Blinded by the Light 16: The Long Walk

The walk along east 15th Street involves both new buildings and building that used to be new.

Blinded by the Light 16: The Long Walk

Hi, I’m 63 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.

Almost every New Yorker has an area that isn’t homebase but familiar enough to feel like it. For me, it was the few blocks along 15^th Street that extend from Union Square toward 1^st Avenue. In the late ‘80s when I first moved to the East Village, those blocks were my way home from the subway. I’d walk past the luxury apartment towers that back then felt incongruous (now they feel like the norm), the private school, some doctor’s offices and into the lower-lying residential area that was my new home. Eventually, I began riding a bicycle to and fro, so those blocks receded into an almost sepia toned past.

Then four years ago, I took that walk again and it felt totally different. It was the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns. I no longer lived in the East Village, having moved a year or so earlier to Brooklyn. And now, one of the doctor’s offices belonged to my doctor. She had closed her office to spare her staff the risk of infection, and she was doing testing. You signed up online for a time and lined up outside of her office. This initially felt admirable, until one evening in late March, when I felt feverish, a symptom of COVID.

My innards had been on red alert even before the lockdowns began. I worked at a grocery store, the very definition of a public facing job. I had already endured customers yelling at me, spitting on me and doing all the other things New Yorkers do when they can’t have every single desire fulfilled immediately and cheerfully. My roommate was astonished and consternated that I had kept the job, but I figured he’d be even more consternated if I couldn’t pay rent; writing assignments were hard to come by, and those that did were painfully late in payments.

As I walked, I passed a pub that was formerly a noted jazz club, and my mind drifted happily from the terror I felt inside to memories of extraordinary music I’d heard there, Hank Jones and Abbey Lincoln came to mind. Then it occurred to me, I was being far too timid about my fate, perhaps the cantankerous spirit of Lincoln was inspiring me). I was 59 (at the time), I had decades of experience as a journalist, I was a respected professional in the food biz with substantial knowledge in two fields, craft beer and artisan cheese. How the hell did I wind up in harm’s way like this?

I didn’t have to think too long about it. The thing was that I’m from the kind of middle class family that you were taught not to complain. We weren’t that kind of African American. My Dad went to the University of Chicago but didn’t get a job commensurate with education for 15 years. We were taught to channel our anger into energy and ambition. I might be stricken with a deadly disease; it might be time to acknowledge that this noble strategy didn’t always work. I also realized that by keeping my failures to myself, I had let them eat away at my self-esteem. It is true that I’m not the first Black man to suffer from racism, but I often felt that I hadn’t overcome those barriers as well as others. However, as I crossed Second Avenue and got in line outside the doctor’s office, I began thinking that I had it wrong, this isn’t the We Shall Overcome Olympics, and that I should talk about all the potential employers who looked me in the eye and said I wasn’t qualified because the job required hard work or that I was “so not the type.” I don’t think my peer group thinks that racism ended after Dr. King’s Washington Monument speech or Obama’s election, but it felt important to explain that while some people might have thought that a minimum wage job at a grocery store was a good fit for my Ivy League alumni ass, there were extenuating circumstances that needed to be brought to light.

The visit to the doctor was calming. She tested me (it was the first time in a long time that I’d had anything that far up my nose). Then we talked about my diet and about how her daughter was going to manage her collegiate visits (she’d been my doctor for 10 years at that point, I’d met her kids when she shopped for cheese with me. She said she didn’t think that I would test positive.

My boss at the grocery store who was on top of matters (he required masks a week before lockdowns began and distributed new ones with our weekly paychecks), put me on leave while I awaited my test results. My first afternoon off, an editor from many years ago reached out and asked if I could write an appreciation of Bill Withers for her at Huffington Post Black Voices. I happily accepted. Four hours later, the piece was live, and Huffpo tweeted links to it almost hourly. It was the polar opposite of Wall Street Journal, where my work hides from pubic view behind a paywall. My network began to swell.

Later that weekend, I got a call from my doctor. I had tested negative. That began a streak that continues today. I’ve tested negative 47 straight times. I still work in a public facing job, though it’s a far better one, I manage a small cheese shop. I still wear a mask on public transportation. Not only have I not suffered from COVID, but I’ve had only a stomach virus and a mild case of sniffles in four years.

Meanwhile, lots of people saw the Withers piece, and via my rapidly expanding Twitter network, I began receiving work from NPR, Bandcamp, TIDAL and Mic. At a time when most sixtysomething journalists were struggling to survive, my inbox was constantly overflowing.

A few weeks ago, I took that walk again. I was on my way to the doctor for a routine appointment. I no longer thought about the ‘80s. I thought a little bit about that night, and how in the aftermath of my realization, my self-esteem has improved, and it made all the success that followed feel less like a fluke and more like the proper result of a lot of really hard work.

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 06: Modern Love

It seemed like a nice setting for a casual get together.

Hi, I’m 63 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 of 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.

“What are you looking for?” asked the woman across the table from me. It was a Friday night, and I thought we were visiting a nice Union Square area wine bar for a casual get together. When she arrived in a tight white top, a black pleather knee length skirt and strappy high heels, I began to change my expectations. I knew her from the store where she was an occasional customer. But until she strode smiling into the bar, I hadn’t considered this a date. I was weary from a long day in retail (and a couple of hours of journalism before I left for the store), but motivated by the gorgeousness across the table, I was quickly locating extra reserves of energy. But this question threw me.

“A woman just like you,” felt like the right answer even if it was a tad performative and well, cheesy. However, the truth was that I wasn’t really looking for anyone. I was still clearing the debris in my psyche from years (two decades really) of regarding myself as a failure. I had an elite college education and substantial professional skills, but most of the last 20 years keeping a roof over my head had been a fervent struggle. I was searching for a concise way to phrase all of that when she grew impatient and began rattling off gay stereotypes and repeated her question.

My previous train of thought went off the rails and tumbled down a mountainside. When you’re 63 and still single, you get used to being misunderstood, but this was a doozy. I smiled and told her I was straight and hoped to explain that my glasses had all but fogged up upon the sight of her that evening, but before I could charm my way out of an awkward situation, she bellowed, “you’re straight?!” loud enough for our table neighbors to hear.

Her plan had been to meet me for wine and snacks then take me to all of her favorite gay bars to hook me up with the idea that I’d reciprocate. I ordered a bottle of Sancerre and another plate of oysters and crab cakes to nosh on; this was going to take some time to untangle.

