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 12: Cheesy Economics

The fantastic French butter we sell is a mere $2 cheaper at Amazon. The good stuff is sometimes expensive.

Blinded by the Light 12: Cheese Economics

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.

It was a midwinter Monday night, and the store was winding down when a cheerful young woman came in. She perused the cases and arrived at the register with a big round of an amazing French butter and a triple crème, both from the great French cheesemaker Rodolphe Le Meunier. I was mostly on automatic pilot as it was the last hour of my Thursday-Monday retail work week, but my defenses rose when she asked me the price. Sticker shock took hold and she huffily returned the butter to the case, heaved a sigh and bought the triple crème. Before leaving, she said, “I don’t know how you’re going to make it like this.” I smiled performatively and told her that we were doing just fine.

On my way home, I looked up the prices of what she bought. The butter can be found for about $3 less a unit in Boston and $2 less online. Some retailers were selling it for as much as $5 more than our price. Overall, what struck me was the scarcity of the butter. It wasn’t available at oh say Whole Foods. You need to go to a specialty shop like mine where we buy in small quantities, which drives up the price. The triple crème was ever scarcer, and every online retailer was more expensive than our price.

Yet our chagrined customer isn’t exactly wrong. Artisan cheese (and butter) is expensive. There’s no way around it. It takes many pounds of milk from specially fed dairy animals to produce a rather small amount of cheese. In addition, the production of that cheese is very labor intensive and since there are no artisan cheesemakers in Manhattan, most of that cheese has to travel, further increasing the costs. Lastly at the retail level, cheese markups are more aggressive than routine grocery markups. Unlike paper towels, most artisan cheese needs daily care and expert introduction.

I often hear the expression “don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good,” but what I fear is going on here is that the good is the enemy of the superb. When artisan cheese became prominent in the American market 30-40 years ago. Its primary attraction was that it tasted so much better than the industrial cheese that had dominated our diets. And indeed, Cabot Cheddar, St. Andre and Caved Aged Gruyere and the like were a marked improvement over Velveeta. But as cheesemakers continued to make better and better cheeses, it seemed like the market got stuck at St. Andre (the triple crème from that Monday night is like St. Andre but waaaaaay better).

About 15 years ago, an acquaintance in the music biz opened a venue that would feature fine wine and music. He had a cheese case too, both for cheese plates and in case anyone wanted to take some fromage home. A mutual friend invited me to look at it. It was full of midlevel cheeses. I thought a place offering high caliber wines would want comparable cheeses. He simply cited the vendor and declined my offer to upgrade his cheese case. Later that year, I had a similar experience at a restaurant hangout near me even after I showed the proprietor that his vendor was charging him more than they did their retail customers.

The catch is that these midlevel cheeses cost substantially less than the high-end ones that I sell at my store and advocate for. But a little ambition goes a long way. In 2011, I did the cheese program for a new outlet of one of the city’s top wine bars. I didn’t hold back on quality, and the owners loved it. 13 years later, several of the cheeses I chose are still on the list and the ones that have been replaced are just as good.

Part of my pay in 2011 was a $300 bar tab, which I drank up in a few weeks. Then a coupla months after the place opened, I brought a sommelier there on a date hoping to get a little bit of a discount. Instead, the bar manager told me that I had another tab to spend. The owners were astonished at how well the cheese program was doing. It illustrates that it’s always a good idea to advocate for the highest caliber food.

Blinded By The Light 04: Telling Your Boss He’s Wrong

We started getting customers; the next step would be getting catering clients.

Blinded by the Light O4: Telling Your Boss He’s Wrong

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.

The store opened and things went fitfully. The staff consisted of only me and a sidekick, a woman who was a born cheesemonger but had significant other credentials. She had worked in food justice concerns in Silicon Valley and on Capitol Hill. She had a master’s degree in food science too. Nevertheless, her love of cheese was real, and she took an admirable deep dive, often listening to six cheese podcasts a week and reading tons of literature on cheese.

Still, there were two people and fourteen shifts to fill. Our bosses at the nearby wine shop figured they’d send some of their people over to close the gap. I was enthusiastic about this plan and envisioned happy hours discussing the difference between the pairing strategies suggested by noted wine author Jancis Robinson and cheese authority Anne Saxelby. Instead, we got a vegan who didn’t want to talk to customers, and a holy mess of a woman who neither wanted to learn about cheese, nor take direction or work her schedule.

