Yesterday was a good day.
The sun came out and I took a walk to the South Slope, Fifth and Eighth. A great block; there’s the veterinarian’s office, a grocery store, Leopoldi Hardware , Ocean Fish market, and my beloved Save On Fifth. And each one was open.
This is the kind of old New York block my late mother in law, Maria Prytula, loved. It was, and thank God, still is, basic. There’s nothing trendy here, which Maria could not stand about gentrifying New York, and everything is immediately identifiable. I like to keep things simple and I want to know that I can get my milk, eggs and bread at a grocery store and aspirin, stockings and a steno pad at Save On Fifth. Park Slope, and indeed all of New York, is crawling with retail spaces that you cannot identify the mission of. Places with names that tell you nothing about what the business does, with a chic mirror and chair seen through the window. If you couldn’t figure out what this kind of establishment did before the pandemic, you certainly can’t figure it out now, as the place is shuttered, like all the others.
Yet the block on Fifth and Eighth was teeming with activity yesterday afternoon. Everyone was distancing as best they could and the folks at the front of the store were wearing the plastic shields over their faces. “Have you been open this whole time?” I asked the man behind the counter. “Yes, the whole time,” he said. Turns out I was calling before they opened (to be fair, they had no voice mail message, proving how truly old school they are).
Oh, did my mood improve. They had elastic for mask making, clear garbage bags for recycling, and Scotch tape for collage. I never buy candy anymore yet yesterday, I even threw in a Werther’s Toffee for the heck of it.
Okay, they were out of Vitamin C. But so is everyone else, so I’ll happily forgive them for that.