The woman across the table is in her late 30s, and her biological clock has her in near panic phase about meeting Mr. Right. For instance, I went to the restroom and returned to find her pestering the bartender for advice on meeting guys in the area. That’ s not ridicule; I admired her intensity, and I wondered if I ever felt that passionately about being in a relationship and if not, why not. I spent the next few minutes explaining that I wasn’t really in the market (though I would have happily made an exception for my present company). I needed to get my self esteem back in order first. I thought this was prudent. She thought I was lying.

I wasn’t. If anyone was ever fated to be single at 63, it might be me. I spent my high school years in Dallas Texas living in a neighborhood where we were one of the few Black families. During those four years, I had two girlfriends, a white woman whose parents forbid us to date only two weeks into the relationship. It’s a shame, one of our first dates was to repertory cinema for the first of two nights of the Fassbinder classic The Marriage of Maria Braun. On the second night I bumped into her coming out of a screening as I was I going in to the next one. After staying up until the wee hours talking about the movie’s epic scope and wonderful cinematography, we both had to see it again before if left town. That relationship crashed but it was better than the one I had with a Black classmate, whose father forbade her to date me because he didn’t want her seeing an “Uncle Tom,” a designation I earned because of my lack of a pronounced “Black” accent. These days I think people would say I sound like the 44^th President. Back then, I was called Uncle Tom early and often; it fueled my desire to get out of town as quickly as possible.

Then I went to an all-male school in New York, and after college, failing to land a professional job, I have worked six and often seven days a week for 41 years to make ends meet. The economic pressures have forced me to numb so thoroughly not to be enveloped by the pain and agony of my struggles. It’s hard to be responsive when you’re numb. About six years ago, when I was working as the craft beer buyer at the fancy grocery store in the East Village, I was sampling our new Other Half IPA and a gorgeous middle-aged woman tried some, looked me in the eye, and said “oh, I LOVE Other Half.” Rather than ask her if she’d been to the brewery’s new facility in Domino Park (a great site for a beer date), I retreated, fearing that the stench of my failures would soon drive her away anyway (it had done so with several other women), and explained that we were now carrying several varieties of beer from Other Half and thanked her for taking a sample. Some people can date when they’re broke; I can’t, and broke has been a way of life for so long, that now that it isn’t, I need some time to parse the new reality. Thus, my relationship history is my much of the rest of my life, a complicated failure. At least so far it is I don’t think I’m done. I’ve had some glorious infatuations, and some lovely short-term affairs, and I use that for evidence in the belief that I can still be meaningful to someone.

My Friday night companion wasn’t buying the abbreviated version of the above, but she did grasp that after a 11-hour workday, I wasn’t interested in a night on the town, so we traded war stories about our dating failures, visited a friend of hers who had just opened a wine shop then Ubered to our respective homes.

Over coffee the following morning, I reconsidered her question. I think the right answer is that I’m looking for a woman who is tired of “potential.” I am too, but in a different way. I’m tired of potential job security, potential steady income, and potential solvency. It took 20 years of middle age searching, but I think I’m achieving real versions of those things. I wonder if that answer would have led to a better evening.

Blinded by the Light 02: Well, How Did I Get Here? Pt 2

Columbus Avenue: The View from near the store

Blinded By the Light 02: Well, How Did I Get Here? Part Two

Hi, I’m 63 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 awake every morning free of 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.

One morning, shortly before a family event, my niece asked me about the trajectory of my journalism career, “why did you choose to freelance?”

I smiled on the outside and grimaced internally and told her that it was complicated. She furrowed her brow. My niece has two master’s degrees, each from an elite institution and like most Black women, she’s run out of patience with her intellect being taken lightly. Twice she’s been hired in her field only to be treated like an intern. I knew I needed a better answer.

“Let’s just say that freelancing chose me.” She nodded, getting the gist of my answer. We shared a little laugh and returned our focus to the preparations for the event.

In reality, both answers are true. It is complicated, and at some level, freelancing chose me. You see, I’ve always wanted to be a journalist. Well not always always, but close; if ever a kid was going to pop out his mom’s womb reading the paper, it might have been me. I grew up with siblings a decade or more my senior, and in the late ‘60s, our kitchen table was a forum for my parents, aunts and uncles, siblings and various family friends to debate and discuss issues like Vietnam, Civil Rights, Nixon and the like. I thought it was the hippest place. Everyone sounded so knowledgeable, and I could tell they took pride in their intellect. That’s what I related to most. I was an excellent student and the elders in my neighborhood, Chicago’s Hyde Park/Kenwood, made it clear to me that big things were expected of me (like maybe going to the school down the block, the University of Chicago). I had been reading the newspaper since I was five years old; I followed the ’65 pennant race via the standings in the Sports section. So, it was no big transition to start reading the front of the paper too. It gave me a chance to participate in the cool kids’ discussion.

Even though the kitchen table was losing its swag by the time I was fully ready to discuss Watergate, I maintained my journalism addiction through high school and by that time had set my sights on a career in the field. I arrived at Columbia University in 1978 with one short term goal. Master the famed core curriculum? No, get a summer internship at New Times magazine, a sort of cross between New York magazine, the Village Voice and Rolling Stone; it was a haven for the New Journalism that had fueled my passions after the kitchen table discussions faded. Unfortunately, sometime while studying for my first semester final exams, horrible news arrived; New Times was folding.

I had discovered by then that Columbia was more than just some school in New York City; it was a ball buster of an education. I made studying—and getting high, it was the ‘70s after all—the focal point of my attention. Career ambitions could wait.

After graduating in the summer of 1982, the depths of a ferocious recession, I sent out dozens of resumes to little avail and took a job at a market research firm to pay my $180 month rent in Upper Manhattan. I interviewed at the New York Times where an HR woman looked at my resume, which in addition to an Ivy League degree boasted of journalism awards won in high school and told me that I probably wasn’t cut out for the field. It required hard work.