This rickety structure really began to crumble when my sidekick got an offer she couldn’t refuse from one of her food justice colleagues. Suddenly, I was the staff. A Good Food Jobs listing, a Facebook posting, a bolt from the blue and 46 shifts in 49 days later, and we were sufficiently staffed again, but that was only one daunting problem. Our anonymity was killing us.

The store opened with the presumption that our wine shop’s internet clientele would provide us with a significant customer base. This didn’t prove to be the case. We received two or three internet orders a week. Meanwhile, our store lacked an awning or a sign to announce who we were. Passersby who noticed us quite reasonably thought we were a pop up; most people since zipped by without the slightest awareness of us. Yet as winter turned to spring, more people did notice us, and business picked up a little. In addition, I’d begun diversifying the inventory with estate bottled olive oils, amazing balsamics and even a few honeys from renowned Italian beekeeper Mario Bianco. I wanted the shop to be a hub of deliciousness and our inventory was getting there, even if large swaths of the neighborhood weren’t.

The turning point came as spring was turning to summer. Open Streets Columbus Avenue, a promotion where vehicular traffic is prohibited on Sunday afternoons, began, and to participate, we put a table outside our store sampling our cheeses. Suddenly people discovered what we already knew, Pleasant Ridge Reserve, Jasper Hill Harbison, L’Amuse Aged Gouda and Brabander, and others were jaw dropping delicious. People who might have shrugged us off as a dauntingly fancy, raced to our counter eager to get a piece of “that cheese, the stuff he’s sampling at the table.”

This confirmed something I was thinking about. For all of its stereotypes of pudgy bearded dudes geeking out over obscure hops, craft brewers want everyone drinking their beer. From 2014 to 2016, I did freelance work for Brooklyn Brewery as a brand ambassador, and there were assignments to go to the esteemed restaurant 11 Madison Park and to small grocery stores in run down areas of the outer boroughs. Denizens at each locale greeted the beer enthusiastically and knowledgeably. Every Sunday, we were doing somewhat comparable outreach for our cheese.

Then came another turning point. One of my staffers, an especially personable fellow, asked if the table could be presented other days of the week.

I didn’t see why not.

Suddenly we had a phenomenon. The table became part of people’s routines, whether en route to the gym, running errands or coming home from school. We began selling hundreds of pieces of cheese each week. Sales tripled. The numbers were great, but I had worked at Bedford Cheese Shop during its Brooklyn heyday. I knew what kind of numbers Williamsburg circa 2010 could put up. I was certain that the Upper West Side circa 2023 and 2024 could top that. In other words, we were moving in the right direction, but we had a long way to go.

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 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.

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 13 Dreams Die Hard

Dreams Die Hard

The juice place used to be a newsstand. I wonder if there are any storefront ones left

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

Episode 13: Dreams Die Hard

Like a lot of people in media, I was stunned, rattled and deeply saddened by the surprise last spring that the New York Daily News was laying off half of its editorial staff. I didn’t work there, nor do I know anyone that does (in the past, I’ve known dozens who did), but rather it was the increasingly loud death knell it represented to the newspaper business and the reminder that one of my most cherished dreams is over.

I began reading newspapers before I began to read really. I was an avid baseball fan from the time I was four or five, and the 1965 National League pennant race enraptured me to the point that I was stealing the sports section just to following the standings, which means I think I knew what Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati meant, though I was completely clueless about my elder’s curmudgeonly insistence on calling the Dodgers “Brooklyn.” By the time I was 12, I had a career goal: write for a newspaper; the people that did got the information first. Yet when I was 30, I won two rounds of interviews at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and both times a decision was made not to hire someone for the position but go with local freelancers. Since I was a local freelancer for New York Newsday, I totally understood; I was reasonably sure that the sum total of my work there, which sometimes was two or even three pieces a week, was a LOT less than what a staffer made. That was as close as I got. I applied for many other spots and often heard that the position was budgeted below my pay grade. Whatever. I can’t complain for a minute about the success I’ve had freelancing and the culinary career I’ve built alongside it. Still, every now and then I think about what life might have been like with a cubicle to call my own, a terminal serviced by in house folks instead of the dudes at the electronics shop around the corner, a group of coworkers who shared my passion for journalism and a steady paycheck plus a 401K and vacations. But those daydreams come to a crashing halt when I realize that it would have been a double-edged sword: on one side, I’d have a pension and buy out money to live on, but on the other, I would never have developed this significant secondary career skill.

