in his final descent (he died in February 2006). On the plane, I thought about Dallas a lot. I hated the bullying I endured there and when I left for college, I had resolved to return as little as possible. In 2004, things were different, I was beginning to think that I should make my peace with my feelings about Dallas and acclimate since as a freelance writer, I might be the sibling running to take care of the parents a lot in the coming years (I wasn’t, my sister, an academic administrator took on those tasks with admirably dogged devotion). Nevertheless, during my week there, I worked on acclimating to that environment. And yeah, it was typical Dallas in August, I was acclimating to days of 105 degrees or hotter.

I managed by slowing down just a little and quieting my mind. Both were techniques I learned from years of yoga practice. I often practiced yoga in popular classes where it got really, really steamy. I routinely laughed at people who thought I wasn’t getting a workout from the classes. I had to launder my mat frequently due to all the sweat it absorbed. When I first started practicing, I thought lots of yoga enthusiasts were thin because they were vegan. I quickly realized that it was the calories they burned in class.

All of this may explain why I don’t own an air conditioner at home. I learned from yoga and relearned from my visit to Dallas in 2004, to not be so attached to conventional levels of comfort. Nonattachment has many abstract benefits, but I’m finding it has immense usefulness now. Meanwhile, I eat less and lighter. I’ve traded my base outfit from leggings and hoodies to light sweat pants and lighter t-shirts. And I really don’t mind if I have a thin coat of sweat. Given the vagaries of the climate crisis, I suspect extreme weather, especially summers, is with us to stay.

Do I tell all this to my sweaty neighbors. No, I figure it’s something best learned on your own devices. I just tell them that I don’t mind a little sweat, and that I’m hoping to lose some weight this summer just by existing. Seems like the best approach to the situation.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 28, Life During Wartime Part Three

Life on Aisle 2 Episode 28: Life During Wartime Part 3

This blog parses the changes in my middle age–how I went from working as a columnist at a major daily newspaper and a leading cheesemonger to being a beer buyer at a fancy grocery store–and how I maintain hope of finding happiness. It’s underpinned by an element of confusion fatigue, frustration fatigue and fatigue fatigue, but it’s about life and downward mobility in New York City, which is never dull.

Continued from Episode 26

And Episode 27

When my doctor called me to tell me the good news that my COVID 19 test was negative, I was in the kitchen chatting with my roommate, broaching the possibility that I might not go back to the store while the situation was so dangerous. I had been pondering the idea all weekend, while sort of informally furloughed awaiting my results. Was I really putting my life on the line for a grocery store? In particular, didn’t I have enough writing income to cover things for a few weeks?

I told my roommate the good news and then I texted my family and emailed a few longtime close friends. Then—over a beer of course—I began to take a good look at my situation. For most of the last year and change, I’ve had a full inbox of writing work, but I was hamstrung by late payments and occasional droughts due mostly to record release date changes. Early spring 2020, things seemed to be working as well as ever. Could my ever-fledgling writing work be counted on to carry the full load? Wasn’t that the dream? To be a self-supporting writer, even if only temporarily? I hadn’t enjoyed that kind of life in 20 years.

The following morning, I got my answer, no. Two assignments that were pegged for early and mid May moved taking with them the paychecks I had incorporated into my financial planning. In the big picture, that wasn’t a huge problem, but it did underscore that my income flow from writing was far too volatile; I needed the supplement from retail to be effective, or at the very least to keep me from worrying myself to death. I shrugged. As I went deeper and deeper into middle age (I turned 60 on the day after I got my results), I began to accept that in general society marginalizes me (and it’s far, far worse for women). Potential employers stopped telling me that they need someone who can work hard and began telling me that they needed someone who could move fast. Potential networking partners asked me to recommend writers to them and cited scribes in their 30s. In response I looked for a way of saying, “well, what about me?” But that feels hopeless.

Of course, it doesn’t mean I like the situation, just that I deal with it. So fine, I’ll include wandering through the empty caverns of Ghost Town Manhattan, masked and gloved and carefully cataloging any surface any part of my clothing comes in contact with, and I’ll make do. People who think that youth have a monopoly on grit are wrong. I’m really good at channeling resentment and frustration into energy; it’s part of the secret of how I work so hard and move so fast.

The further consideration in staying in retail was that no one knows when this situation is going to end. If we were five weeks out from a readily accessible vaccine, then I might have sat home anyway, but we’re probably not five months and maybe not even ten from that promised land. The kind of risks I’m taking are the kinds of risks that millions more will be taking in the coming months as states “reopen the economy” knowing full well that a second wave of the pandemic is in the offing.