I was more mystified than angered by the response. It wasn’t until I heard the same comment about not being fit for a full-time journalism job since it’s hard work from numerous other media outlets that my anger began to simmer inside. Nevertheless, I was having a successful go of it freelancing. Within a year of walking into the headquarters of the Amsterdam News in 1984 and asking to preview an upcoming jazz festival, I was writing for Newsday, a suburban NYC daily making a big push into city limits as well as trading mail with editors at the Village Voice. Over the course of the next few years, I wrote regularly for Essence, Rolling Stone, and Vogue. I still wanted a staff job; all these successes still left me working in the food biz to make ends meet, but at least I’d proven that NY Times HR person wrong. I did belong. Less than 10 years after her dumb assessment, I had a long piece in the Sunday Arts and Leisure section, and I still regret not sending it to her. OTOH, I had heard that assessment often enough (occasionally from other people at the Times) to know that it was a commonplace view.

By the time a media outlet did offer me a job, it was 2020, and I was offered a Senior Editor position at a respected trade magazine, but the salary offer was for 50K and came with the caveat that I would have to give up my freelancing. I asked for more a little more $$, and it was the last time I heard from them.

But you know what? Who fucking cares!! At this point, there are very few 63-year-old staff writers at major media outlets and even fewer who cover the arts. I’m fine; I built a career while working six and seven days a week for four decades. I do regret the networking opportunities I missed out on and the prospect of a steady professional wage for several years, but I don’t regret falling into the bubble of thinking that working in a ~~dying~~ er, massively contracting field was my only ability. I wonder if those HR people understood that they were denigrating the son of two workaholics and kid brother of three others. They weren’t alone; many potential food business employers also questioned my work ethic.

So yeah, it’s complicated, but I’d say freelancing chose me. It’s hard, but it’s working out pretty okay.

Blinded by the Light 01: Well, How Did I Get Here, part one

Many people think of the Upper West Side as a quaint neighborhood full of brownstones. I think of it as another dystopian Manhattan locale.

Blinded By the Light 01: Well, How Did I Get Here? Part One

“It sounds like you’re living the dream,” chirped a customer one lazy spring afternoon at my cheese shop, 67Gourmet, which is located in New York City near Lincoln Center. I smiled while grimacing inside. I knew what she meant; I have two careers, and both are going well. The cheese shop is quickly establishing itself as a go-to retailer for artisan cheese, estate bottled olive oil, small producer cured meats and all kinds of other goodies. My staff and I happily regale our clientele with stories about the woman who quit her job as Editor in Chief of a leading Italian fashion magazine and bought an olive grove in Tuscany where she now makes one of the finest olive oils in the world or the graphic designer who grew up not far from the store, who left her job to bake ridiculously good brownies and cookies. Meanwhile my other professional life, music journalism, involves writing and reporting for the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Tidal, Bandcamp and other high-profile outlets. I get what she means; after years of feeling the stench of failure and pointlessness stalking me at close proximity, I now worried about moving forward not falling backwards, er, falling further backwards.

I broke my smile, looked the customer in the eye warmly, and said “I’m living one of the dreams. I went to college in New York City in the ‘70s, so I did a lot of drugs. I have a lot of dreams. The dream would involve working a lot fewer hours than I do.”

She nodded appreciatively and after a little more small talk; she gathered up her haul, three cheeses, a package of locally produced sliced Bresaola, a baguette and a small jar of apricot lavender preserves made by two young women in Paris whose products we’re especially proud to carry.

Before I could lean back and parse the encounter, another customer, a regular, arrived at the counter with his two kids, several cheeses, a baguette and an eagerness to discuss the Knicks. He was off to the great outdoors, and then another customer arrived eager to discuss Succession, a show I don’t watch, but because of my affiliation with a Rupert Murdoch owned media company, it’s a show I’m expected to be conversant in, so I read enough articles and plot summaries to meet my customer’s expectations. It’s not enough that I can explain the differences between double creams and triple creams, Alpine cheeses and cheddars; I need to know who Kendall Roy and Shiv are.

That much is fine by me. A good cheese counter is a social center. I think of it as a bar—and I’m a veteran barfly—except that instead of drinks for people hanging out, we sell nuggets of deliciousness for people to take home. It’s not just the social contact that is a dream; I’m paid something that borders on a professional wage. Three little words, “the gig economy,” are fashionable to toss around casual conversation about life in the 2020s where the pace of our devolution toward a feudal economy is blinding. But what’s not fashionable is the number of talented, smart college graduates who are making just above minimum wage as workers in this situation. As someone who is 63 and spent more than 20 years trapped in that economic straitjacket. I often commiserate my younger peers; I don’t know which is worse, having experienced better and expending every ounce of effort to find it again, or being 25 and knowing that “better” probably cuts off at choosing an industrial color for highlights in your hair.

It means I have lots of friends who are 30 and even 40 years younger than I am, and I’m thankful; I love their energy and insights. My tighter bond with this crowd is the solace we take in trusting our passions. My friends my age split into two groups: those who are still trying to figure out what happened to dial up modems, and those who are happily retired and doing interesting things with their lives. I love both groups. For one I like that successful people regard me as a peer, and for another, while I’m well versed in high-speed internet, there’s a ton of shit that I’m still trying to figure out myself.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 37, Leaving Aisle 2

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 craft 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, ever dull.

As the soft glow of autumn light in New York City was turning toward the opaquer winter brightness and default jackets were getting heavier, my career prospects, dim for nearly a decade were brimming with springtime warmth.

For one my writing work had skyrocketed like a dotcom stock in the days of irrational exuberance, yet it all seemed sustainable. Contacts, some old some new, were connecting me to editors who immediately became big fans of my work and acted as they had an obligation to keep an assignment, sometimes two in my inbox. I didn’t dare do the math to see if the writing income could enable me to leave retail. My financial standing was too fragile. I looked at it as a way to whittle down my credit card debt if not whack at it like a weed.

For another retail was looking better. I was thinking of launching a consultancy in craft beer, and an old friend in the wine business had put me in touch with her boss, who was thinking of opening a cheese shop. The first meeting with her boss went well then, the line went dead for a few weeks. I began engaging a first round of potential clients for my consultancy and setting up the administrative infrastructure. Then just as a matter of course I circled back to the wine shop owner, and he responded immediately. He had just signed the lease on his space after several weeks of contentious negotiations; could I meet tomorrow morning. That meeting went well as did another a few days later. During that meeting he said the five magic words, “what should we pay you?”