I still do journalism and I’m proud of it. One of the most esteemed newspapers in the world enthusiastically publishes my words about ten times a year. I’m not walking away from that. On the other hand, I don’t do it in pursuit of my adolescent dream, I do it because it’s a revenue stream and I desperately need every penny I can find. At least that’s what I tell people, and the reception varies. When one potential Ms. Right heard I was still writing professionally she gave me the same consternated look that she gives 30ish men who cling to dreams of fame and fortune in hip hop or in the NBA.

I think news of layoffs — whether the Daily News, ESPN in 2017 or that most esteemed newspaper in 2016 — would plunge me into emotional realms that code as depression, but I have to achieve some sort of performative conviviality for retail, so I maintain my equilibrium. This job also reflects the dramatic change in the recognition of print journalism. When I worked at Butterfield Market in the late ’90s, I had a few writers for Vogue (yes, ALT was one of them) among the clientele; one of them even came by and showed me my Cassandra Wilson feature before it was out. In 2003, at Garden of Eden, there were several New York Times writers among the regulars and I got a blow by blow account of the demise of Executive Editor Howell Raines. At Bedford Cheese Shop, there were a variety of New Yorker writers who often parsed the difference between the current truckles of Keen’s and Montgomery Cheddar. And lastly on Columbus Avenue, thanks to Jeff Gordinier’s piece, I had a wide variety of media folk stopping by to chat and try cheese. At my current gig, the media influx is fewer and further between for a simple reason; the ranks have thinned. And now these episodes of despair are coupled with an increasingly strong sense of isolation.

In some ways that potential Ms. Right was right in one way. I am still chasing a dream and doing via hopes of having a writing career (albeit in books rather than print journalism), but the dream has diminished considerably. When she and I were dating I envisioned corner desks and cubicles, long vacations to other continents, work related travel to other countries where I could get the scoop that the Jakarta Jazz Festival was now the leading event in Asia or some such. I’d dine in the pool of the leading food critic and chat with chefs about my days as a cheesemonger which would be long in the past.

My days as a cheesemonger are starting to recede into the distant past, and the dreams have diminished considerably. My dream at this point is to pay my rent without the obligation feeling like a pair of cinder blocks on my shoulders. I’d like to travel, but that means a quick run to Boston for a ball game and maybe a visit to a brewery like Trillium or Treehouse. I used to think that cheese would get me to that level. It did, but it was unsustainable. I don’t think craft beer will get me there. I’m too old, too dark and too fat. I do think writing can, even if that route is filled with landmines and torpedoes. Sure, web design might be a surer path, but writing is what I’ve got.

Or maybe it’s got me. Friday night around 10, I was wrapping things up at the store, eager to get out while the rain had let up, when a customer I hadn’t seen in a while crossed my path. He wondered where I’d been hiding. I told him I work only four days a week. I could see in his expression a curiosity about how I make ends meet. I told him of my writing endeavors. He brightened. He told me he wrote regularly for the Soho Weekly News and began to explain what it was (I guess I don’t look like I’m 58). I name dropped a couple of his colleagues and he happily recounted what it was like to write in the mid and late ‘70s.

I let on that I occasionally felt foolish to continue to pursue ambitions of writing in the current media economy, and he almost shouted. “You can’t not do it! If you’re a real writer, you have to write!!”

“What do you think about when you wake up in the morning?” He asked, his eyes flashing with zeal.

The right answer was coffee, but I knew what he meant, and he could tell I knew what he meant and smiled. I gave him a card. He looked at it and admired it for a second. I thought about telling him how easy Vistaprint is, but I didn’t want to interrupt.

“Don’t ever stop,” he said and looked me in the eye a smile creeping across his lips. “Bet you know that already.” He then headed on to do his shopping.

And with that gust of wind in my sails, I finished up and charged into the drizzly night feeling a bit better about the status and root causes of my dreams.

I don’t know if this work environment is sustainable but it is fun and rewarding

Life on Aisle 2: This is What Plan C Looks Like, Episode 12, On the Fringe

Episode 12: On the Fringe

Nope, not the usual grocery store craft beer.

