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Rouse's
Rouse's is a supermarket (not mega saver gigando zone) with at least three locations in New Orleans proper. One is in the French Quarter and one is Uptown. The final installation, located on Carrollton Avenue in the Mid-City section of New Orleans. Anthony Rouse, the proprietor, started his first grocery store down the bayou in Houma, La., in 1960. But at the tail end of his career (he died earlier this year) he was heralded for reinvesting in New Orleans when he bought up the shuttered Sav A Center and A & P stores that dotted the metro area. The move doubled the size of the Rouse's franchise, and it gave that oft-unheralded, much stigmatized area known as The Rest of New Orleans Where Most of the Regular People Live a grocery store. Shockingly, the Mid-City location is the only supermarket from, and this is a conservative estimate, the Orleans Parish limits near the Lower 9th Ward through to Lakeview. That's a sizable chunk right through the heart of the city. (As you may have guessed, since the lower 9 is involved, that's also where a lot of poor people live -- but it's a huge land area, so it would be ignorant to only chalk it up to an issue of economic disparity). The Uptown Rouse's is nary a stone's throw from Winn Dixie and Wal-Mart, just to put things into a little perspective.
Though grocery stores are maligned as one of the many institutions taking on a more homogeneous, corporate (read: boring and lifeless) sort of feel over the last 30 years, there are still enough local grocers hanging around in most parts of the country to give credence to the idea that they're one of the only retailers left that still offers some regional diversity. And in New Orleans, there's no more showy piece of the Old Weird America vibe reeking from the streets like a Katrina fridge that hasn't been opened yet than the food. French or Creole or Cajun or Carribean or somewhere in between, they couldn't come up with some of this stuff again even if the French stumbled upon the Baratarians all over again. (The part about the Acadians getting kicked out of Canada is far too implausible a wrinkle). It's rare that you'll find shrimp remoulade mix displayed prominently in your local Seattle grocery store. And no one can touch the olive selection.
Leaving only one packed grocery store for normal New Orleanians looking to whip up some dinner sends them a message..they don't want us to eat. It's already bad enough, what with the 'We don't want you to live in a good house' vibe already being put across here. Investors may be shaky about setting up shop, but it's not like they wouldn't have business.
So while unheralded nationally on the level of Kanye West and formeldahyde, Rouse's occupies a critical place in that black albatross around the neck of this place known as the post-K landscape. They came and set up shop when no one else would. And unlike their counterparts Robert Fresh Market in the Marigny, they found a way to reopen despite all the insurance and legal hurdles that were thrown down in front of them. Judging by the business over there on Carrollton when I stopped by today, business seems to be alright.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
General Interest Review 00000
William Safire
William Safire died today. I learned this from the website of one of those pesky newspapers that still seem to be hanging around. Safire wrote for The New York Times. He was also a speechwriter for Richard Milhaus Nixon, and coined some of the phrases that made Nixon's hatchet man and vice president Spiro T. Agnew look like a creep to people with whom I would've agreed had I been around 40 years ago. Nattering nabobs of negativism. That stands alone for me. It crosses my mind when I least expect. And with some regularity. You know what doesn't? Anything Bob Herbert writes...
When Safire was hired by The Times, conceivably The Enemy as he was on the PR side of things, he turned himself into a nattering nabob as he withstood the brunt of rancor that comes from holding the whipping post known as "The Conservative On The Times' op-ed page." Along the way, he also instituted On Language, one of the most delightful columns to read that has ever been in print.
The Times op-ed columnists seem to be selected to reflect the sort of ideals of society that that great self-identified beacon of society, The Times Reader, can identify with. For people who are aware that there are poor people in other countries, we now have Nicholas Kristof. For generic Times readers who think that these countries are filled only with people like themselves, we have Tom Friedman. For people who reduce everything to meaningless, gimmicky gook, we have Maureen Dowd. And of course Herbert, who represents the mainstream Democratic Party's line of failing to say anything that everyone doesn't already know. Safire's space is designed to prove that there are a few conservative Times readers -- or at least that those other imes readers were intellectually honest enough to read about what the other side thought. But Safire wasn't just an ideological stenographer. He won the Times readership over anyway because he brought provocative ideas, my personal favorite being his crusade to abolish the penny, that had little to do with sucking up to the party o restating what Irving Kristol thought about something in column size. (The latter job was filled by Kristol's son, William, during his short stint on the whipping post). Safire's views were nuanced enough to support the Iraq War but oppose the USA Patriot Act.