I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting the question. I guess I’ve had too many situations in my life and especially in my middle age where things that were going well didn’t get to that point. I doubled my retail number and to my ambivalent surprise he said yes immediately. I think I had undersold myself, but I put myself in position to march into the grocery store and give notice. En route home, I stopped at my favorite nearby craft beer bar and celebrated. I wasn’t planning on going back to the cheese biz, the wounds from the glass ceilings that I hit hard in 2014 still hurt, but it was an escape from the grueling world of a grocery store running with about 60% of the necessary staffing. I preferred to get my cardio on a bicycle or at the gym instead of getting workouts on a sales floor.

I began notifying my craft beer contacts telling them to stay in touch. The consultancy was still on my agenda, though it was no longer on my short term to do list. Also, I still wrote about craft beer for several major media outlets. I told my coworkers and gave out several business cards telling them that they could escape too, and to stay in touch. Finally, I began the sad work of alerting my customers of my departure. My finance bro and sis crowd shrugged it off and wished me luck. A few others wished me heartfelt goodbyes, one of them thanking me for investing palpable passion into what had proven to be a dead end job.

That touched me deeply. I’ve often felt that working for just more than minimum wage in chaotic environment was numbing. It was great to hear that it wasn’t *too* numbing for me to communicate honestly.

My final weeks were over the holidays in 2021, so time moved especially quickly. My next to last day was New Year’s Eve. So, it was a whirlwind until I tossed my coat for the last time as an employee of Westside Market’s East Village location and headed to the time clock and then the register with my final purchases. The finale didn’t feel momentous, which surprised me. I had arrived in 2014 because I had few opportunities and I’d made the most of this one, which frankly wasn’t much. Now I was heading to a scenario of greater opportunity.

It was a cold Sunday night in January. I didn’t feel like celebrating. Instead, I just wanted to go home, cook dinner and go to bed, so I could get up in the morning refreshed and ready to make the most of a whole new set of challenges. I wondered if age, I could see my 62nd birthday approaching, had beaten the euphoria out of me, but I’ve since concluded that my new possibilities still left me on a long road to where I want to go. I’ll hold a celebration when I get there.

I’m still the son of two workaholics and the kid brother of three others; I just wanted to get to work. That, probably more than anything else, a contentment with working, has been my saving grace through all the professional chaos of my life, and it still was. That was a satisfying thought.

So what happens with this blog now?

Well, I’m off of Aisle 2, but the long slow march from abyss of middle aged downward mobility continues. So the next installments of this blog will be called Life After 2: Hello Plan D. The series will begin in this space soon.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 32 Something Fishy

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 32: Something Fishy

“Customer service at the seafood department please”

It started innocently enough. I had rushed from the beer aisle to seafood department because well, someone needed to do it. By the time I arrived, I was prepared to explain that I was the craft beer buyer, not a fishmonger, so if you needed some shrimp ladled into a cup and weighed, I could do that. I also have enough cheesemongering experience that if the customer needed oh, say three quarters of a pound of salmon, I could readily plop a side on a butcher block, and cut them a filet. But, if you wanted to discuss the virtues of wild Atlantic Char or the differences between the styles of shrimp we carry, you’d need an actual fishmonger, not a craft beer buyer with knife skills and an eagerness to demonstrate his versatility.

The eagerness to display my versatility part was somewhat new and innocent too. When I started at the store in 2014, I had been working in the New York City specialty food business for 30 years, long enough to know that anything that could be lumped on to your plate would be lumped, often unceremoniously, on to your plate. I could work at pretty much any counter, I could run a cash register, I could program the scales, I could analyze a P&L sheet. I kept all of that under my hat. I had a beer section to manage, and the store was near a Trader Joes, and two Whole Foods, one of which devoted an entire corner of its facility to a craft beer section. My plate was full enough.

Seven years later, much had changed. The beer section was world renowned. That Whole Foods beer corner had been shut down (and replaced by a coffee kiosk). Our selection far outflanks our larger competitors and I’m on the aisle three evenings a week, happy to make a quick recommendation for a good pilsner or local hazy IPA or to explain the Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity laws and their importance to the American craft beer movement. So yeah, when the desperate pages went out for assistance at the seafood counter, I may have been looking to diversify my focus just a little. Also, I was older. At 54, I was eager to stake a flag in some terrain; now at 61, I was more interested in displaying my adaptability.

The calls were a result of staffing cuts that left the store running on a skeleton crew. It was commonplace to find a manager or two spending hours of their shift on a cash register or stocking shelves. I figured ladling shrimp or cutting pieces of salmon would be my extra mile. What I didn’t count on is it becoming a permanent part of my inbox. One Friday evening, I was reminded by the Assistant GM not to forget to close the fish counter.

I raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and was instructed to talk to Salvador, the fishmonger for instructions.

As it turns out, it was pretty easy. Anyone who has closed an artisan cheese counter, and I have closed many, wouldn’t be challenged. The salmon went in one bin, the whitefish were wrapped and put in another, the shellfish had a space for their bins. And that was the hard part. The real fun was beginning to assume some knowledge of seafood would be expected of me. I began enhancing my somewhat sketchy take on seafood. Salvador goes home at 4; afterward, my responsibilities extended beyond Aisle 2 to the seafood station, which was in the back corner of the store

The timing for this well, deep dive, was perfect. Cooking salmon had been a weekly ritual during the pandemic. I began creating recipes involving ginger, onions, peppers, miso broth, and even kale and baby bok choy. Cooking cod, tilapia, and scallops were well within my repertoire too. But our fish counter showcased flounder, trout, lemon sole and other fish that wouldn’t benefit so readily from my throw the refrigerator into a pan and see what happens approach. The same sort of dialogues I have with many of my beer customers about navigating the wide range of local brews we carry found a parallel in the back corner, where I learned that celery salt and smoked paprika make a good rub for salmon or char and that a creamy saffron sauce is easy to make for Chilean Sea Bass. I also found reinforcement for the restraint of limiting the seasoning on some fish to simply cracked pepper, sea salt and olive oil.

Cooking salmon has become a weekly ritual

The other aspect of my home away from my usual home away from home was that I liked was the tactile handling of food. It brought me back to my cheesemonger roots. Beer is safely stored in bottles and cans—or rather cans and bottles given current trends—unless dropped, they are pretty much indestructible. Not so much with fresh fish, which require the level care and attention to detail that I once brought to clothbound cheddar and washed rind cheeses. I began wrapping the cod, trout, banzini, et al with great care, frequently doing old school Italian packaging for each style of fish as if they were a cheese being loving packed away for overnight storage.

