Slim Shady’s Schlep through the City

What to say about Eminem's Chrysler commercial?

Some are saying that for “native Detroiters” the ad provokes goose bumps. (Since leaving southeast Michigan almost ten years ago I've met native Detroiters from Toledo, 32-mile road, and Ann Arbor.) Others are calling bullshit on a gritty rustbelt ad put out by a company that is now owned by Italian auto giant, Fiat. In the end though (as reported by Businessweek) pop and pathos may not be enough to save Chrysler.

Basically the spot features Eminem driving all around the Detroit metro area looking for the Fox Theater – River Rouge, Hart Plaza, the D.I.A., the suburbs, he even makes it over to Belle Isle at one point. Considering the car appears to have a navigation device this seems like an unnecessary odyssey, even for a guy who moved to the ‘burbs years ago. (Formerly of 8-mile, Em now resides north of 27-mile.) Mr. Mathers lost in the city is not, however, the only unsettling aspect of the ad. Like an out-of-towner trying to find I-75 North, the whole message is confused and more than a little panicked.

Geography is no joke in the two-minute spot. My first reaction to the ad was: Why Eminem? Why not Iggy Pop or Aretha Franklin? The answer is perhaps obvious: as a white rapper from 8-mile, Eminem can deftly navigate the city’s nasty racial politics. 8-mile road – as this image shows – is the dividing line between Black Detroit and the White Suburbs. Claiming 8-mile places him directly on the liminal space between black and white. Eminem has enough urban cred to rep Detroit, but he’s also white; he can sell Chryslers to all those folks who live north of the city (think of those big houses at 0:51). As does his persona, the rapper’s day-long trek attempts to suture the racial cuts that have defined the city's politics and geography since well before the 1967 “riots.”

Like the steam that rises year-round from the city's grates and manholes, the ad's message seems both out of place and ephemeral. The two-minute spot is filled with moments of race and class ambiguity, instances in which Detroit’s past is both evoked and erased, its “ruin porn” celebrated and eschewed. The image of Eminem griping the wheel of his Chrysler 200 is skillfully juxtaposed with the statue of Joe Louis’ fist in Hart Plaza. When Em grips the grain, does his fist evoke the Black Pride imagery of the Joe Louis Memorial or supplant it? With both images we see power, progress, and movement, but at what price? Can we even begin to compare the legacies of the two southern-come Detroiters?

(Are his palms sweaty?)

When the voice over claims “it’s the hottest fires that make the hardest steel” should we simply think of Detroit’s recent hard times as a metaphor for the foundry, or should we also think of the history of “Devil’s Night” or the 1967 urban revolt that sealed the deal on white flight?

In fact, for a real treat, listen to the audio from the Chrysler commercial while watching this video on mute:

More than a strange coincidence, the mash-up of these two Detroit scenes is precisely what the Chrysler ad does in the first place: it juxtaposes past and present, pain and profit. The city's journey "to hell and back" didn't start with the economy tanking, or Colman Young or even summer '67. (And if you disagree you should read this.) And just as it's an error to see a "riot" as something that creates social conditions rather than an event that stems from them, we need to take the long view on this one. Pain and profit are imbricated in Detroit's history, the city stands as a testament to the failure of the system by which it was created. And while Chrysler isn't responsible for the brutal logic of capital that made Detroit, it isn't without a strange irony that this history is evoked to sell us more cars.

And speaking of the logic of capital, who would have thought they’d see Socialist realism in a Super Bowl commercial? Sure, if you want to get at the genuis loci of the city, feature Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals in the ad. But that’s just it, the murals speak to the foreclosed possibilities of both racial integration and labor organization in the city. They depict labor as both thriving and integrated, neither of which ever materialized in Detroit. They evoke a vision of Detroit, one in stark contrast to the city's material existence. In focusing too tightly on Rivera, however, I miss the forest for the trees. Forget the mural, what about the Chrysler ad? Industry, ruins, the promise of the future, bodies in motion - have you ever seen so many hands in a commercial? - this stuff puts Rivera to shame. It's as though the bailout money actually turned Chrysler into Socialists. Would that it were that easy.

Where the spot really errs is in its representations of real people. In an ad so high on pathos what are we supposed to think (feel?) when the first human interaction we get is with this guy:

I'm not trying to tally representations of whiteness and blackness here, hence my not mentioning the white cop that motions us to "go right ahead!" at 1:00. It's not about that. But it's Detroit in 2011 and the first person we see in this ad is a black porter giving us an approving nod? Really?

