Anytime: Williamsburg

I'm hungry. I decide to brave delivery. My benefactor tells me of a service that delivers a vast array of items - Anytime. "There's one in Manhattan and Brooklyn," he says.

Anytime: Williamsburg. (718) 218-7272. I call...

"Anytime..." Silence.

"Uh, I'd like to make an order for delivery," I say, confidently.

"Ok, this first time order?" he asks quickly. "Yeah," I say.

"Number?... Address?... Apartment... Cross Street?... I need the other cross street, sir." There is a void to him; there is no patience. He repeats the last four digits of my phone number. "Uh, huh." He repeats them again. I repeat them to him. "Ok, your order..."

"How about..." I begin. He stops me. "One moment." He clicks over.

He clicks back. "Ok, what can I get you?"

"Two Anytime Burgers," I order. "Sides?"

I panic. "Fries?" "No fries, sir" he says. He's starting to get annoyed, but no fries? "Uh, how about felafel?"

"We don't have felafel, sir!" I am staring at the menu. Felafel balls are $4.50. I go silent. I shut down...

"We have fries, baked, mashed..." He begins listing the side options, and the beginning of the list begins with fries! I manage to tell him, "yeah, fries please..."

"Will there be anything else, sir?" he asks.

At this point, I thought everything between us had been solved. As if it were only a big misunderstanding. Yeah, they had fries. Yeah, they have falafel balls.

"How about an order of the felafel balls?" I ask. A different tone of voice, a few different details - I figure if I ask him nicely, it'll all just work out.

"Sir, WE don't have felafel! Will that be all?"

"Yeah..." I was baffled. What exactly had just taken place? How could calling a late night delivery service prove such a challenge?

Instantly, he lightens up. "Thirty to forty minutes, sir." I hang up. The city is laughing at me.

(Incidentally, the "Anytime Burger" was pretty much incredible when it arrived...)

To Market

I left the flat today to find food for the week. In my home village, there was an indoor market. Lines of items for everyone: meats. fish. eggs. 

In the city, every corner has a shop master selling what all shop masters 

sell – expensive items of poor quality to those that venture no further than they must. One must go further to find a good price. To find fresh meats, a person may find a meat market. Fish? A separate market in a separate area of the city early in the morning. A bean? A stand that sells them. Loaf bread, in a still different bizarre.

The citizens move from shop to shop with aluminum carts; personal wheeled-baskets, and it is glorious to watch them as they move along the street. Food, for these people, is a destination three stations away. The meal: a ritual, a processional along the main traffic ways of the metropolitan neighborhoods. 

Eating is a deliberate act. Finding the meal is equally deliberate.

Where once we carried items on our shoulders, our backs, we now push them around like a showcase of personal delights. The flavor of survival in the city is in our baskets. And yet, we are left quite vulnerable and exposed without our own transportation. Where does one direct the eyes with so many neighbors close – on the streets, on the trains, in shops? Our baskets become the object of our eyes without cars to hide them in. Our imaginations create plots involving our neighbors to keep us entertained, where once we ate together.