With that kind of timeline in mind, I began to settle in for the long haul, normalizing the new normal. I pride myself on my adaptability, and it pleased me to see how I was pretty much reflexively cataloging anytime my body came into contact with a surface of unknown sanitary quality. For instance, recently my roommate was out of town but several deliveries from Amazon, Chewy and the like arrived for him. I easily remembered what part of the package hit my legs or arms as I carried it into the apartment, then wiped the package and those body parts with disinfectants and went on about my business as if it were all part of the process. I both think about what I will wear to retail and what I will change into as soon as I get home. I’ve started shopping for masks that will complement the ensemble I’m wearing.

Then I had to move the goal posts back to their accustomed position. I had been telling people I was “hanging in there,” and, though true, I hate that. I have goals, and I pride myself on striving usually little steps but occasionally large ones, every day, every.damn.day. So, I decided that this new normal afforded me chances to pursue them. For instance, since there were no concerts to cover, I began cooking more, a lot more. I aimed to add a few minutes of evening restorative yoga practice to my daily 20 minutes or so of more active asana practice. And I began to get back into cinema. Overall, it was a plan to be happier rather than merely contented. I still wanted to be some semblance of my 40 year old self, and again, following the mayhem of the early days of COVID New York, it began to feel possible again. I wouldn’t be hanging out in cool coffee and craft beer bars after taking yoga and dance classes but the spirit of doing so would be accessible to me. It was a big ask, but not an unreasonable one.

In the days leading up and just following the lockdown, I joked with customers on the beer aisle. I told them that as a freelance writer was well familiar with the insecurities and fear—the existential dread–that the present day had brought us. In some ways, I was, and in some ways, I had to accept the challenge to meet them. Life remains a struggle, but at least for me, that isn’t news.

Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Huffington Post, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com.

20200426_175654 — Before you reach Aisle 2, there is other information

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 27, Life During Wartime Part 2

20200407_182814 — The Atlantic Terminal Area at Rush Hour

Continued from Episode 26

When I arrived at my doctor’s office for a COVID 19 test, I found a substantial line, and I could see that there was a sign on the door. Not only am I a New Yorker, but I’m a music journalist when not working in the food biz. I’ve squirreled my way past many a line. I walked straight up to the door to read the sign despite a few people in line protesting.

I don’t remember the words of the sign, but the gist of it was simple, wait your turn in line.

It wasn’t tersely phrased, though some of the commentary from people in line was, that’s not my doctor’s approach. She’s remarkably affable. I often tell people that if I didn’t see her twice a year for checkups, I’d want to get coffee from time to time. I care about her and her kids, and the vagaries of being a single middle aged Mom in Manhattan. It makes people think that I have a crush on her; I don’t. If I had a crush on every attractive middle aged woman in New York City, I wouldn’t have headspace to accomplish anything else.

I got in line and made a joke to the woman in front of me that I felt like I was at Trader Joe’s again. She snapped back, “are you talking to me?”

Yeah, I guess this was a tense situation; comparing it to getting frozen burritos or jars of Thai green curry sauce wasn’t entirely appropriate. The line began to move slowly. I estimated that I was about 45 minutes away from seeing the doctor, and I drifted away in thought. My mind teetered on falling down several rabbit holes. For one, there was the discouragement that a job in a grocery store may has resulted in such potentially deadly circumstances. Did I work myself to death? I put those thoughts out of my mind. My nephew upon finding out that I was being tested texted me reminders that four out of five people contract COVID without needing hospitalization. Still, Gil Scott Heron’s “New York is Killing Me” echoed in my head. I thought about people I know who have not left their apartments since mid-March, and I wondered why I lacked that kind of prudence and discipline. And finally, I saw a wealth of woulda coulda shoulda’s during my professional life; I’m used to dismissing those. I’ve made a lot of really good moves too.

Yet then I found myself on a mental road that wasn’t so easily escaped. I pride myself on my adaptability and embrace of my vulnerability. I seemed to have failed at both of those qualities this time. Why had I fallen into the foolish pretense of bulletproof-ness at such an inopportune time. I looked down. I took a deep breath of resignation, fully aware that I was resisting the symptoms and looked at the line. It was shorter.