In the last analysis, my issue with the spot is that it evokes a history of bad decisions as the reason to make more of them. From pollution to the death of the union, it uses the failure of American industry as a way to rekindle faith in that very institution. It also, and with a heavy if unintended dose of irony, co-opts socialist iconography during the most capitalist of time-slots. And, in an ad that stakes a claim to city-wide solidarity, it juxtaposes burnt out buildings with posh suburbs. The ad lays bare all the bad bets Detroit has made and then, by some miracle of logic, tries to convince us to double-down. The commercial closes with Eminem solemnly intoning "This is the Motor City, and this is what we do." Sad thing is, he just may be right.

And now for something completely different...

The two men who sat down had seen hard times, very hard times; or at least that’s the back-story I assigned them.

The scene was my local coffee spot. I had positioned myself within flirting distance of a cute woman I’d recently seen working at the local video place. The line-up was this: her in a coffee-house-chain leather armchair, an empty armchair, me, and another empty armchair. Perfect. Between her and I we had the whole corner on lock. How could anyone get in there? One person would be a creep, a couple would find it awkward, conversation impossible. It was like having Xs in three corners of a tic-tack-toe grid. No one could make a move on us.

Wrong.

Never underestimate the fallout of ill-placed chivalry.

So these men, these two men, walked in; the overhead air blaster, like an Arthur Rothstein photo of a dustbowl homestead, drew embarrassing attention to the last few wisps on their otherwise barren, artificially-wind-swept heads. I’d seen one of these men before, casually slouched over in a crowded plaza hacking and spitting as though it was just the thing to do in that quasi-urbane place. I recognized this man when he came in but like the law, good judgment arrives late if ever.

They were moving on us; like they gave a shit about my set-up, these two. Our solidarity was in jeopardy. Like the Sooners of suburban sprawl we had to confront the fact that, yes, those empty spaces would be filled – and by people we didn’t like.

I was of course way ahead of the latte sipping beauty in realizing the severity of the situation. She was engrossed in some Chuck Klosterman or Chuck Palahniuk thing. I had no choice; I had to be polite to these oldsters, but what to do?

Now, I’ve read Caesar’s Gaelic Wars. I know that when faced with such a maneuver the best thing to do is hold your line. Barring this it’s better to be surrounded than to have your forces cut in two.

They made their move for the empty chairs and I panicked. Instead of moving right and creating a solidarity power-pod, I moved left, ceding our center to this aged enemy. Unfortunately, having lines of communication cut by these two was the least of our worries.

I cannot emphasize enough the repulsiveness of these two men. Now I’ve mentioned the one before: blithely engaged in an act all passersby politely ignored but fully understood to be the preface to a eulogy. Words, alas, do not exist to describe the grotesqueness of what followed. Their actions reside outside the limits of language or any apology I may proffer.

Simply to collect the passel of ailments they displayed these men had to be well into their 90’s. They spoke an unfamiliar language, it may have been Aramaic. One way or another I assumed that these nonagenarians hailed from a place very different from suburban Los Angeles, a place where the life expectancy was at least one-third their walking age. Moreover, these were certainly not the types that skillfully dodged the death, disease, wailing, chest pounding and general raucous that weighed on their miserable compatriots. No, these men had lived lives the equivalent to the pain and suffering of three deaths; as though they pushed on not through continued regeneration but through subtracting death from the equation

The facts thus far: 1.These men were (and are, if still alive) bald. 2. They were very fucking old. 3. They were speaking Aramaic. What’s left? Lots. Once plopped down, successfully fissuring our youthful Kaffeekultur, I began to see these men for what they were: a baroque collection of every ailment known to humankind.

They were certainly ‘old’ and ‘slumped over,’ ‘resigned’ and ‘suffering.’ But I place these terms, these linguistic signs, in scare quotes to insist that the images that, in your mental rolodex, you have assigned to these groupings of letters are wholly inadequate.

Imagine the jet-lag that would accompany a three hundred hour flight. To the moon and back in a cramped window seat. Now imagine being under extreme mental and physical duress for the entirety of the flight – aside from the window seat. Imagine thirteen days in a globe-trotting Guantanamo Bay. An Extraordinary Rendition, indeed. This approaches the lethargy these two men displayed. Their bodies had given up. What, I asked myself, transported them to this suburban coffee spot, besides this flight? From where did they hobble?