The further benefit of being on the fish counter was that I was out of the fray, so to speak. Rather than being in the middle of a heavily trafficked aisle and descended upon by lost customers and bewildered Post Mates shoppers, I could actually hear myself think. When I was on the fish counter, I began to reflect on my career trajectory, the various roadblocks I have smashed into and where to go from here. I’ve been reflecting on the idea that after several attempts to move beyond Aisle 2 that craft beer like artisan cheese and like—let’s face it, many other walks of life—simply doesn’t have a role for an older, professorial African American. It’s unfortunate; I could probably boost any brewery’s sales by 100K a year. Yet, the same was true for artisan cheese and that led me on a path out of that world and into craft beer. I think these realizations amid the chaos of the aisle would be frustrating. Instead, in the serenity of fish counter, I began seeing them as just another set of obstacles to transcend.

A couple of weeks ago, Salvador asked to speak to me. He had a concerned look on his face. He told me that he’d prefer that I wrap the whitefish somewhat simply as he’d instructed. “It’s easier,” he said. I responded that I didn’t mind bringing great attention to detail and wrapping the fish so carefully. Then I looked at him and I realized that he didn’t mean it was easier for me (though this was true), it meant it would be easier for him first thing in the morning to unwrap five packages of fish rather than the 12-15 I was leaving him. This was true, we all had too much on our plates at the store. I smiled and promised to be less precious with the fish. He smiled back as if to say that he appreciated the care and attention I wanted to provide his product.

Salvador is a spry middle-aged man. He demeanor and eloquence suggest that he had no intention of spending his 40s working in a grocery store. I wanted to ask him what he thinks when working in solitude on the counter, but my suspicion is that the conversation would take up time that neither of us have.

Martin Johnson is a freelance writer whose work on music, sports and culture has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, NPR, 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.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 17, Leaving.

cda11-1cUSQ_FPvFxI4HD0-AFz_5w — I used to live in a neighborhood called “funky” now it’s just called Manhattan.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 17 Leaving

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 decision to leave came easily; it probably took about 30 seconds. The implementation of that decision took years.

The decision to leave happened some time in 2016, and it came so clearly and bluntly that it might have been a moment of clarity. I had lived where I lived for a very long time, since 1992 to be precise. That evening in 2016, I was home from retail, enjoying dinner and beer while in front of the computer listening to a podcast and probably following social media, when I looked up and scanned my apartment. I looked at the walls covered in floor to ceiling shelving containing CDs, books and records. I looked at a pile of old magazines ranging from the New Yorker to Skin Two, sitting inertly in another corner. In the bedroom were two tables piled high with clutter, computer discs from an earlier era, clothing items that were never put away then fell out of the rotation. My rent had just escalated to a vertiginous level. The competitor in me wanted to use the increase as urgent motivation to rebuild the journalism career—yes against all odds, but the odds are I were never on good terms anyway—and make the new number work. Then the voice of reason intoned loudly inside my head.

“You don’t need all this,” she said.

It may have seemed like an odd moment for an existential epiphany. I was sitting at home in a place that increasingly felt like more like a burden or at best a refuge rather than a redemptive setting of refocusing and renewal, but I was in the throes of Double Dry Hopped India Pale Ales by local brewers like Grimm, Other Half and Finback. The fact that they were only making me feel less stressed but not actually happy plunged me down a rabbit hole of introspection.

I knew what I wanted my life to be about and I knew what I wanted to pursue, yet increasingly those goals were taking a back seat, if not something far more distant to the simple objective of keeping a roof over my head. In short, I had prioritized *where* I wanted to live over *how* I wanted to live. I don’t know if that’s always a mistake, but it felt like one this time.

I began loosely probing around about other areas in the city to live while a book proposal that had it yielded a deal might have alleviated the financial worries failed to ignite any interest in agent world. The results of my investigation weren’t promising. One-bedroom apartments in accessible areas of Brooklyn and Queens were nearly as expensive as my East Village digs. Some people even wondered aloud why I was looking to move when I had “such a good deal.”

That led to a year or so of wondering WTF was wrong with me. if pounding one’s self-esteem to a pulp was a useful skill, then I would be Oprah level rich. I’d have written many books on the subject, opened institutes and held numerous endowed professorships to teach young people the best techniques. It isn’t, so as my journalism income dwindled for what seemed like 23^rd time in the not so new millennium, I pounded in the solitude of my refuge, sometimes medicated with craft beer sometimes just staring into vistas of the Francis Wolff photographs on my wall wondering with amazement that my landlord hadn’t dragged me into court. I began checking my mail only once a week or so as I wasn’t always able to deal with the news that time was almost up.

I forestalled the inevitable with an additional gig–yes a third job–doing sales and marketing for a small dairy farm that was making absolutely killer cheese in the Finger Lakes region, but local cheese retailers were too slow to take the cheese into their inventories and the farm was slow to adapt to protocols of New York City cheesemongers. Meanwhile my self-esteem got a much-needed boost when a bartender I admire seemed to take a liking to me. I began deciding that how I looked in my eyes didn’t matter so much if I looked so divine in hers. Yet by the end of 2017, the cheese gig and the infatuation were over. Another book proposal failed to attract any interest from the agent community, and I had to face facts. It was over. My life as an East Village resident earning an income from work at a fancy grocery store and from freelance journalism—my badge of identity for the last 30 years–was no longer sustainable.

I waited all winter for court papers. I assumed all footsteps in the hallway were servers with court summons instead of neighbors. Then suddenly a reprieve lurked on the horizon. For the first time in a decade, an agent took on a book proposal of mine and gleefully envisioned a big deal. By the time court papers arrived, I had a way that could rectify the situation. All wasn’t lost. At least not yet.

While the odds and I are not on good terms because I’ve beaten them repeatedly; book proposals are where the law of averages snaps back into place. You might think that a writer with 35 years of experience and a wide range of branded expertise from published works at the high levels of journalism could get a book deal. If you did think that, you’re wrong. I’m zero for seven in that pursuit as my agent giddily began seeking deals. I began thinking what if this new proposal fails to entice editors. That has been my reality, right.

