Food Fight!!!! Whole Foods v. Food Coop and Stroller Heather v. Amy Sohn

The New York Observer has an article out this week on the prudes of Park Slope and whether we'll schlep our entitled, gentrified asse(t)s downhill to the scary, dirty, desolate, but newly non-toxic site of Whole Foods Gowanus.

It was only a matter of time before big-box brown rice capitalism landed in Brooklyn, which in the last four years has welcomed Fairway, Ikea and Trader Joe's. Whole Foods has opened six stores in New York since 2001, all in Manhattan. But proximity to Park Slope, the epicenter of purpose-driven, pseudo-suburban family life in Brooklyn, opens a whole new can of worms. Residents have so far staved off high-end retail, other than the odd boutique, despite being a branch office of Manhattan economically. One cannot even find a Gap in its increasingly lily-white environs. 

This is Park Slope Food Coop territory, after all. 

Brownstoner put up a link and the comments quickly started rolling in, 154 at last count (and I just had to restart because that fucking website crashed my laptop). Anyway, the comments stream morphed into a kind of awesome food fight between lovers and haters of the Food Coop, Whole Foods, Amy Sohn and the latest greatest new Park Slope celebrity (if I have anything to say about it, anyway)...STROLLER MAMA HEATHER.

Go Heather!

I don't actually know much or care much about Amy Sohn. I started to read her book and lent it to a friend who was catching a flight after a chapter or two. I was just getting to the part where not Jennifer Connelly was feeling paranoid that goody-two-shoes not Maggie Gyllenhaal was trying to one-up her at the Food Coop orientation. My friend was infuriated at the depiction of PS 107 and dumped the book at some terminal at LAX.

But I couldn't help but love the way Stroller Heather was fighting the (maybe) good fight against Amy Sohn for her comments to the Observer reporter. Wherein Amy Sohn laments the Whole Foodsification of Gowanus, which she loved for its grittiness and dirty video stores. Okay, so far so good. 

But then...

She said she would not shop at Whole Foods but hoped some of the riffraff at the co-op—the type of people who don't have their hearts in the movement, the type who wind up on the blacklist—might.

"They probably come from another part of the country where Whole Foods is very fetishized, and they have been waiting," Ms. Sohn said. "They want to replicate their sort of Mall of America experience in New York City, so they love that you can have a Whole Foods in Brooklyn."

Which brings us to Stroller Heather... Oh, it is SO ON, folks.

At 10:32, the first salvo:

Bite me, Amy Sohn.

Sorry, I'm trying to think of something more articulate, but that's all that comes to mind -- and I am not even a fan of Whole Foods.

There's a certain eternal thing among a certain type of New Yorker, where being "in the know" and going to whatever particular thing is fashionable is really, really important. These days, it's all about the "responsible" shopping. Never mind that most of that is utter bull. If one is a certain demographic, one must love the coop and sneer at Whole Foods.

An hour later:

I truly do not want to hate the coop or Amy Sohn. Why do they make that so hard? Why can't Amy say sane, reasonable things? Why can't the co-op just be a place to buy squash? Why can't Park Slope just be an area in Brooklyn with an annoying hill?

At 4:30 pm:

Yes, that's right, everyone who is NOT a member of the co-op is a godless misanthrope who kicks puppies, votes republican, and shops at Walmart.

Yes, yes, YEEEEESSSSSSSS!!! You tell her, Stroller Heather.

I lurve Heather. Can we nominate her for something. So what if she lives in Fort Greene. I could use some help on the BREEDER defense front over here...