And they talked, man did they talk. With sudden dissents into sleep their living bodies tortured the dialectic of their cracked, dead language. The sleep was in-turn shattered by bursts of guttural life, violent clearing of throats, wheezes and bellows. Yet, there were ailments beyond the aural.

Remember that flight, the one that marked these men with severe and irreparable jet-lag? Now imagine that, just before landing in L.A., this flight experienced a violent crash. These fragile, ancient foreigners were jettisoned from the craft, hurtled into the atmosphere. In impossible free-fall they smashed through limbs of trees, bounced of chain-link fences, tumbled over hoods of late-model Buicks, broke through hotel awnings and shattered the inevitable pane of in-transit glass.

There’s a line in Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” where Chuck D states that he was followed by “fifty two brothers, bruised, battered and scarred but hard.” These two men were not hard; though they may have been brothers. However they could no doubt – and each on his own – claim the bruises, beatings and scars of Chuck’s fifty two rebellious inmate cohorts. They had canes, arm braces, S.A.S. orthopedic shoes and one of them was apparently blind. Disheveled, tired, beaten and broken, occupying a liminal position between life and death these men conversed violently.

Their conversation, like the aged vessels that brought it to me, was jarring and repugnant.

Remember the plane crash that mutilated their impossibly fragile yet indestructible bodies? Remember the torture they endured on that flight? Now imagine that before this surreal tragedy lifted off these men were not friends but the worst of enemies. Fattah vs. Hammas; Palestine vs. Israel; The I.R.A vs. the Orange Order; Foucault vs. Chomsky; The Cold Crush 4 vs The Fantastic 5. The apparent beef between these repulsive relics eclipsed all others. What were they talking about? I could not penetrate the hidden plot of this ancient text. Was this some cultural thing? Was their native land a place where robust debate was equaled only by hard-living and sudden sleep?...

“This esoteric Byzantine debate must be settled before we both die…We cannot die until there is an answer… we must go to a franchise coffee shop adjacent to a small Southern California liberal arts college campus and finish this…Whatever it takes, whatever it takes.”

Had I underestimated these two? Was I actually witnessing the concluding remarks between Glaucon and Thrasymachus regarding the nature of justice? If this had been the case, I would have liked to interject that what the video vixen and I were being forced to endure was certainly not a valid notion of justice. This was a tyranny of repulsion.

Are you beginning to understand the gravitas of this situation? What am I leaving out? What more can I tell to lend texture to this nauseating scene? Have I mentioned that the pants of both men were unbuttoned? Not in a casual, “oops, forgot to zip,” kind of way but in a way that suggests a fierce lack of concern. Did I say that one of the men had a substantial shit stain on the back of his pants? Did I tell you how, roused from his torpor, the blind man turned to his right and grabbed the movie madden’s white leather hand bag? (She quickly and commendably rubbed both her hands and the bag with Purell squirted from a tiny travel-size.) “I no see it…I’m blind…soorry” was his rejoinder. Did I fail to mention that this be-feebled purse thief, when not muttering, bellowing, or crumpled and sleeping, would slowly spit into tiny napkins and toss these cess-pods onto the travertine floor? No, I spared you these nauseating details. But I lived through them and I bare witness.

The girl is gone now but the men remain. I have a video to return today. Perhaps I should apologize: “I’m sorry, I had no idea it would be that bad. And I know this doesn’t erase things or make it better but, I should have moved to the right.”

"It's black, it's white, it's tough for you to get by..."

Sometimes things aren't as they seem. Other times things are very much as they seem, so much so that we don't believe what we're seeing. Take this famously creepy pic we all remember from thin, dog-eared picture books of our youth:
Coy Beauty or Grizzled Hag? (Watch "The Shinning" for the definitive answer.)

Sometimes we see things that unsettle us, sometimes we experience things that aren't one/the other but are both/and.

This is purportedly a blog about "food," but I don't see how that baggy term precludes me from talking about other things like, say, alcohol, and racism. I mean, I grew up in suburban Detroit and from what I can remember of the "grown-ups' table" - or at least a large contingent thereof - food, alcohol and racism were as much a part of the holidays as Fords caravanned in the circular drive.

