Whole Foods on Houston Street

After a quick drink with Brent and Peter at The Skinny for some bloggy/new media shop talk, I wandered almost guiltily to the WF on Houston Street. Why the guilt? I was sneaking around the back of my 14th street WF love.

Well, I could have saved myself any guilt. The place was capital “D” pressing. Maybe because it’s new. And it was a Tuesday night. And the LES was quiet. And they have too much room: 71,00 square feet spread over two floors-it felt and was empty. (I didn’t go upstairs, not yet, but the NYT did, second item).

I, like most New Yorkers, are used to cramped shopping quarters . Like Fairway on the UWS? If you don't get shoved or one dirty look, you’re doing it wrong. So all that space and no pushing, it was like entering bizarro world. Too clean, too new, too nice, too fresh: sterile. Not New York.

Sustainable Table blogged about it a few weeks back [amongst others ] much better than I in this short post. However, I think we’re all experiencing similar feelings about the Whole Fooding of the city: torn between a deep emotional loss of neighborhood grocers and a guilty pleasure for embracing the new, the clean, the big, and the organic.

Comments

Anonymous said…
It's the other way around here in Chicagoland. The WF near me in Evanston is small, packed and rather cramped. There's usually a 5-10 car deep queue to get into the (admittedly really small) car park. Of course, this may say more about the socio-economic status of the Chicago North Shore (think Westchester) and the relative lack of 'quality' grocery stores (although I think our local Dominicks, aka Safeway, is pretty decent).
Allergic Girl® said…
hey steve:
yeah this WF is in that huge new block long building on chrystie and houston. alot of smaller buildings/spaces were sacrified for these large WFs around town, hence the sadness. amazing that evanston has one too! it is a college town though so that makes sense.

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