When I took my current job, I thought I was moving from the fringe to the mainstream. For much of my culinary career, I’ve worked in small, off-the-beaten-path or at least unusually located boutiques. Now, I work at a bright, gleaming, 18,000 square foot store, easily the biggest place I have worked at since I was employed by a superstore in Dallas Texas during the Carter Administration. And it’s a five-minute walk from Union Square, one of Manhattan’s biggest hubs. To give you a sense of proportion, I think the produce department at my current store is as large as the first iteration of the Bedford Cheese Shop, which I worked at in 2004, when it was still inside the minimall, next to Spoonbill and Sugartown book store.

I was wrong. When it comes to craft beer, I’m on the fringe. Grocery stores, even fancy grocery stores aren’t supposed to carry rare and exotic beers and we’re especially not supposed to sell them in an enthusiastic, knowledgeable way and promote them on Instagram.

Um, sorry.

At least, once a month, I hear from a sales rep “oh that’s not really for you,” in response to an inquiry about an exotic brew. One brewer that we proudly supported early on restricted some formats of his beer from my store and explained that he wasn’t distributing to that format to grocery stores anymore and didn’t want to make exceptions. “It’s a slippery slope if we start,” he wrote in an apologetic email.

All that is fine in one way and not so much in another. It’s fine since a chip on my shoulder is typically a good thing. I began using the hashtag #yesagrocerystore for a while until it began to feel shrill. Also, I realized the drivers for a lot of the small local breweries we work with were coming by even when they weren’t delivering; they dug the sandwiches from our delicatessen section. Since there are several beer bars that have excellent food, Milk and Hops, Fool’s Gold and Double Windsor just to name three, I took it as high praise for the rest of the store.

On the other hand, there is significant detriment. I haven’t been able to extend the brand that I’m building very much and monetize my skills. I went into this job with the idea that I could build it into something that would be self-supporting income in case the journalism income declined precipitously again. Those hopes are fading. Yes, success at retail has led to feelers from a couple of other outlets, both of them offering lower pay (um yeah, those were short conversations). My attempts to break into the bar world have been rebuffed; maybe there’s a glass wall. I fear that I fit the stereotype of the grocery store beer buyer who doesn’t really like craft beer but follows the sales patterns. I’m overweight and not white. About once every two weeks, someone — and not always a white person — is surprised to discover that I actually like craft beer and furthermore that I’m somewhat knowledgeable about it. The overweight part is something I’m working on; the stereotype blinders I can’t help. Also, there are some bar owners who know me from five years ago when lower body injuries were a daily problem for me. I am beginning to get back in shape and hope to lose the baggy jeans for catsuits as I did in my early 40s. It would be a very au courant and very Wakanda. And it would be a loud reminder that my cane is not a permanent part of my wardrobe.

Of course, out on the fringe is where I’ve lived most of my life. For years I didn’t fit into any particular African American crowd either. Then, suddenly in the late ’90s, I stumbled into a crew that like me grew up middle class, and more importantly we didn’t regard our Blackness as an anti-colonial stance, we regarded it as imperial. That is to say, if we took an interest in Wong Kar Wai films then guess what y’all, liking Wong Kar Wai was now a Black thing. Ditto lunches during restaurant week, classic American songbook, or anything else that caught our fancy. We weren’t fitting into new holes; we were destroying the pegboard. It validated new narratives. Unfortunately, as the new millennium settled in, rising rents, career snafus and other vagaries pulled us apart. In particular, I was pulled from the orbit of what was left of the group, since I had to work more and more just to stay somewhat afloat economically.

On a recent Thursday many of us reunited in the East Village. One of our old crowd was doing a reading at place near Avenue D. Once we got over the shock that we’re now approaching 60 instead of 40, the old rhythms resumed. When I asked one ringleader that I hadn’t seen in years how she was doing, she paused and looked me in the eye. Then she uttered a guttural, “I’m okay.” There was a pause. “I guess,” she continued. “You know what I mean.”

I did. And I loved that the pauses in her declamation were as charged as those in Thelonious Monk’s music.

The reading was magical. It reconnected me to the days when metaphor meant more to life than algebra and artistic expression was something to be lived not just blogged.

When I left, I looked at the night sky which was just beginning to envelop Avenue D and realized something important. I’ve been on the fringe most of my life. If I’m on the fringe in craft beer, it shouldn’t feel like an imposition. It’s an obstacle that I’m used to overcoming. It’s practically a homecourt advantage.