So, keeping in mind the above photo, what should we think of this picture:
You can find this curious drawing along the left side of most Jack Daniels bottles (half pints don't have sides, ya dummy!). Sure, it's a hand clutching - if awkwardly - a glass of Jack. But, what else do we see here? With the above image in mind, lets now look at another item with deep roots in American culture:
Anyone? Anyone? Now with blackface in mind (or better yet a Sambo character) what else do we see in the J.D. label? Can we also see the thumb, forefinger and empty top half of the glass as a hat? The two curious white dots just below as eyes? The remaining fingers as bulbous nose and obscene, larger-than-life lips? Like the old woman photo, Jack Daniels gives us an image that is both/and; both white hand clutching a glass and a minstrel image evoking better times - presumably in the glass and in the past; what with all J.D.s talk of tradition that surrounds the drawing how could it not?

With these images - and any "optical illusion" - you see what you want but you cannot "un-see" its other half, it creeps into the periphery of what you'd prefer to see. Because it's there too, it's part of the image .

So what? Is this just some dumb exercise of my passion for academic pedantry and booze? Well, yes and no... Actually yes on both counts, but it's also bigger than that. Let's look at another image with a curious message:


So besides robust, alcohol inspired homo-social bonding, what is this an ad for? Certainly Chivas would say "honour" and "gallantry" - in fact, if I heard them correctly, they do say this. As Chivas would have it these are frail and forgotten ethics that can be resuscitated if we just drink enough whiskey. And while it's a step up from Jack's Jim Crow and The Minstrel Show, it still has an illusory quality that demands deeper focus. What was all that about a "code of behaviour that sets certain men apart"?

If the Jack Daniels label is haunted by what is there, the Chivas ad, and its message, springs from a fear of what is not there. Anyone? Anyone?

Answer: Be suspicious of an ad that features a bunch of white guys and ends with "Here's to us." (Unless it's an ad for stormfront.org or the Republican Party.) 'Us' in the Chivas world means the kind of guys who not only drink Chivas but are also predisposed to do all those great things the ad is suggesting. 'Us' is the guys in the ad, white guys - only.

Still don't buy it? Or is the advert just too English with its "sporting" types and effete, Thom Yorke-esque bellowing?

Then how about this one:


I much prefer the Stranglers-inspired soundtrack but I think these guys have seen "Lock. Stock, and 2 Smoking Barrels" one too many times. Visually, this looks a lot like the Jack ad: all chiaroscuro, glass clutching, and masculinity. But while blackface is right up front in the Jack image blackness simply surrounds the guys in the Ketel ad. In the end the cool, brash, young dudes end up looking like these old ladies.

So why are these ads so amped about white guys and the past? Admittedly all Ketel is pining for is "last night" (albeit filtered through "300 years of tradition) while Chivas seems to want to get out of that gray city and find a place on which the sun never sets.

The cynical response to all the images, to the whole post, from the Jack label to the Ketel ad is that I am "reading too much into it," that all this racial stuff isn't there. However, like the old lady picture, the whole point is that it is there, but it's there in such a way where, whether you see it or not, it's part of the image, part of the message. You don't have to see the racial undertones of the Ketel or Chivas ad for these very undertones to seep into the periphery of your thought - in fact, it works better this way.

So have a drink, think about it, but remember: a lot of thought went into these ads - and vision can be impaired by more than alcohol.

Where's The Local?

Ok, It’s time to get this thing back running, that’s to say, time to get my 3 posts in for the new year. Ideally this time I will keep it up, we shall see. In fact this post isn’t even new, and it’s certainly not very entertaining.
Last year I was invited to give a talk about food culture at a small, progressive liberal arts college. I figured the best thing for the kids was not for me to puff-up their already inflated sense of self righteousness but to actually give them something to think about. What follows is an abbreviated, updated, linked up and slightly humor-fied version of that talk. Enjoy. I will return in time with more goofiness.

Ours is an age of food culture. From Michael Pollen’s pithy pamphlet of the moment to arcane and theoretically inclined academic writing, we write about food. From cell phone snaps to highly elaborate “food porn,” we photograph and film food. And from PBS to Japanese game shows, we watch others prepare food – often in elaborate and unfamiliar ways. Increasingly, we also flex our personal (some go as far as saying political!) muscle through how we spend money on food – or perhaps better said: we are increasingly aware of this muscle. These days organic, grass-fed, line-caught, non-GMO, heirloom products have become so diffuse that we can find them – if we so choose – on the shelves of our local Wal-Mart. Indeed, the emergence of “Big Organic” shows us both how far our knowledge of food has come and how fragile and ill-defined this knowledge is.