The thought crossed my mind that I would throw myself in front of a moving subway train leaving my computer on the platform open to a document that screamed in 72-point type, “Are You Happy Now Motherfucking Publishers, I was dead to you all along and now, I’m…” But while many, many writer friends would empathize, this didn’t appeal to me. I had other goals. I wanted to rebuild my yoga practice to a level that I could spend a useful hour a day on a mat. I wanted to bike the East River bridges more frequently. I wanted to attend the European jazz festivals. I wanted to drive the PCH along the California coast. And, I wanted someone else to look at me like the bartender did, preferably someone like her whose gaze I enthusiastically reciprocated.

So, I began thinking what sort of New York City life could exist from my income at the store and the vestiges of my income from journalism. The answer was simple, a share of a place either uptown or in the outer boroughs. Friends warned against this approach. I was in my late 50s; to their thinking I was too old to relate to younger people. Yet, most of coworkers at the store are two, three even (gasp) four decades my junior and I relate to them great. Most of my customers are two even three decades my junior, and we go out drinking. Most of my bartender pals are, well, you get the idea. I looked at Craig’s List. Shares in my price range were abundant.

Sometime between the eighth and ninth rejection letter (ultimately out of fifteen, it wasn’t a bad book idea, not at all, some publishers were wary of my brand and others had similar books in their pipeline), I decided that my time in a Manhattan One Bedroom apartment was over. Even if I got a deal, I was leaving. I would miss my frequent contact with my neighbors, both the next-door ones and the baristas at the coffee bar, the bartenders at the beer bars, and baseball fanatics at my pharmacy. And yes, I’d be charging off into a region of the unknown, but sometimes when the known doesn’t work, the unknown can be very promising. I figured it was worth checking out.

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.

3d600-17T_ebWNZWt-KTmp86wkbGQ — Beers, yes, but also catalysts for existential inquiry

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 16, The Big Picture

From Sep 20, 2018

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like

Episode 16: The Big Picture

When I see unfamiliar customers on the beer aisle approach them with this introduction.

“Hey, how are you doing today? If you have any questions on our beers or ciders, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll be happy to address them. I’m one of the buyers here.”

There’s a lot to unpack in the salutation. For one, it tells them that they don’t have to stand and stare aimlessly at several hundred craft beers and wonder which one is right for them. Two, in a big picture way, it offers to make the experience of shopping far more convivial than say ordering online. That’s something that nearly all of my coworkers on the sales floor are aware of, and so the guy in the Yankee hat gets asked about his hopes for the Bomber’s playoff chances; the woman in the Duke sweatshirt gets asked about friends in Florence’s way, and so on. I like to tell people that I no longer follow the NFL passionately, but I do keep track professionally. That way if I see a guy in a Kansas City Chiefs jersey on a Sunday afternoon, I can offer a quick comment about their stunning new quarterback.

The response to my salutation on Aisle 2 varies based on gender. A few women shrug off the offer as if it were a come on or worse I’m implying that women don’t know much about beer (which is far from the truth. I learned some about beer from Mark, Dave and Ray, but even more from Gina, Jen and Maggie. A lot of my networking these days involves Lila, Colleen, Holly and Ally). Most women recognize that the conviviality in the offer is genuine and a discussion often ensues about craft beer. On the other hand, many men curtly refuse the offer. It’s as if there’s this notion that their Y chromosome also comes with cicerone skills, when in fact I’m certain that the city’s leading cicerone, Anne Beccera (ahem, have you lost that stereotype yet about craft beer being a boy’s game yet?), would happily tell you that the beer scene is so fast changing that you HAVE to ask questions to keep up. A discussion ensues with some men, and a few hear the last part of the salutation and ask, “wow, what a cool job, what do you do?”

That’s a long answer. The short of it is simple. I meet with sales reps and place orders and email breweries and reps from boutique distributors and place orders. Piece of cake, right? Wrong, the hard part is knowing what to order. I run one of the best retail craft beer programs in the city. People come from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and even Texas to shop here (okay the Texan is an airplane pilot and she shops only when she has overnight stay after a local landing but still). I keep my ear to the ground to stay on top of the latest developments. That means spending at least a half hour a day on Instagram looking at brewery’s pages and those from likeminded retailers. That means strategic bar hopping so that I can talk to buyers and managers of high-end craft beer bars in the vicinity, see what’s on their list and even peruse the kegs that are next. And yes, it means drinking probably eight to ten beers a week purely for research; dozens of bartenders in this neighborhood have fielded a request from me for a sample pour of something I’m considering ordering when its available in cans.

It’s a lot of work, and no, I’m not complaining in the least. It’s a really cool job, and I feel fortunate to have such a stimulating situation. Yet, I work 30–35 hours a week. There are no paid vacations. All that bar hopping is not on some company credit card. And, if I don’t match my paycheck from the store with comparable writing income, then I can’t pay all of my bills. So yes, I work another 30–40 hours a week either generating prose or researching outlets who might pay me for the prose I generate. There are fewer and fewer of those, which means that I spend more time looking for writing work than I do writing. And that means that the research part of the beer gig often takes on a medicinal angle.

Yes, it’s upwards of 70 hours a week of stuff I love to do, and I’m the son of two workaholics and younger brother of two others. I can handle this load. Still, there’s something profoundly negative that occurs from this situation. I lose the big picture sometimes. In NFL parlance, I become focused obsessively on first downs and forget about touchdowns. I have tended make the goal working 70 hours a week and getting the bills paid rather than working fewer hours a week, travelling some, going to yoga more often (or even more ambitiously resuming dance classes!), reading more, etc. In other words, I have made being solvent the goal rather than being happy.

I don’t think of it as a moral failing. It’s only natural that when you work so hard to survive, you forget that the object of this here game of life is to thrive. I had lost track of that goal, but it came back to me in an unexpected way recently. I was having a day where I was weary, not really 100% either though not truly under the weather, and I was looking ahead to several more hours of retail work. A regular customer came by to get some coffee and asked how I was doing. I heaved a sigh and said, “just hanging in there I guess.”

He smiled as he drew a cup and said, “well that’s the best we can do.”

My inner voice scoffed, and I said to myself “maybe that the best you can do, buddy, but I want to be doing well, doing…” and suddenly the inner copy editor and fact checker in me cut off that line of thought and offered a nice skeptical “really?”

I felt myself falling down a rabbit hole of introspection, which is not a good headspace for a retail sales floor, so I went downstairs to the stock room, ostensibly to paw around the milk crates of loose bottles to complete some six packs that had been reduced to five items. It was a good, mindless activity while I thought things through, and since I don’t speak Arabic, French or Spanish fluently enough to converse with the my coworkers based in the stockroom, I would likely be left to my own devices.

I thought about a longtime friend who lives in NYC. He recently told me he was going to hold his 60th birthday party in New Orleans and that I should make my flight reservations early since it would be around the time of the Jazz and Heritage Festival. I had to stymie the urge to yell at him; it felt like just the sort of thing that someone in the job bubble would say to shame someone trapped in the gig economy. I took for granted I would have to save my pennies diligently just to go to Eleven Madison Park or a comparable venue to celebrate his birthday. A plane trip, a stay in New Orleans? Are you freakin’ kidding me!

But, but…wouldn’t it be a blast to go to New Orleans? While the request bordered on tone deaf to my situation, if my finances can’t handle a trip for a friend’s birthday, isn’t there something wrong with my finances? Can’t I fix that? I began to wonder if my friend’s invitation wasn’t a vote of confidence that I could get out of this hole.

I decided that merely getting up to date on the bills, while an admirable goal, wasn’t setting the bar high enough. I needed a definition of fun that was more ambitious than enjoying new double IPA at a favorite neighborhood craft beer bar or an hour on a yoga mat. I needed a weekly dose of that while maybe saving money for a trip or too.

Otherwise, my customer was right. Just hanging in there *is* the best I can do.

I found a few bottles that would complete some six packs, restacked the milk crates, and I returned to the sales floor. En route, I decided that instead of grabbing take out on the way home, I’d pick up a salmon fillet, dust in a spicy rub and grill it. It would be a little dose of life. I tend to work hard so that I can work harder, and having a cool job makes that easier on the spirit. Instead, I needed to work hard so I can play hard, even if playing hard might require a little practice.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 15 Friday Night Lights

Episode 15

I’m not a cheesemonger anymore, but I still know where to go.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like

Episode 15: Friday Night Lights

If the fact that I have usually worked seven days a week for the last 46 months wasn’t sufficient proof that I’m an Olympic caliber workaholic, then here’s more proof: Friday, my longest workday, tends to be my favorite day of the week. The writing part of the day starts early; I try to be in front of the computer by eight as the onslaught of press releases is ferocious; even though I consider myself to be a semi-retired music journalist, I get about 50 or so PR emails an hour on Fridays. I try to respond to more of them than I used to because I don’t write as often as I used to, so I secure my spot in the loop by being communicative. It also gives the PR person something to take back to their clients. I’ve done some press releases, so I know how useful it is to take tidings back to the client. But the real fun is in retail even though the day might go deep into the night.

Unlike 99.9% of all retail staff employees, I don’t have a real schedule. I breeze in around 2 four days a week and I leave…well, that’s complicated. I leave when the beer aisle is set for the night. On Sundays, that usually means around 8:30 or 9; Mondays and Wednesdays that usually means 10. My Friday workdays end around 10 sometimes; around 11 sometimes and once or twice they’ve gone til midnight. The reason is simple I don’t want to put the night managers in position of having to work on the beer aisle (in other words, I don’t want some snotty trust fund kid bitching them out because there’s no Lagunitas IPA, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or another craft beer staple on the shelf). To me, it’s my part of the exchange; I run a beer boutique in the middle of a fancy grocery store. It’s a culture clash but thanks to my efforts, it works.

Still, it is a grueling day and I usually awaken on Saturday morning dazed and confused. If it wasn’t for the reggae show on WKCR playing on my bedroom radio, I often wouldn’t know what day it was. But the rigor of Friday is lugging cases of beer around; the fun is dealing with the customers, who are chill because Friday means something different to them than it does to me. Typically, there are two rushes on Friday. The first is from 5:30 to 7:30 and as you might expect It’s mostly a beer savvy crowd in to get treats for the weekend. It’s genuinely fun to chat with them about new trends in craft beer (for instance, old school West Coast IPAs are on the rebound after two or three years of being overrun by big, sweet juicy New England style ales).

Then from 7:30 to 9 I restock the shelf and function as a back-end floor supervisor chatting with the clientele. The topics range from the red-hot Red Sox to the Mueller investigation while showing them where we’re hiding tahini or popcorn kernels. By this time, I’m sufficiently tired that I enact my own zero tolerance policy for nonsense. That might mean curtly shutting down the woman who tries to explain to me what a soft drink was or the guy who moaned that Aretha Franklin was dead and tried to tell me who she was. I told the guy that I had fond memories of growing up with her versions of “Spanish Harlem” or “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

The second beer rush typically starts around nine, and it dotes in extremes. On the one hand, there are the young men and women loading up on Bud Light and hard seltzer; on the other hand, are the junior beer geeks, many just old enough to legally drink who want to learn what overtones a Mouteka hop imparts on a beer (or some other entry level cicerone question like the difference between a pilsner and a lager). If they are with friends, then sometimes I’ll take them to our Pop Up area and let them sample a beer to illustrate my point. Some nights that rush ends around 10 or 10:30 sometimes it goes longer.

My coworkers admire my conviviality and they get that some of it — occasionally all of it — is performative. It’s how I channel my rage and frustration. I feel like I spent 30 years piling up good numbers on the left side of the equals sign only to end up getting a lump of coal on the right. At some level, dealing with the store’s clientele renews my hope as I pile up goodies on the left side of the equation again. Many of my coworkers have followed suit and the handful of African American coworkers subtly indicate they grasp the root of my conviviality.

One of them a young woman who started a year ago as a cashier shares the root. At a glance she embodies a stereotype, 30ish, overweight, mother of three kids from different guys. Yet look a little more closely and you get the consistent charm, hard work and eagerness to take on responsibility. In other words, although her resume may not boast it, if she’s on your team your team stands a better chance of winning.

She was promoted to a front-end supervisory post where she assists people who need help with the self-checkout stations. On a recent Friday, I was heading to the stockroom to get more beer for the shelves when I saw a scene. There were four customers, two men, two women, finishing at the self-checkout station and the comradery was thick. I imagined that they had just gone to dinner and were buying some mixers or some such to finish the evening with drinks at a nearby apartment. 15 or 20 years I might have been one of those four. Now, Friday means a long night followed by take out and a podcast (usually Still Processing or as I think of it: the Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris show). I’m fine with it. I didn’t so much fall, as I climbed up two steep precipices — one named journalism and the other named artisanal cheese — only to have both mountains crumble underneath me as I was about to reach the top. I’m climbing a new hill, this one named craft beer. I might regain my previous economic stature, but if I don’t, I tried. I’m fine with that. But I looked at my coworker and she was shell shocked. I could see she was being reminded that she hadn’t been given a chance to climb as an adult; she feared she might be developing skills for naught.

I think she’s going to get her chance, and it’s not because I’ve read the Sapphire novel, Push; I still believe in the power of determination. I wanted to go up to her and say something, but I didn’t know what words to use. It was after 11, more than 15 hours after my workday began. My fatigue had reduced my genuine — i.e. not performative — expressions to a handful of salutations and an order for takeout on my way home. I stood across the store watching her process. After about a minute, she clapped her hands and went to straighten up some shopping bags. I continued downstairs to get my last batch of beer. It seemed that she had channeled her frustration into motivation. I learned that my zeal for work takes too much of a toll me at times. It was something I’d have to work on, so to speak.

Once I’m up and running on Saturday, I usually go shopping

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 14 My Body Myself

Episode 14

When I worked on Columbus Avenue, I took the cheesemongers and some of the other cool staffers out drinking once a month or so. For one, it seemed like a tradition. When I worked at Bedford Cheese Shop (2004–2011), the lure of every staff meeting was a chance to spend the rest of the evening drinking on the store credit card afterward. For another, it was my way of thanking the crew. The cheesemongers that worked with me during my tenure (2011 to 2014) on Columbus Avenue were amazing; today the alumni of that counter include several restaurant managers, a sommelier, a chocolatier, a literary agent, a food photojournalist, a wine bar owner, and yes, two or three women who are still in the cheese biz (like other fields, the brain drain in artisan cheese is real and potentially dire). I loved my crew; I used to daydream of going around to other leading cheese counters and challenging them to a Cheesemonger Invitational style battle (and yes I occasionally envisioned West Side Story style choreography but with dancer/cheesemongers holding cheese wires and two handled knives). I also took them drinking to thank them for putting up with the cesspool of mismanagement, sexual harassment and general idiocy that took place elsewhere in the store.

I did my best to make sure that the usual foolishness didn’t infringe on the cheese counter, but I was limited. For one, I can’t intercept lewd emails sent to my staffers by their coworkers (the owner’s response was “well she is kinda flirty, don’t you think?”) or defend my coworkers against physical attacks — no exaggeration — when I’m not there. And for another, the job did a number on my physical well-being. I rapidly discovered that working 45 or 50 or even 55 hours a week on my feet wasn’t so easy now that I was into my 50s. I know, I know; I should have realized that going in, but when I was 42 it wasn’t uncommon for me to work a 5–4 shift at Butterfield Market as part of subbing for vacationing countermen, then charge off to Jones Beach to review a concert for Newsday, then work another 5–4 shift, and after the second shift, instead of collapsing, I’d take a led ashtanga yoga class at my gym. Then, I’d collapse for the night and wake up at 3:30 a.m. to bike to the store again.

See, I have unreasonable expectations for my body and until I hit my 50s, or rather my 50s hit me, my body had a track record of rising to the occasion. It was important as metaphor; my body could exceed the societal expectations and so could my career! Not on Columbus Avenue. I suffered through a cascading series of lower body injuries that usually forced me to use a cane to get around. I abandoned the subway for buses because going down steps was just too hard. The fact that it took me five minutes instead of 30 seconds to exit my building from my third-floor apartment was a constant source of depression. One neighbor happily chirped at me one day as I hobbled about, “why don’t you get a wheelchair?”

The doctors told me, stop working on my feet so much. I tried. I appointed myself publicity director and got the place coverage in the Times and New York magazine. The owner’s response was to cut my pay by 40% (not for nothing did the crew often talk over drinks about how the place was really a money laundering outfit), so I cut my hours proportionately and began reaching out to editors more and looking for other culinary work. That helped, but vestiges of that workload continued to haunt me well into my first year at my current gig, where I work 30 hours a week, not all of them on my feet. Fortunately, my employers were comfortable letting me hobble around the store until I healed.

And I did, by the summer of 2015, when I went to Chicago to cover the jazz festival, I no longer dreaded waking up in the morning to see what limb or joint didn’t work properly. Instead, I high stepped through the Windy City, racing up and down the steps of the el as my struggles were a distant memory. Upon my return I set about somewhat fitfully to regain my fitness level. To me, I was still that guy who biked a lot and took ashtanga yoga three times a week. Sure, I was older, a little more injury prone and fatter, but to me those conditions were temporary.

To my substantial dismay, many of my new friends and business contacts thought that the overweight guy on a cane was the real me. When I went looking for bartending shifts to supplement my retail income since journalism continued to decline, my contacts told me in so many words that I wasn’t qualified since they needed someone who could move.

That lit a wildfire inside of me. Just as I got fit in my 30s with a stern eye toward eradicating my self- image as an awkward teenage geek, I had a new image to demolish. However, I had to take a slightly different approach. Instead of engaging in fitness as a series of inbox initiatives for my body to accomplish. I had to approach this new spate of fitness as a collaborative effort, understanding that sometimes my body wasn’t up to a spinning class or even a 25-minute session of home yoga, and I’d have to take more days off than before. Instead of a “look” my goal became a level of harmony between my mind and body. However, I took to moving around the store as fast as I could. It was silly, but I thought of it as a rebuttal to all those colleagues who thought I was a poor candidate for bartending shifts because I couldn’t move.

One my motives in switching from jeans 100% to yoga pants about half the time was that I would start taking yoga breaks since my gym was a half block away and I know when the yoga room is free for self- practice. But who was I kidding? The beer program and the store demand far too much of my time — it’s a full-time job squeezed into part time hours — to simply break away for 30 minutes of sun salutations even if my body would benefit.

Nevertheless, I think I’m in the process of killing that old image. One afternoon a new fishmonger remarked on my yoga pants and asked me if I taught yoga somewhere. I told I just practiced, and I self- deprecatingly patted my still a little too large for comfort midsection. He understood my gesture and said that I walked with attention to alignment kind of like a dancer and suggested I consider it since it was probably better paying than retail. I smiled at the compliment, happy that I was perhaps starting a new chapter of perception.