That is to say, he was an old-fashioned Republican that didn't mind rolling up his sleeves and disagreeing with his party's standard bearers. The amount of arrogance and self aggrandizement required to carve out this sort of reputation over decades is not yet even measurable. One only need look at the sudden spotlight foisted on Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine as she fights to hold onto roughly the same reputation within the Establishment to see how much power you can accrue by being a lone inconsistent voice among a chorus of hard-line party-liners. But, hey, when is the point of anything in Washington something other than "look at me?" Safire stood out even beyond the Snowes of the world because he actually put forth ideas that you could agree or disagree with, and the man could turn a phrase. That means...he wasn't a moderate. And that's the point. The landscape that Safire departed forces anyone wishing to expose their spine to hide beyond ideology ("You lie!"), or, worse, self-serving delusion (anything Tom Delay and Rod Blagojevich have ever done in public). But Safire was just pounding out what he thought might be interesting. That's the imperative that the conversation shapers seemed to have decided the public would rather do without. Reading and thinking...you mean it's possible to both at the same time?
William Safire died today. I learned this from the website of one of those pesky newspapers that still seem to be hanging around. Safire wrote for The New York Times. He was also a speechwriter for Richard Milhaus Nixon, and coined some of the phrases that made Nixon's hatchet man and vice president Spiro T. Agnew look like a creep to people with whom I would've agreed had I been around 40 years ago. Nattering nabobs of negativism. That stands alone for me. It crosses my mind when I least expect. And with some regularity. You know what doesn't? Anything Bob Herbert writes...
When Safire was hired by The Times, conceivably The Enemy as he was on the PR side of things, he turned himself into a nattering nabob as he withstood the brunt of rancor that comes from holding the whipping post known as "The Conservative On The Times' op-ed page." Along the way, he also instituted On Language, one of the most delightful columns to read that has ever been in print.
The Times op-ed columnists seem to be selected to reflect the sort of ideals of society that that great self-identified beacon of society, The Times Reader, can identify with. For people who are aware that there are poor people in other countries, we now have Nicholas Kristof. For generic Times readers who think that these countries are filled only with people like themselves, we have Tom Friedman. For people who reduce everything to meaningless, gimmicky gook, we have Maureen Dowd. And of course Herbert, who represents the mainstream Democratic Party's line of failing to say anything that everyone doesn't already know. Safire's space is designed to prove that there are a few conservative Times readers -- or at least that those other imes readers were intellectually honest enough to read about what the other side thought. But Safire wasn't just an ideological stenographer. He won the Times readership over anyway because he brought provocative ideas, my personal favorite being his crusade to abolish the penny, that had little to do with sucking up to the party o restating what Irving Kristol thought about something in column size. (The latter job was filled by Kristol's son, William, during his short stint on the whipping post). Safire's views were nuanced enough to support the Iraq War but oppose the USA Patriot Act.
That is to say, he was an old-fashioned Republican that didn't mind rolling up his sleeves and disagreeing with his party's standard bearers. The amount of arrogance and self aggrandizement required to carve out this sort of reputation over decades is not yet even measurable. One only need look at the sudden spotlight foisted on Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine as she fights to hold onto roughly the same reputation within the Establishment to see how much power you can accrue by being a lone inconsistent voice among a chorus of hard-line party-liners. But, hey, when is the point of anything in Washington something other than "look at me?" Safire stood out even beyond the Snowes of the world because he actually put forth ideas that you could agree or disagree with, and the man could turn a phrase. That means...he wasn't a moderate. And that's the point. The landscape that Safire departed forces anyone wishing to expose their spine to hide beyond ideology ("You lie!"), or, worse, self-serving delusion (anything Tom Delay and Rod Blagojevich have ever done in public). But Safire was just pounding out what he thought might be interesting. That's the imperative that the conversation shapers seemed to have decided the public would rather do without. Reading and thinking...you mean it's possible to both at the same time?
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