And there have been many positive developments in this food culture, but I would like also to see a larger discussion of the complicated and often contradictory nature of our contemporary foodscapes. I am specifically interested in the emergence of locavorism within our current culinary scene. Is this movement the panacea for the ills of our global, industrialized food systems, or is it just more embroidery for our bourgeois blankies?

With perennial food contamination scares, claims of higher nutrients of organics, and the rise of the farmers market, the emergence of the locavore seems creepily conjunctural. We need to remember, however, that a desire for sanitary, nutritious, and convenient foods also motivated the food system against which the locavore movement pushes – instant dinners were the organic ramps of their time! And just as the industrialization of last century’s food chain bore unseen and harmful costs, so must our current localization of food contain consequences we vaguely understand. Who is at the other end of this globalized food chain and how do our choices effect them? May we simply “go local” without considering the global ramifications of such a move? How can local be both redefined and expanded so as to become more relevant to urban, poor, and otherwise marginalized communities; communities in which a local “foodshed” may contain only processed foods and liquor stores? Lastly, how do we position a politics of food consumption within a larger network of social and environmental activism? I am certainly not the first to ask these questions, I hope however to chart the topography of this discourse, to begin to understand its discordant and at times unsettling tones.

In his 2008 book The Green Collar Economy, former White House special advisor Van Jones discusses how food politics may fit into a larger green political movement. Jones quotes Peoples’ Grocery of Oakland founder Brahm Ahmadi as saying that he desires,

"completely localized food systems that are regionally based, with the majority of food consumers consume coming from within a few hundred miles of where they live, so that consumers have direct knowledge of the farms and farmers, and how and where that food was produced. A revolution in terms of environmental stewardship and reducing the carbon footprint in the food system. And finally, dignified job creation and wealth creation rooted in social justice and environmental sustainability."

Ahmadi’s vision basically sums up the locavore ethic – even better coming out of urban Oakland as opposed to the foodie mecca of Berkeley. (More on Oakland below.) So we have a “revolution in terms of environmental stewardship” that would also help local job creation! Sounds groovy. But not so fast. We need to interrogate the unsaid in the above statement; what lies on the other side of the deep-rooted desire to stay local or regional, to see the farmer and have knowledge of the farm?

In Ahmadi’s world, knowledge of where food was produced, how and by whom is power, power over the products one consumes and the way in which they are consumed. In this world knowing and seeing are all-important. Knowing who produced what, seeing them and what they produced in person – knowledge and sight are prime movers of the new locavorism. But what is un-seen and un-known under this ethic is exactly where our attention is most desperately needed. When our gaze shifts to the farmer at the local market it shifts away from the migrant laborer in the Salinas Valley. When we purchase local we don’t give our money to the farmer in Guatemala. The proper rejoinder to this claim may be that choosing local is also not choosing the industrio-capitalist system which may exploit the migrant laborer and the Guatemalan farmer. Fair enough, but how does this choice effect change in the system? On its own it doesn’t. Taking your chips off the table doesn’t mean you’ve changed the game – it means you are no longer playing. As I see it, on its own locavorism can go one of two directions:

1. As a standalone ethic, at best, locavorism ignores that the Guatemalan farmer couldn’t give a shit about his carbon footprint. He or she (or more likely he and she and their children) make a living because far away people buy their products. At the end of the day, and despite the nasty corporate intermediaries, we can choose or choose not to purchase from them. And while it is not the pastoral ideal of the local farmers’ market, farming may be their only source of income. (Much of this discussion is inspired by this excellent book.) As part of a globalized food chain our decisions effect others, a turn towards the local is always a turn away from somewhere else.

2. As a standalone ethic, at worst, locavorism finds itself an unwitting partner to that ever shifting yet always present American x-word, xenophobia. Ahmadi wants “job creation and wealth creation” but only for local communities. As went the farmer in Central America so goes the migrant laborer in the Central Valley. His labor is not needed, his presence not wanted. Is this the nasty underside of the local foods movement? Can we go as far as to suggest that by patrolling the borders of our bodies, by needing hyper-familiarity with what we let in, we are also complicit in a jingoistic fear of what the nation keeps out? Don’t food scares, in fact, play a proxy role in this move? If E. Coli and Salmonella outbreaks represent the fear of all thing beyond our culinary horizon and our personal control, can we extricate the laborer and the global labor circuits from this fear?