The woman in front of me, looked at me again. Her expression had softened. It looked like she now agreed with me; some light conversation might break the tension. She too worked at a grocery store, and she was with a younger coworker whose aunt was a patient of the doctor. I told her that I had been a patient for more than 10 years and thought the world of the doctor. That seemed to put her mind at ease. After a brief discussion of the weather the conversation fizzled. The thick air of tension seemed to be receding as the line shrunk. There were only three of us left; it was well after 9 p.m. The woman went in ahead of her colleague.

When she came out, she began raving about how great the doctor was. She was impressed by her cordial manner, especially since she had been working for nearly 12 hours. I smiled knowingly. The fact that my doctor closed her private practice to protect her staffers then found a way to be an asset during the crisis was her in a nutshell, but the loyalty she builds in her patients via her demeanor is more than icing on the cake. She saw me and smiled cautiously. She seemed happy that a regular would be the end of her workday.

Inside, we chatted about her kids, my family, my work. She asked if I was feeling symptomatic. I told her that I felt feverish the day before. She took my temperature—it was 97.9–and she gave me a look like “tell me again, why are you here?” I reminded her that I work in a grocery store. She ran down a questionnaire of telltale signs of the disease. Body aches? Not really. Taste/smell? Just fine. There were about ten others. She seemed pleased with the results. Then she broke out the monster sized Q Tips. After I shook off the effects of the nostril probing, we talked about when I could set up an appointment for a regular visit. Two months seemed like a good timetable. I was encouraged that she felt I’d be alive in two months. Her original email announcing the testing promised results in 24 hours; she said that since there was more testing—I smiled at that good news—results probably wouldn’t be in for three to five days.

I wended my way home through the ghost town that is today’s New York City, frankly too mentally tired to catalog every surface I touched. I simply resolved to give my jeans, boots and jacket a solid wipe down when I got home. It was 10, which meant it was too late to get takeout; I’d have to cook, but I was used to that by now.

I woke up Friday and texted my boss at the store that I’d gotten tested and expected results in a few days. He told me not to come in until I knew that I was healthy. A day off, a Friday off, was an especially good thing. It put in position to write an appreciation of Bill Withers for Huffington Post, an unsolicited assignment that came in just a I would have been wrapping up the writing part of my day to go to retail. And I began reading and listening to COVID narratives from people that had suffered from then beat it. I began to understand my doctor’s skeptical look. The symptoms I did feel were minute compared to what others had endured. Still just because I was relatively asymptomatic didn’t mean I wasn’t infected.

I awoke Saturday with the kind of shot out of a cannon energy I hadn’t felt in months. It occurred to me that it had been a long time since I had had four days in a row off from retail and slept in my own bed during that span. I felt great on Sunday too. My roommate and I began discussing our gameplan for what we’d do if I tested positive. It was during one of those discussions, which took place with me in the kitchen cooking something and him on the sofa grading papers, our usual positions, that the call came from the doctor. I didn’t get it as the phone was in the bedroom and my ringer was turned off.

I took a deep breath when I saw that she called. The vibe from many of my friends and a few relatives was that I could beat this thing. I looked at my text-based voicemail. I had to read it and reread it to absorb the answer: I was negative. I told my roommate to put the plans on hold. He was grinning ear to ear. I went to the bedroom to text my family and email some friends. In the email I said that I’d dodged the bullet, but I had many more trips through the battlefield. I poured a beer (Other Half DDH Oh, in case you’re wondering) and began to examine if there was a way out of this mess. My body seemed up to the challenge, but my nervous system could use a break.

To be continued

Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com.

20200324_194349 — Day or night, there’s always a line to get into Duane Reade now

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 26 Life During Wartime

The view from just south of Union Square on a Friday night.

For years, I used the term existential dread metaphorically. It was in reference to a way of life from my late 30s and early 40s that I still feel closely attached to two decades later. My increased attachment was in response to the reality that those days–and my lifestyle from that era–were as gone as jitterbuggers, Edsels and reel to reel tape. Still I felt somewhat prideful that my nostalgia was for my early middle age, not the giddy post-collegiate years that many of my friends yearned for. Yet I dreaded that that existence was gone and wasn’t coming back. Each major cataclysm—the dotcom crash, 9/11, the Great Recession– bore the era further and further into the fog of history.

The new cataclysm, the onset of the novel coronavirus and COVID 19, has me using the term existential dread in a far more representative way. Aisle 2, in case you’ve forgotten, is in an 18,000 square foot grocery store. So, while millions of American workers got used to working at home, and millions of others got used to navigating the bureaucracy of unemployment applications. I got used to my roommate reading up on whether jeans or yoga pants should be my work clothing since the viral material lasts longer on synthetic fabrics. It’s not a minor concern. He has risk factors; hell, I have risk factors. He’d rather not risk catching the virus at home. Hell, he’d rather not catch the virus, and needless to say, I share that sentiment even though I travel via the subway to a risky work environment in the age of a lethal, highly infectious disease.

