Too Many Words About a Grocery Store: The Miracle on Graham Avenue

Last week while running errands, I discovered, with openmouthed dismay, that my favorite little neighborhood organic grocery had disappeared. Simply de-materialized, leaving behind the spindles of its awning and newspapered windows. There was a handwritten note saying they would re-open down the street, soon.

Soon? What in the world is "soon" to a girl who wants her cream-top yogurt and the good granola? Soon, as in, maybe someday in the visible future? Soon, as in, we are still paying off the Department of Buildings? Or soon, as in really, never? (An all-too-frequent happenstance in New York City.)

This morning, I approached my laundromat, and discovered to my surprise and delight that Khim was back!

Oh boy, and how!

Where the old market was so small and crowded that you had to carry your handbag directly in front of you or lay waste to entire shelves of goods, and if two people met in the aisle, one had to back all the way out to let the other pass, the new one has literally increased in size tenfold.

After dumping my delicate underthings (okay, that's an overstatement, since you could build bridgework with my bras) into a machine, I rushed across the street for an inspection. There I spent a speechless wash cycle wandering the aisles, gaping like a Cold War Russian at the sheer plenitude.

I suppose if you could ever induce me back into Whole Foods I probably wouldn't be so excited by this little borough grocery store. I've been inside WF exactly three times, once in Denver, once in Chelsea, and once on the LES, and three was quite enough. It wasn't the store itself so much as the people shopping there that I found so grating.

If you want to have your liberalism validated, you go to Whole Foods. If you want to have it tested, you go to Bushwick.

But in a neighborhood with a couple of dingy grocery stores, where you can only be mystified by the poor and obese folks who load their shopping carts with sugary cereals, giant bottles of soda in colors not found in nature, and every Entenmann's baked good known to humankind, with nary a green thing to be found, this brightly-lit oasis of things that grow! Out of the ground! -- walking into this clean-smelling miracle of a store, I feel like Dorothy stepping out of her farmhouse. I swear I heard Munchkin giggles from behind the tomato display.

This little grocery is set up as competition to Whole Foods. See, the encroaching hordes of the Bugaboo Brigade currently hop on the L train to go to Whole Foods in Union Square, 15 minutes away. You see them on the train with those stupid paper-handled bags (that aren't worth a shit for reuse, if you ask me), making the trek back to Brooklyn. Most of them get off at Bedford Avenue, Lorimer Street, and Graham Avenue. Lately more of them have been getting off at my stop, a fairly recent development.

So if Khim's is offering some of what WF is offering, at literally half the price ($2.99! For Brown Cow Yogurt! The big one! $1.99 a pound for vine tomatoes!), these folks will be able to get their dose of ego aggrandizement from a local merchant, and the rest of us will have fresh and wholesome food available to us at reasonable prices. Hey, I don't care what your reasons are, but as long as you're supporting the little local guy, I'm all for you doing it.

But should someone warn the Stroller Corps that they they're probably going to be shopping next to actual, you know, poor people?