My point in all this is neither to defend globalized industrial agriculture nor to excoriate the local foods movement. Rather, I would like to insist that locavorism cannot exist as a standalone ethic, that a turn towards a local food system must also equally and actively engage a regional and global food system. This is a tall order, but without political engagement outside of local action this movement does little more than grease the wheels of the system it purports to change.

From cars to Kashi bars, green lifestyle options have become roundly normative, that is to say, they are not only the gold standard for “ethical consumption” but also comfortably incorporated into the prevailing mode of production. So if, as Thomas Frank put it more than a decade ago, “the countercultural ideal has become capitalist orthodoxy” how can the locavore movement create a position independent from yet invested in the prevailing networks of food production and distribution? I’m going to make my turn towards home by suggest a new way of approaching the movement and the terms which it applies.

But first a mea culpa (that’s how pricks say “my bad”): I’ve been beating up Brahm Ahmadi throughout this post and, while my critique of the movement has I think been accurate, my use of Ahmadi has not. Ahmadi’s work within the Oakland community and specifically with the West Oakland farmers market may serve as points of departure for reformulating what ‘local’ means. The community of West Oakland contained 137 grocery stores in the 1960s but only 22 in the 1980s. Oakland is not alone in this trend, in Detroit an estimated 550,000 live in what are commonly known as “Food Deserts,” areas in which party stores, gas stations and fast food restaurants are the only food sources. The health consequences of living in such a locale are many including higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and death. The Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative claimed recently that “the average West Oakland resident lives 10 years less than their Berkeley counterparts, and that food access is a significant factor in this disparity.” A survey of Detroit residents contained more conservative but no less alarming figures; Detroit residents losing a combined 11 years of life per 100 residents compared to 7 for the greater metro area.

Yet within these spaces of urban blight also spring the thoroughly local and urgently needed urban gardens. These gardens are an important nodal point not only for the communities they serve but also in a larger constellation of a productive politics of locavorism. Here in Los Angles the South Central Farm Market (or Community Garden) thrived from 1994 until it was forcibly closed in 2006 – this despite a last-minute intervention by Joan Baez.

I use the term ‘nodal point’ and reference the South Central Community Garden for specific reasons. First, as I’ve said it is important not to privilege the urban garden over the distant farmer, or the unseen laborer; all three must stand as free and equal partners on an ethical terrain. The urban garden may address health concerns in the inner city but without existing outside itself it cannot address working conditions in other countries or equitable pay within our own country. Second, I use the term nodal point to reference a group whose existence I have so far only hinted at yet whose absence is everywhere – the upper-middle-class bourgeois liberal. From Alice Waters and Michael Pollen to Peter Singer, the prominent figures of the locavore movement show the pallid face of classic hegemony; Jones and Ahmadi notwithstanding. Let's consider this post from the South Central Farmers’ blog,

"WHAT: The South Central Farmers who starred in the 2008 Academy Award Nominated documentary “The Garden” will [ ] host an organic cooking demonstration; sell and share local organic produce from their new farm in Shafter, CA; and host a roundtable discussion about Locavore community food initiatives....
WHERE: Whole Foods Market, Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, CA"

How do we parse out locality within this event? Is it found in the farmers, formerly of South Central? In the farm, currently north-west of Bakersfield? Or could it be in the clean, LEED certified, culinary fetish-filled aisles of the Pasadena Whole Foods? The answer is I think obvious, and it is exactly this phenomenon from which the local foods movement needs to break free.

It would seem that locavorism in its current instantiation simply paraphrases Orwell’s famous quote from (where else?) Animal Farm. That is, we’re all local, but some of us are more local than others. The above event vacates the interiority of the South Central farmers, it positions them not as equal partners rooted within a constellation of localities but as heirloom products to be consumed by specific locavores.

This is, I fear, the obscene underside of the locavore movement: that the rules of the game are being dictated by a specific group and others participation in the movement is only validated through translation and dislocation, meaning that viable partners in the global foodscape are only acknowledged if they are moved in (S. Central farmers), moved out (migrant labor), or moved away from (Central American farmers). And it is through these processes that people and places are made into fetish items to be consumed and/or discarded.

What the local foods movement needs is not a new mask on the same old face. As I’ve suggested, what is needed is a constellation of nodal points, of free and equal partners, a system that is rooted in the local yet sees itself as ethically and equitably linked to other localities. What we need is a movement that embraces a paradoxical localism, an ethics of consumption that sees the urban gardener, the migrant laborer, the distant farmer, as well as the urban and suburban consumer as linked. And again, locavorism cannot have a “first among equals” but must be radically democratic. If locavorism can see itself and its choices as emanating from and extending beyond its locale it may traverse more than just culinary concerns, it may in fact help foster a more organic form of social understanding.

