Letter from Riverhead

A friend writes: “I just got back from a truly marvelous vacation and one that was unlike anything I’d experienced before. I went on a walking tour of discount supermarkets. You go to Costco, Sam’s Club and end up at the BJ’s Wholesale Club on Route 58 in Riverhead. Butterfield and Robinson is a Canada based touring company that specializes in high end biking and walking tours and there are some multi-sports of which this one should qualify since there was walking and shopping for items like toilet paper in bulk. In these economically challenging times many active vacation companies which specialize in bike trips to the Loire where they place their customers in Chateaus at night and pick up the pieces the next day, when wine tastings lead to bike crashes, should consider this growing new market. Holiday Inn Expresses can replace the chateaus with chains like Panera’s and  the Olive Garden substituting for the two and three star Michelins that still grace high end tours. The spirit of the old active vacation trips was still there, if the clientele was somewhat changed in both attitude and appearance. The high rollers, who normally would check their walking sticks and settle back by the pool with a bottles of Merlot, were now seen heading back to the same discount supermarkets they’d spent the day touring with their new found coupon books in hand.  Our trip ended with tearful fair wells at the BBB (Bed, Bath and Beyond), about a mile from I-495, the Interstate that would carry us all back into the major airports and Manhattan—from which we would all disperse to the four corners of the earth.”

Diasporic Dining XII: A Dollar Saved is a Dollar Earned

Photos by Hallie Cohen

It’s Easter weekend. The cashier at the Dollar Tree is a veteran of both Price Chopper, where she was recently hit by an old woman with a cane, and Walmart, where there were long lines. By comparison, the Dollar Tree Where Everything is $1 is on a far more homey, human scale. In the window are signs advertising frozen and dairy foods for $1 and the “Wow Item of the Week,” some unhappy looking Easter bunnies. Dollar Tree is a backwater compared to discount juggernauts like BJ’s and Sam’s. No membership is required at Dollar Tree, and there is a whole wall dedicated to festively wrapped balloon weights. The Dollar Tree book shelf is composed of the equivalent of minor league hitters who have struck out. For instance, there is a book called The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace With Your Inner Achiever, which doesn’t seem to apply to anyone who walks into the store. The real achievers, those who buy paper towels in bulk, are too ambitious for Dollar Tree. They are to be found waiting patiently on line with their wagon trains of groceries at the big discount clubs. At Dollar Tree, there are mutations like the four-divider pocket notebooks that didn’t make the cut at Mead. At the other side of the store are the rudimentary Easter items. No one who walks out of the Dollar Tree need go hungry or be deprived of a chocolate Easter egg or crucifix. The big epistemological question at Dollar Tree remains: is everything really only a dollar?