The weeks since the mid-March shelter in place orders have left me feeling that what used to be routine, banal even, has now become life threatening, both for me and for those around me. My rides on the subway are positively harrowing because whether day or night, the cars are empty; and now the wait at 1 pm is about the same as the wait used to be at 1 a.m. The streets are deserted. There’s a real sense that the zombie apocalypse is upon us and everyone else got the memo while mine went to spam. And that sense intensified as the few eateries that initially remained open, closed their doors. I was here for 9/11, and it wasn’t anywhere near this desolate.

At the store the vibe is completely different. The crisis has yanked the store into the 2020s. We’ve gone from something like 80% walk in traffic and 20% deliveries to something like (the caveat is that this is based on observation, not data) 65/35 the other way. It’s meant creating a fulfillment staff on the dead run, and it’s left me to patrol far more than Aisle 2, assisting many more customers throughout the entire store, often at a distance of less than six feet. The job is already exhausting and stressful. This has added new layers of tension to it.

Oddly, those episodes are completely contrasted by the sheer phenomenon on Aisle 2. Alcoholic beverage sales are up during the lockdown anyway, and my craft beer program has become a rock star again. With on premise consumption of well, anything, banned, and many bars either closed or only open for retail purposes, many brewers whose divine nectars I used to beg for, are now sending me their cans on a weekly basis. So sure, we’re selling lots more Victory, Six Point, Bells and Lagunitas, but we’re also selling lots and lots of Other Half, Hudson Valley, Aslin and Equilibrium. People are coming from well beyond the neighborhood and loading up six, eight, even 10 or 12 cans at a time. And other top brewers that we routinely carry like Finback, Grimm, Lawson’s and Industrial Arts are flying off the shelves too. The crazy thing is that close to half of my regular customers are away, sheltering in place somewhere out of city, which is an epicenter of the virus.

The emotional swings from euphoria on the beer aisle to alternating currents of panic and gratitude elsewhere in the store, to something bordering on fear on the streets and in the subways exhausts me, but I can’t be. I try and carefully catalog what parts of my body have come in contact with surfaces of uncertain cleaning. I used to sit on the trains, enjoying the rarity of it, but I began wearying of wiping down my jeans and the back of my jacket. Now I stand, and I’m not the only one enduring the absurdity of standing in an empty subway car, so that the only surface was a gloved hand. Then upon exiting the subway, I change gloves. The busses are free, and it’s impossible to stand and maintain expected social distance, so I sit on the edge of my seat as if I were watching a close NBA game (and I rue the nostalgia of watching NBA games period).

For a couple of weeks, these meticulous endeavors were evolving into a ritual of security. Then, I began noticing that I felt more tired in the latter stages of my retail shift. Not knocked out tired, but wearier than I’d been. My uber rational inner voice rationalized the fatigue as only natural. On my retail days, I work on writing endeavors for five or six hours then run around the store for seven or eight. I was almost 60, and I ate less because all my go to places for a quick snack, a wrap here, noodles there were closed. I felt moments of headaches and sore throat, but uber rational voice dismissed them as momentary. Then one night I ran a fever for about an hour before Tylenol restored order. My uber rational voice was quiet.

I’m especially fortunate. My doctor had shut down her private practice to minimize the exposure of her staff to people with the virus, and she was now doing tests for established patients and anyone else who wanted it. I went online to make an appointment immediately. My doctor is great and like me, she’s a workaholic. My appointment was 8:30 that Thursday night. I figured I’d be the only one there. I got there and there was a line, not a Trader Joe’s level line, but a considerable line. It gave me time to gather my thoughts.

To be continued.

The Q Train leaving the Barclay’s Center stop midday.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 25 Flavor Matters

20190513_184831 — Garlic, onion, ground beef, chopped tomatoes, bell peppers before they meet the pasta

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like Episode 25, Flavor Matters

About six years ago, I was in a small, Upper East Side wine boutique hawking some artisan cheese as a means of promoting a wine and cheese event there that I was co-hosting when in walked an extraordinarily well dressed woman, even by the standards of a nabe where low six figures puts you toward the bottom of the local income strata. It turns out she was a VP at a well known fashion company, and I wouldn’t say she looked like she stepped off the runway, because her magnificent ensemble spoke of both taste and battles fought and won, battles fought to a draw and either won later or de-emphasized and battles confidently in progress. In other words, her appearance expressed a celebration of decades of success, not the mere good fortune of a teenager with high cheekbones and very little body fat.

She politely declined the cheese samples, walked straight to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of the cheapest California Chardonnay in the store, paid for it, chatted amiably with the owner for a moment and left. After the door closed, he told me of her position, and I wondered if she was cooking something with the wine. My brow furrowed a little when he told me that the cheap bottle was her go to selection; I would have thought something a tad more upscale, a Chablis, for instance, might have been more appropriate. He told me that if she can’t taste the difference between cheap and expensive wines, then cheaper ones were the way to go.

It made perfect sense, but I have struggled in the years since to apply it to my own life, because I can taste the difference, and the bolder and more nuanced flavors have become a necessity. I thought of it on a recent weekend, when a cashflow crunch reduced me to only a few dollars until Monday. I could afford one beer, and my choice was a double IPA from Lone Pine, a brewer in Maine whose cans are new to NYC. I could have bought twice as much Modelo for the price, but I didn’t consider it; the bright, intense, citrusy flavors of the Lone Pine would keep me from numbing, which was essential.

Numbing has been an important coping mechanism—a reflex even—during the last two decades as I descended from middle class to the semi-bohemian working poor strata I now occupy. It’s a way of stemming the pain when I can’t even think of attending a friend’s 60^th birthday party because it’s out of town, or I can’t make rent because a writing client is late, or because my landlord just served me court papers or because I can’t remember the last time I took a vacation (it was more than a decade ago) or simply because the weekend is lost to a cashflow crunch because a direct deposit didn’t hit on time. It combats stress, but it also combats sadness anytime I bond with a woman of interest and then she cools because I’m broke and too old. Essentially, it’s narrowing the range of possible outcomes because most of them are not good, and it’s especially essential for someone who spends three days a week interacting with the public

All this numbing seems quite savvy (I strongly suspect it’s my version of “chilling,” i.e. not letting anything bother me or even better an emotional equivalent of opioids), but my current goal is to lose the capacity or at least the reflex. I’m looking to return to a headspace of my earlier days.

I’m fond of saying that I discovered my inner dancer in my mid to late 30s, and that began my happiest time as an adult. Besides biking and a variety of yoga classes, fitness back then often meant the most complex, funky dance classes at my gym, and the skill of moving to beats and reflecting the spirit of the music, enabled me to feel the energy of the world around me much more intensely when I was merely executing the choreography of moving through Manhattan. But then the dotcoms crashed. journalism work, my primary income back then, began to evaporate, then the Great Recession happened, and my culinary work also became dicey. The energy of the world around me became much less inviting, and at times, it was simply menacing. My body began to show signs of age and frailty, so dancing became out of the question. Flavor, be it in a double ipa, a slice of pizza with pecorino, prosciutto and pineapple, or an affordable variation on scallops that I cooked annually for my mother, became my escape from numbville. I would feel the energy of the world in a positive way for at least a few moments.

Things are different now. I’ve abandoned my one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan for a share of a nice place in Brooklyn’s Prospect Lefferts Gardens. The view outside my bedroom window is no longer the gray, grimy airshaft of my building but a sunny, green courtyard. I’ve added steady, interesting regular writing work at a branch of CUNY. I’ve resumed doing yoga albeit a self-practice for about a half hour a day and one hour on weekends. What I haven’t done is roll back the numbing reflex. I’d like to. Even if my world lacks the sunny optimism of the dotcom days; for the first time since then—yes, we’re literally talking two decades, a third of my life and half of my adulthood– I’m absolutely certain that I’m moving in the right direction. Yet the emotional responses of a far more fraught time still exist, practically hard wired into my psyche. I think this is what people mean when they talk of economic PTSD.

I’ve thought of several ways to transition out of this mindspace, but many of them like spending five minutes dancing to a song from those classes in the 90s or some music I feel comparably close to (oh say, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, or Meg Meyers version of it) feel too ambitious for my current fitness level. Meditation is another good idea but quieting a mind that has been standing-near-the- speakers-at-a-death-metal-concert loud also won’t come easy. Instead, I’ve settled on daily agenda making (once the weather warms a little, I’ll try and do it in the courtyard). It will be a way of enforcing that my personal glasnost is in full effect. The big picture task is how to progress further and faster rather than how not to fall backwards into the abyss.

And of course, one of the agenda items will be to cook more and more interesting foods. I drink good stuff as a professional necessity but surrounding myself with flavor will become a celebration of the progress rather than a pushback against the numbing.

20190302_113713 — Even on a cold, wintry day, the view outside my window is pretty cheery

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 24, Five Years!

a95eb-1f7ahq0ixuz_rb3aq_sz0cq — What was supposed to be a way station has become a destination.

Reflexively, when I’m on the aisle, I cite my experience. It’s mostly to keep people from thinking that the stock guy is chatty. I’ll preface my observations about the availability of this brewery or that beer with “in my three and half or four plus or so year as a buyer…” Recently I was in that exact sentence structure, when I realized it was my fifth anniversary as the craft beer buyer at the store. My thought process came to a screeching halt even though my mouth kept moving as I explained that I’d inquire about the beer that the customer was looking for.

Five years!! A David Bowie song took over the mental jukebox.

That took a minute to settle in. When I shook hands on the gig, I thought for sure it would be a two to three-year run. I’d need a year to get to know the New York City craft beer landscape, a year or so to build the program into a force, then a year finding my way into a gig at brewery or a distributorship. I nailed the first two, but clearly things had subsequently gone awry.

That isn’t new for me. Most of the last two decades have been spent in a scramble. Journalism income fluctuated wildly then ultimately failed to produce a living wage. I bumped up my work in the cheese business to a professional level. Then, suddenly that failed too. Looking ahead to a dire future, I shifted to craft beer and rebuilt some journalism income (now, fully aware that it would probably never fully support me again) and well, here I was. All that pivoting—sometimes changing directions in mid-air—looks savvy from a distance, but the desperation takes a toll. I wondered if I was still on the right path toward a sustainable solvency or had I chosen—albeit quite reasonably—to pause on a sturdy ledge with much more climbing ahead. I no longer had an unshakable faith that I knew what I was doing, yet I rarely paused to take stock. I typically call my Saturday afternoons, when I’m free from retail and stop journalism-ing around 2, my regroup and refocus time, but that only deals with short term matters like how will I pay the rent next month. Longer term issues don’t factor in.

With the year and the decade approaching conclusion, a reconsideration seemed overdue. When I tumbled down that rabbit hole, the first thing I considered was what went wrong with the most recent plan. This is something I’m bitterly tired of doing. I come from a family of dogged overachievers, and I fit in perfectly with them for 40 years. Why do things keep falling apart?

When my outlook cleared of past frustrations, I looked at the craft beer community. Who looked like me? Well, no one. The sales representatives, marketing people and brewers were not just younger (and whiter but that’s a barrier I’m well accustomed to overcoming) but they were MUCH younger. There were no “cool uncles” in the midst; in fact, there was only one cool aunt. That wasn’t enraging; rather it was relieving. I had built one of the best retail craft beer programs in New York City, but I was a unicorn, by definition a hard fit. Secondly, I had to look in context. When I pursued other craft beer work in 2016 or early 2017, I was just a couple of years removed from a three year stretch where knee issues resulted in needing a cane. While I thought of myself in the present tense as the guy who can do journalism from 9-1 on Fridays then a retail shift that is usually 2-12 but sometimes extends until one. Afterward, I spend ten minutes stretching to counter the toll of running cases of beer and well, yes, White Claw around an 18,000 square foot space. I finish the night with a quick beer at a nearby bar then I pick up Korean fried chicken and head home with a head of energy. I wake up at 9 on Saturday at get back at it. So, my reality probably conflicted with those of my potential allies, who probably remembered me as the overweight old dude hobbling around a store.

So I probably was an exile in bro-ville.

All of which was a great realization. I could stop my inner demons from pounding my self esteem to a pulp over my perceived lack of progress toward my goals. But the bigger question was where was I going, did I know how to get there? If I no longer trusted my ambition’s GPS, what could I do?

I make a better Sisyphus than Icarus. I never tire of rolling that rock up the hill, and even though I’ve had eight book proposals fail to get a deal, I was mostly undaunted when a new idea occurred to me and I began outlining the outline and plotting the research. The last few failed because of a lack of brand as a writer. I built the store a superb brand as an outlet for some of the finest craft beers available in NYC; I’ll have to use similar tactics for my writing career. Perhaps I’m letting the fact that I’ve written for most of the leading publications and presently write for one of the world’s leading newspapers speak for itself. I’ll have to devise a bullhorn.

I always feared opening a place of my own would be an Icarusian episode, but an idea for one in my new Brooklyn nabe occurred to me. I kept mulling it until I saw a way to make it profitable beyond simply attracting the beer enthusiasts of Flatbush Avenue to the venue.

I think I’ve figured out a way on the business (now, all I have to do is learn the rudiments of starting one) and I feel good about the book prospects despite so many great ideas lying in rubble near me. So maybe I reached a perch of stability and am looking toward sustainable solvency ahead. I think so. I’ve been wrong before, but I think this is the way. If it isn’t, I’ll shrug and figure out another path even if shrugging is hard.

***

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 23, An All Too Familiar Feeling

CB Dorset — Consider Bardwell Dorset, R.I.P

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 23, An All Too Familiar Feeling

Earlier this year, I applied for a Google Podcast Creator grant in tandem with a young French music journalist that I met while shopping for a new living situation in late 2018. She brought great energy, enthusiasm and connections to the project. For me, I’ve rolled enough rocks up a hill only to see them go tumbling back down, that her involvement kept my usual Sisyphean pessimism from setting in.

We differed on a key aspect of the proposal, however. She thought it should be about music and cheese, and I thought it should be about music and politics. From her French perspective, cheese was underappreciated in America, and I couldn’t agree more. But from my former cheesemonger’s perspective, the approach to cheese was a little more dire. I love cheese but I fear for it too. The best cheeses come from small dairy farms and small dairy farms like small farms in general are getting clobbered by the dual forces of global capital concentration and climate crisis. I feared that a podcast on cheese would be a recurring, painful obituary.

I thought about that this week when the news hit that the wonderful Vermont cheesemakers Consider Bardwell would be shutting down. They had been in the news about a month earlier for a product recall due to fears of a potential listeria presence, and in the aftermath, they determined that it simply wasn’t economically feasible to continue making cheese.

This isn’t surprising and that’s the saddest element of it all. Nobody goes into cheesemaking to make lots of money. It’s a passion project abetted by skin of your teeth profits. The difference between success and failure is a very thin line, and it’s mirrored by the struggles of retailers in New York where Lucy’s Whey has vanished and both Saxelby Cheesemongers and Malt and Mold have left the once funky and now quite tony Lower East Side.

Even though it had only been around since 2004, Consider Bardwell felt like an institution. Cheeses like Rupert, Manchester and their signature Dorset were on the short list of many New York City cheesemongers. They were cheeses that were unusually sophisticated. They had subtle distinctive flavors. They seemed well suited for cheese plates and unsuited for sandwiches or macaroni and cheese. They made cheese lovers cheeses.

I vividly recall the first time I had their cheeses. It was 2004, and I was working at Bedford Cheese Shop when a shipment arrived. It was anticipated by the bosses and a hush practically came over the shop as the cheeses were unpacked. A wheel was cut, grassy buttery flavors were savored. As customers came in, samples were given. A half wheel was sold in quarter and half pound increments before it was rewrapped. During those heady days it was an oft repeated scene. Arrivals from Twig Farm, Andante, and Capriole in America, Rolf Beeler, Casa Madaio and Neal’s Yard Diary from abroad were events, moments to quiet one’s mind and alert the senses.

The news of their closure hit on Thursday as I was buying cheeses for a class that night at the 92^nd St. Y. When Andrew, the Cheesemonger at Formaggio Essex conveyed the news, there was a depressing familiarity to the feeling. It was from journalism, and it felt the same way it did talking to others in the business when ESPN of the New York Daily News or Buzzfeed or whatever announced significant layoffs. It was the feeling that this once great place to be professionally wasn’t so great anymore and might never be viable again. As I wandered into the Manhattan sunset, shoulders slumped ever so slightly, I reminded myself that this is why I’m in the craft beer business. Breweries are certainly not immune to the vagaries of contemporary capitalism, but the closure of one doesn’t feel like a death knell of a sector.

In the end, we didn’t get our grant or even make the finals as I had the previous year for a proposal built around this blog. I suspect that my colleague’s idea might have been more suitable to Google’s interest. It was more whimsical, less conventional. But I know the story of my life, and when I tell it, I’d like to focus on the episodes of resilience and triumph, not tragedy.

Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and cinema has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsday, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The Root, Slate, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications and websites. He also blogs at Rotations, and he can be contacted at thejoyofcheese@gmail.com.

CB Rupert (photo from murrayscheese.com)

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 22: The White Claw Effect

White Claw BC 6 — Something like a phenomenon; by some estimates it outsold Bud this summer.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 22, The White Claw Effect

This blog parses the changes in my middle age and how I went from working as a columnist at a major daily newspaper and a leading cheesemonger to being a beer buyer at a fancy grocery store and how I maintain hope of finding happiness. It’s underpinned by an element of confusion fatigue, frustration fatigue and fatigue fatigue, but it’s about life and downward mobility in New York City 2018 and 2019, which is never dull.

The biggest story in the craft beer world this year isn’t about a beer at all. But because craft beer is largely misunderstood insufficiently understood, its impact is worth discussing. The “it” is White Claw, which is by far the industry leader in a fast-emerging sector known as hard seltzer; these are fermented beverages usually seasoned with fruit of some sort. They are light calorically and refreshing, sort of as if LaCroix or your favorite flavored Italian seltzer contained 5% ABV.

Sales are through the roof. Since its introduction in 2015, hard seltzer sales have soared with triple digit increases every year. By some estimates 2.5 billion dollars of the stuff was sold last year and yes, that number is may be on pace double this year; some contend that the stuff outsold Budweiser this summer. This rapid rise parallels craft beer which has gone from 8.7 billion dollar in sales in 2011 to 27.6 billion in 2018. Get in at the right time and an investment in the right sort of alcoholic beverage will pay off handsomely.

But White Claw and its ilk, principally Truly, which is owned by Boston Beer (the brewers of popular craft beer lines like Sam Adams and Dogfish Head) and both Bon & Viv and Natural Light Seltzer, which are owned by Anheuser-Busch, aren’t having a tangible effect on craft beer sales for one very important fact: their constituencies have minimal overlap. And in the long run, the trend could benefit craft beer.

First off, consider this scenario. Four young people walk into a bar with an especially well stocked selection of spirits. One person orders a single malt scotch, another orders a martini and specifies the gin, a third asks about the small batch bourbon and the fourth orders a vodka tonic. Right, the fourth person in general is the White Claw drinker, and no, that’s not intended as a disparagement. There are a lot of things in the world to get admirably geeky about. Obsessing about alcoholic beverages isn’t a necessity for sophistication. Low information drinkers should not be lumped into the same heap as low information voters! But, in that context, the beverages that White Claw is hurting are Angry Orchard, the cider produced by Boston Beer, Bud Light, Stella Artois, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, etc. Yes, the beer/cider equivalents of that vodka tonic. As sales of White Claw, et al have soared the sales at my store of those beverages have plateaued or declined.

It’s easy to taste why. White Claw (and its ilk, but…) is easy drinking and refreshing. And it has just enough ABV to take a load off without hurting you in the morning. To my observations on Aisle 2, the White Claw crowd is very, very young. The craft beer crowd has a reputation for being youthful, but that’s overplayed a little. You don’t put up numbers like those in craft beer without reaching all demographics. I have as many knowledgeable, enthusiastic middle-aged women among my avid craft beer constituents as I do young men.

Not that there’s anything wrong with having a very young constituency, that crowd has money and is eager to brand themselves by embracing the shiny new toy. It’s that spirit that fueled craft beer’s early rise as youngsters abandoned Miller or whatever for Brooklyn Brewery or Sierra Nevada, and the latest rise has been fueled in part by young adults abandoning those brands for super small local brewers like Other Half, Tree House and Monkish. But the shelf life of something as the shiny new toy isn’t long. This isn’t a dire prediction, hard seltzers–like Uggs and low-slung jeans–are here to stay, but their current moment and heat isn’t sustainable. Some of the drinkers will go elsewhere, and one of the destinations is likely to be, ahem, craft beer.

The two biggest trends in craft beer right now are hazy, fruit forward India Pale Ales, and oak aged, fruit forward sours. Notice the word repeat in that past sentence. People who think all beer is dry, grain forward in flavor and somewhat bitter, are in for a big surprise; the trend in craft beer is toward beverages that are lighter, food friendly and um, rather refreshing. Not only are these beers not vinegary or bitter like other brews in that category, most of the sours and many of the IPAs are also low alcohol and a short culinary move from the flavors of hard seltzers.

I’ve already had a few customers tell me that they are fans of Crooked Stave’s Sour Rose, St. Bretta and Wild Sage beers precisely because they are like a vodka tonic but with more flavor. When the inevitable fatigue arrives in the hard seltzer market, craft beer will probably absorb some of those customers. It will be more proof of the resilience of the craft beer market, which isn’t a bubble but a fundamental restructuring of American drinking habits, even if that isn’t a sexy story.

White Claw shipment — We were ready for the weekend. On Monday, we ordered more.