Of Prohibition, Passion, and Persecution

Alas, I have not been writing as much as I ought. The good news is, however, that in the time I have not been writing I have been gorging and binging. And as is my want my go-to items are pork and beer. Fortunately, like a pot smoking sex fiend seeks out Amsterdam, I knew where I could find my rock bottom: Canada. (I hope you will forgive my e-absence as Canada has no internet.)

I understand however the fine line between a bender and a problem – I swear I do – and I had my moment of clarity once safely back in smoldering L.A. Staggering through Silverlake desperately seeking a Canadian-style fix I ran into this:



In my hung-over, maudlin, and sodium-filled state my initial thoughts dealt with the circularity of nature, the beauty found in simplicity, and the general samsara of both life and my hangovers. Then my teary eyes turned to the sign adjacent the “piece.” Could the “Ring Festival L.A,” be massive-scale hipster-backed boosterism for the NuvaRing; the illuminated sculpture hypnotizing them as they ride by on fixies; unprotected sex and carefree STD transfers without wasting tattoo money on some kid; a bold rejoinder to the ubiquitous “Stay Negative” billboards? No such luck. Once I visited the artist’s website I saw that, in fact, the thing just symbolized all that other meaningful shit plus some overpriced tickets to Wagner. No go on the raw sex.

Speaking of people who like it raw, this article in our local rag speaks to issues I hold near and dear, namely illegal products, sanitary conditions, and food. Basically, “the man” is cracking down on folks who are selling illegal cheese to other folks who like eating illegal cheese. I particularly like the thoroughgoing vision:



I suppose if we eradicate quisillo we’ll have more time to worry about peanuts, peppers, spinach, toys, dog food, tomatoes, ground beef, and swine flu. Or, if we really felt daring we could connect the crackdown to longstanding fears of what non-white-folks eat (groups to think of, think about, or think into: Chinese, Blacks, Jews, and yes Mexicans.) But this blog is not the space for such heady downers. Rather, let’s just picture the cast of characters in an 80s comedy where Don Kass, deputy city attorney, hell-bent on success, tries to destroy the mom and pop shop life blood of an East LA community. Comedy, hijinks, a little racism, food, we gotta hit.

Honestly I felt a real connection to the folks in the article as I too was (and will be for some time) in possession of illegal foodstuffs – of a sort. You see the trip to Canada was not simply for Molson inspired reverie. No, it was also an opportunity to smuggle across the border massive amounts of locally cured, uncut, rind-on Canadian bacon:


(note my diminutive hand emphasizing size)

Yes, like a wily coyote I slinked into this country with 30 lbs (above picture x 4) of the best bacon around. Not only that but I also brought 15 lbs of Peameal Bacon, a product so rare, so Canadian, so packed with briny tenderloiny goodness that it cannot even be found on Wikipedia:





Like the Ring Cycle or the circle of a NuvaRing, peameal bacon has no end, nor can it be found in the “Family Planning” section of the Sunset and Western CVS; its pleasure lies in its never being seen, its passion rooted deep within your body.

Ancient Texts and Modern Marvels

(Farmer, Mad-man, Intellectual, Lab-tech: Pollen)

Jesus, Michael Pollen is so hot right now! It’s already universally known that the Sunday NY Times Magazine is as much a part of our proud bourgeois culture as floppy baseball hats, canvas totes, and brunch. (I don’t actually know what use the canvas tote had before all this fresh, organic produce appeared.) But now M.P. goes and drops another mega-article in the Mag? It’s almost too much.

He basically says that food shows are otherworldly in their impracticality; we spend too much time watching others cook and not enough doing it ourselves and that folks need to get back to basics, get off their asses and into the kitchen. So the argument follows thus: the stuff on TV isn’t real; we’ve replaced doing with watching; we – men and women – need to get back in there and start cooking!

Truth be told, I think Pollen has a future not only in the food world but also that of non-pornographic intimacy videos. Really, we could replace the food-talk with sex and keep the structure of the article intact. I don’t know what role Julia Child would play in all this but Pollen would figure it out, he’s a smart guy.

Pollen does not suggest, of course, that we (good bespectacled, left-leaning, cap-wearing, Obama-voting, tote-swinging, farmer’s market habitués) need to read less about food. Indeed, we develop our culinary stamina through Pollen’s tantric, Svengali lessons. But since I’ve already told you more than you need to know about the article, you don’t have to read it. Now you can spend more time watching pornography, or telling your friend about this blog.

Pollen’s will no doubt spend a lot of time as one of the NYT “most popular articles.” As someone with great faith in the infallibility of popular consensus I limit my reading to only the most popular of articles. As such I was disappointed to discover that Mark Bittman’s 101 Simple Salads for the Season had been dropped from the list like a Julia Child potato pancake. I tried valiantly to get through the damn thing but I just couldn’t finish it. Jicama and Mango? Raw Beets? The remnants of a grilled hot dog? And this guy calls himself “The Minimalist?!” He sounds like a fucking Futurist.

Here are two representative entries (with my red highlighting and commentary indicating points of particular awe:

44. Make a crisp grilled cheese sandwich, with good bread and not too much good cheese. Let it cool, then cut into croutons. Put them on anything, but especially tomato and basil salad. This you will do forever [What the hell does this even mean?].

81. Soak sliced prune plums or figs in balsamic vinegar for a few minutes, then add olive oil, chopped celery and red onion, shreds of roasted or grilled chicken, chopped fresh marjoram or oregano and chopped almonds. Serve on top of or toss with greens. So good [Come on Bittman!!].

Is he high?!? Did these recipes come to him in some bizarre dream? If you want to know what it felt like slogging through Bittman’s article watch this:



Or better yet take this advice: don’t read Bittman, don’t read Pollen, stop reading this blog for a few minutes and go put some sea salt and lemon on fresh spicy arugula. Eat it. These things will make you happy.

Of Mantras and Men [sic]

One of the less promising developments in our vocabulary in general and our culinary vocabulary in particular is the ever increasing use of the term “so good.” This pithy descriptor annoys me to no end. Applebee’s bread: so good. The chicken nuggets at the cafeteria: so good. That meat thing at that one Middle Eastern place: so good. Some crappy bullshit at an unimpressive bar... you get the idea. If you haven’t gotten the idea, here it is: First, as the examples show, this epithet always follows a monologue regarding a specific item at a specific locale. The item and the place are always mediocre, middling. Usually the aura of the speech act suggests that this little treat is something I have not tried or have under-appreciated. I am, of course, lesser for the lack. I think that often these fools assume that since I cook, write, and talk about food that I actually like eating. I don’t. In fact, despite what I may lead others to believe, I increasingly despise food and eating. That’s why I started this blog: sublimation. All of this makes my hatred of “so good” (the saying, not the blog, though I guess there's a connection) so much stronger. It goes without saying that I am not pleased with the man known as “Mr. Food” who has taken up “so good” as his battle cry. This brings me to my second point.

No one describes a meal at Le Bernardin or St. John as “so good.” Hell, even a burger on the grill gets better treatment. When food is truly enjoyed its description should emerge as a culinary-linguistic performance piece. The passion with which the meal is described should approach a form generally reserved for erotics of the most vile and fantastic sort. When food is truly great one should swoon, get lost in a hoodoo-trance and reemerge into consciousness weeping. This is, perhaps, asking a lot but it brings us to my third point.

Along with the foodie explosion of the last few years has come a certain democratization of taste. While the movement’s elite get all in a froth over “Fresh, Sustainable, Local; Fresh, Sustainable, Local” they limit their passions to foods once thought only fit for peasants, or maybe freaks. For sure this mantra is beginning to sound a lot like this:



There was a time after all when eating local was a form of dietary slavery. So while this elite neo-provincialism blooms so does the pedestrian desire to join in the chorus. People used to wolf down the mediocre food of their little berg in grudging silence. Now everyone wants to share: “So Good! So Good!”

This brings me to my final point. Food reviews (professional ones) have always been a great source of colorful vocabulary and metaphor. Unfortunately, as the English language tops 1,000,000 words it seems like foodie-speak has access to fewer and fewer of them. For sure culinary mediocrity pairs nicely with simple language but the overall blandness of the food we put in our mouths and the words we spit out of them is a bummer. Maybe we should think more and talk less about food. Maybe we need to realize that eating food does not a foodie make. Maybe we ought to see that “so good” and “fresh, sustainable, local” are both dumb mantras that stand in for real thought – D.U.M.B: