"A statue of a dancing woman captures the light, happy spirit of Dagmar in SoHo, a dispensary designed to appeal to sophisticated women."

From "The Quirky, Luxurious and Stylish Cannabis Dispensaries of New York/In a crowded field of legal sellers, stores in New York City are leaning into looks and vibes to find their customers" (NYT gift link)(lots of photos of store fronts and interiors).

Top-rated comment: "Sorry, but I still support my local dealer, who risked arrest, supplying me with pot for 50 years and still delivers."

"New York City bodega owners came to City Hall last week for a 'roundtable discussion' at the invitation of Julie Su, deputy mayor for economic justice..."

"... only to get barraged with 'intrusive' questions about their businesses, a source close to the situation said.... 'What items are sold the most at your stores?'... 'Where is your profit margin the greatest?' sources said. The bodega reps declined to answer.... 'They wanted us to share proprietary information with them but they don’t answer our questions and that’s why there is distrust,' said a bodega rep who did not want to be identified.... Mamdani’s plan to subsidize the grocery stores with taxpayer funds so they can offer rock-bottom prices on essential items threatens grocers who operate on 2% to 3% profit margins.... 'What is the main thing people come into your store for? What else do they buy while there?' 'It seems like a clumsy, one-sided fishing expedition,' a food policy expert who did not want to be identified told The Post.

From "Mamdani officials scramble to ease concerns about public supermarkets — but local business leaders aren’t buying it" (NY Post).

Su insisted that the city "wanted to understand is whether there are key products bodegas sell and rely on that we should not sell." And "That’s how serious we are about not undercutting them." The whole idea is about undercutting them. Now, the city seems to be trying to assure them that they won't undercut them too much. But the bodega owners don't trust the city. If there's a "2% to 3% profit margin" generally, but the city wants to know "Where is your profit margin the greatest?," it looks like the city wants its own operation to take advantage of the most profitable items. 

"You don't have to tip. You wanna tip."

An Aussie discovers Texas Road House for the first time. Epic!

The World Cup needs to be permanently held in the US. It offers the most for the teams and the fans. 🤣🇺🇸🇦🇺 pic.twitter.com/5AFbUVWrFZ

— Buzz Patterson (@BuzzPatterson) June 19, 2026

AND: Costco has your beans:

Culture shock… Europeans in America pic.twitter.com/fxxgdHqKng

— Meidas_Charise Lee (@charise_lee) June 19, 2026

"What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!"

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Allen Ginsberg. I'm sorry I let it slip past unnoted, but I'm noting it now. Marilyn Monroe had her 100th on Monday. That got way more attention in the media, so I could have observed it, on the right day, but I avoided that. She's had too much attention already. I imagine she's tired of it, tired of the form it takes. 

Here's the whole poem, "A Supermarket in California."

Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas?... We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier....

"Condé Nast started the magazine as Glamour of Hollywood in 1939... but shortened its name when World War II reshaped the lives and ambitions of American women."

"It instead focused on 'the girl with a job,' which would guide coverage for decades. Its glossy pages contained fashion, beauty and sex tips but also coverage of abortion, sexual violence and women’s growing financial independence.... The magazine’s Women of the Year awards, introduced in 1990, became a cultural touchstone.... Those it recognized included Anita Hill... 'I don’t know very many magazines, neither Time nor Newsweek, that gave me that much interest,' Ms. Hill, now a professor at Brandeis University, said in an interview, adding that it had given her hope. It took a place like Glamour, she said, 'to understand what the moment could mean to women.' But like its peers, the magazine got pinched by the digital age...."

From "At Glamour, a Once-Mighty Magazine, a Skeleton Crew Churns Out Shopping Links/Job cuts at Glamour and a greater focus on posts with shopping tips offer one of the clearest examples of the waning reign of women’s magazines" (NYT).

Back in the 1970s, before I went to law school, I worked in a job that required me to read a lot of magazines, and I read all the mainstream women's magazines every month, so I know what Glamour was back then: The hippie era is over. The no-makeup look requires makeup. Here's how to transform your office outfit into a nighttime getup that will wow onlookers. Oh, to have had a blog! But back then, you just made jokes with co-workers. I considered Glamour horrendously outdated, but who knew it would take 50 more years to die? And it's not even completely dead yet. It's still squeezing dollars out of Amazon Affiliates links, like a one-person self-publishing writing operation in a remote outpost in the Midwest.

"Mr. DeCock hasn’t left New York in as long as he can remember. He barely even goes to Brooklyn."

"'Everything I do is in the neighborhood,' he said.... What Mr. DeCock doesn’t do, he said, is buy clothes or shop for much of anything, including groceries. He does not drink coffee at home. His fridge is empty.... Mr. DeCock... stopped cooking after the pandemic, when he admitted to himself that he was terrible at it. Now, he goes out for almost every meal — although he often skips lunch or dinner without noticing. He might run across the street for an order of the $27 seitan scaloppine at his favorite vegan restaurant, or walk a few blocks to a Mexican restaurant, where he’ll order the vegetarian enchiladas for $24.50. When Mr. DeCock is home and not working or sleeping, he’s often watching television. His big splurge is cable, his Spectrum bill is $250 a month. He also pays for Netflix, $19.99 a month, and Hulu, $18.99 a month. A Colorado native, Mr. DeCock sometimes misses nature, so he compensates by watching reality television shows about people who have to survive in the wilderness."

I'm reading "Affording New York/How a Hairdresser and Painter Lives on $70,000 a Year in Chelsea" (NYT). The 750 square foot studio apartment, in the Hotel Chelsea, costs $2700 a month.

"Affording New York" is a series. I love seeing how people express who they are by how they economize. This is the case of someone who's really splurging on food and television and making it work by harshly scrimping on travel and anything that might be shopped for. Gerald DeCock, 67, lives in a great part of town and he just stays put, getting the most out of that precise place. It's not just money he saves.  He saves a lot of time by avoiding all shopping and staying off the subway and every other form of transportation. Frankly, this way of life is appealing quite aside from the question of making it fit $70,000 a year. 

"Even if Communist Party leaders want to unleash more spending, formidable obstacles stand in the way, including..."

"... a work force increasingly trapped in insecure, low-wage employment, a rapidly aging and shrinking population and a weak social safety net that encourages people to save for emergencies. China’s people, perhaps more than at any time in the last few decades, are in no mood to go out and splurge. Many have been airing growing anxiety online, posting about falling incomes and scarce jobs. The average income was just over $500 a month in 2025. Unemployment is high.... An estimated 200 million people, or at least one-quarter of China’s work force, are now engaged in insecure 'gig' employment — delivering meals or packages, driving ride-hailing cars, selling goods online or doing other short-term work.... Adding to worker insecurity is China’s household registration system, which restricts access to social services like schooling and health care outside one’s hometown. This effectively ensures that people from China’s vast countryside serve as cheap migrant labor for megacities like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.... These are hardly a foundation for a vibrant consumer economy...."

Writes Anne Stevenson-Yang, author of 'Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy,' in "China’s Long-Promised Consumer Boom Is a Mirage" (NYT).

Is it possible for an American to maintain good health while spending $65 a month on food?

I'm reading "The Fantasy of a Comfy Retirement Has Always Been a Mirage" (NYT), which begins:

On Thursday, a woman named Sharon from Minnesota called into C-SPAN’s “open forum” to express her despair about the cost of living. “I’m 65 years old. I’m legally blind. I’m on disability. I went to my doc, and I lost 28 pounds in the last year. I did not need to lose 28 pounds. I did not try to lose 28 pounds. I lost the 28 pounds because I cannot afford to eat anymore,” Sharon explained, speaking clearly even though she sounded near tears. Because of Trump administration cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the high cost of groceries, gas and electricity, Sharon only allows herself $65 a month for food....

Of course, that sounds shocking and horrible. I have empathy for Sharon and do not like to see anyone struggling so hard, but I wondered whether it was a least possible to maintain your health while spending only $65 a month. Grok assures me that it is possible. I think we all know what this diet would consist of — lots of oatmeal, rice, beans, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots, along with some apples, bananas, and eggs. It's terrible to allow yourself to lose 28 pounds (that you couldn't spare) before switching to this basic diet or going to a food pantry, but not everyone has enough energy or mental clarity to make the adjustment.

Anyway, to be clear, I'm not saying the government shouldn't help people in this circumstance. On the contrary, I think the country deserves excellent food policy. I'm not a source of advice on what that would be.

Hasn't Canal Street always been funky?

Man takes a stroll through New York City..

This place is absolutely COOKED. 💀💀 pic.twitter.com/Lc9Yx5kPUd

— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) February 22, 2026

I watched that video, and yes, it looks awful, but has it "metastasized" and "gone insane"? It's Canal Street. The voiceover declares it's the "most expensive" part of New York and calls it "Tribeca" and "Soho." It's Canal Street, being Canal Street. 

I looked at those wares vendors had laid out all over the sidewalk, and I'd like to bring some lateral thinking to the problem. The product you see there is almost entirely women's handbags. It could become utterly uncool and dumb to carry a handbag. A handbag is literally a burden. It makes you vulnerable to theft. You don't need it. Designers whose clothes you may not be able to buy make a customer out of you by offering this carrier of their name, causing you to feel that you need it more than you do. Wake up to the post-handbag world and those guys hawking handbags will disappear. 

What, beyond your iPhone, do you need to carry these days? The closer you can get to nothing, the better you are. That's the idea to sell, but who is motivated to sell it? I know I'm being silly, at my age and my distance from New York, to try to influence the anti-handbag trend, which has to hinge on the pleasure and freedom of the consumer, not hatred of street vendors. These are guys making a living, and if your aim is to walk down an uncluttered, uncrowded street, reroute off Canal Street.

By the way, I used to live in NYC — from 1973 to 1984 — and 2 things about me back then: 1. I avoided Canal Street, unless I was swooping into that one place where I bought art supplies, and 2. I never carried a purse, I went out of my way to figure out how to carry everything in various pockets, I had a whole feminist/hippie conception of what I was doing, and I regarded women with purses as embarrassingly uncool. 

"If you use chopsticks to pick up apple slices, begin the day with hot water and goji berries before meandering down to a nearby park for a dose of t’ai chi..."

"... there’s a chance that this is a 'very Chinese' time in your life. If you’re under 30, you won’t be the only one. One of the more unusual cultural trends to sweep Gen Z recently has been among TikTok users who share wellness tips typically associated with China.... Chinamaxxing, as the social media trend is known, is all the rage in the US...."

From "I taught America how to be Chinese, says 23-year-old TikTok star/Gen Z is mastering chopsticks and t’ai chi, thanks to Sherry Zhu from New Jersey" (London Times).

You can sample the TikToks of Sherry Zhu here. I'll embed 2 of them:

1. "You didn't know it, but you are Chinese."

Shopping completely alone.

It is possible —  apparently — but you will need to be in China and, presumably, sacrifice your privacy for safety and convenience? And wouldn't most Americans sacrifice privacy for safety and convenience? I'll say, no, we won't, because we wouldn't believe that we'd get the promised safety and convenience. We'd just be giving up our privacy for not much of anything.

I thought it was just me, but apparently it's a big, sad trend.

I don't like shopping. I can't make myself go (other than food shopping). Occasionally, I consider forcing myself to go shopping — find some clothes to try on and buy at least something — but I'm beset with boredom, and I do not go. Have I even set foot in a clothes store in the past year? Somehow I pictured other women going into the shops, getting excited about clothing items, and splurging on things.

But here's Robin Givhan — in "Why Is Shopping an Abyss of Blah?" (NYT) — "Shopping has become a drag. A bore. An obligation. A thing you do alone on your phone, not out in the world.... Shopping should be about lust. Instead, shopping has become a slog.... Our senses are flattened, our appetites dulled. Nothing seems quite right.... Shopping has become a grotesquerie of commodified consumerism and environmental waste.... Retailers became more corporate and mimed soliloquies on status and trends. Shoppers’ aesthetic discernment grew weak and flabby. A once lively conversation between sellers and buyers quieted. Shopping lost its fizz...."

"Sales [at the city-owned grocery store] were okay at first, but after the pandemic, crime rose and sales began to plummet."

"Police data show assaults, robberies and shoplifting in the immediate vicinity have been on an upward trend since 2020.... At a community meeting last year, Pierson played videos of security incidents so graphic he gave a warning in advance — a naked woman parading through the store throwing bags of chips to the ground, another person urinating in the vestibule and a couple fornicating on the lawn of the library in broad daylight.... [P]olice Maj. Chris Young said that even an 'overwhelming presence' of officers in recent months didn’t significantly decrease incidents.... Part of the problem is the city’s lack of a jail, Young said. The left-leaning council closed the previous facility in 2009 as a cost-saving measure... and so people arrested for minor crimes are quickly released... and head back to the same location, Young said. 'We typically have the same group of offenders every week that are recognizable by face and by name, just loitering and hanging out,' he said. 'A small percentage of people are ruining it for the rest of the community that deserves to go to their grocery store and their library.'"

From "Kansas City poured millions into a grocery store. It still may close. More cities and states are experimenting with the concept of city-owned grocery stores, but these experiments often don’t account for social issues" (WaPo).

This article is, I assume, prompted by Zohran Mamdani's pledge to open 5 city-owned grocery stores in NYC if he is elected mayor.

The Kansas City store lost $885,000 last year and "Despite a recent $750,000 cash infusion from the city, the shelves are almost bare."

"She sold antiques and handmade goods meant to conjure a slow, bucolic life: taper candles, spongeware vases, frill pillows mismatched to perfection."

"To Ms. Gelman, the store felt safe, like a 'cozy sort of womb,' she said. The entrepreneur whose brainchild had once attracted a $365 million valuation — who had named a conference room in San Francisco after Christine Blasey Ford and a phone booth in Washington after Shirley Chisholm — was now content collecting woven Longaberger baskets and dreaming up fictional English villagers to inspire the shop...."

I'm reading "First, a Feminist Utopia. Now, a Dollhouse in the Country./Audrey Gelman, the creator of the Wing, is taking another stab at shaping millennial tastes, this time with a pastoral inn — and more hotels on the way" (NYT).

The "Feminist Utopia" was the store that "felt safe, like a 'cozy sort of womb.'" Who knows what's feminist about dreamy nostalgia about English villages? 

The "Dollhouse" is an inn that the NYT describes as "a hallucinatory boardinghouse furnished by a flea market picker and haunted by Ichabod Crane" with rooms that are "almost entirely shoppable: scalloped rattan coffee tables from England ($2,250); mattresses from Massachusetts (starting at $1,349); hand-painted dinner plates ($59) from Italy; a thrifted pig-shaped cutting board ($55)."

"One guy told me that every time he wants to buy something, he does 25 push-ups — he says it takes him out of his head and back into his body."

"And, hey, I’m not going to do that, but... [d]oing something physical, like putting on a song or getting yourself a snack or going to get a coffee, that’s all good. Text a friend or call someone. A lot of people have told me that they find their partner and have sex or get out the vibrator — which you can’t do at work, obviously, but if you’re at home, get after it. Whatever works. These are skills that you build over time...."

Said Ashlee Piper, author of "No New Things," quoted in "How I Quit Shopping" (NY Magazine).

Skills!

Things that get my "Trump's masculinity" tag.

I didn't take this interesting photograph, but the person who did doesn't want to be named. The location is the Galleria in Houston, Texas. Closeup:

The size and positioning of the eagle make me uneasy. Does the eagle have large talons?

"Mr. Lange sees what he does as 'recontextualizing' garments that are perceived to be at the end of their life."

"'... [T]here is a dark reality where it’s like, OK, I’m buying this in this place where it doesn’t have value, and I’ll bring it to the Lower East Side where some kid in all black will want it.'... In the competitive world of vintage hunting, some of the biggest fanatics don’t covet the perfect pair of 501s but rather a 1930s jacket found in an abandoned mine shaft and tinged with chemicals (also for sale in Mr. Lange’s shop). Where some cringe at the prospect of decades of dirt and grime on their clothes, others relish it. 'There is something cool about feeling someone else’s skin on you,' Ms. Trufelman said. 'People want to see signs of wear and tear. It’s a way of valuing someone else’s life and livelihood.' But even those who embrace thrashed clothing as the apotheosis of a certain gritty authenticity might sometimes pause to wonder.... 'There is a whole stolen valor side to this: You didn’t earn those rips. You didn’t paint anything'.... 'I’m not a laborer... I just want the look.'"

From "Oh, This Old, Tattered, Moth-Eaten Thing? So-called thrashed clothes — garments resembling something closer to rags — are coveted by vintage fanatics" (NYT)(free access link, so you can see photos of this stuff).

Hard to believe people are still beating themselves up for appropriating the workwear of manual laborers. The shopkeeper who selects distinctly interesting pre-worn clothes that would have been thrown away and sells them for a good price deserves his money. It's not a "dark reality." But presenting your work as "dark" — or the "skin" of others — is pitching the sale. 

Here's the Instagram page for Lange's store, sumshitifound.

That evocative word: groceries.

Trump: I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost, you know, who uses the word. I started using the word. The groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time. pic.twitter.com/4hDzdJFrTz

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 8, 2024

"Hauls are the shopping equivalent of a dopamine-chasing overdose. That is the essence of the idea, which is less about any one thing..."

"... than about the sheer number of things. It’s the elevation of quantity over quality, muchness as an end in itself. Like social media itself, and smartphones, the haul creates its own subset of compulsive behavior.... That addiction isn’t officially a part of the DSM-5, the most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but it is recognized by the Cleveland Clinic and the journal World Psychiatry, among other official bodies.... Not surprisingly, an anti-haul movement has grown in response, at least in a limited way. The hashtag #antihaul has almost 3,000 posts on TikTok; #deinfluence, about 4,500...."

Writes Vanessa Friedman in "I Haul, Therefore I Am/It is the shopping phenomenon of our times, and now it’s an Amazon store" (NYT).

I watched a lot of that "anti-haul" material at the TikTok link, and it's the video equivalent of junky clutter. It's chirpily and lengthily informing us that unneeded stuff is unneeded. Some of the videos are shot in a store — here's trashy nonsense that we shouldn't buy — and some are in the TikToker's own home — here are various items she's throwing out. I feel sorry for the young women — they are all women — who need support freeing themselves from things they don't need. I think this is basically an emotional problem of the young. You have amorphous hunger and acquisitiveness. If you wait long enough, I predict it will go away. Until then, direct that energy into building something of value. You know what those things are. I don't need to list them.

"For more than a month now, people across social media have been bragging about the scuffed, worn-out shoes..."

"... they’ve been wearing since middle school and how they use their makeup all the way till the very last drop. They’re proud that they’re using decades’ old pans, inherited from their parents. Or how they don’t buy food storage containers; they just use old mason jars. This all sounds like Depression-era behavior, but it’s not. It’s a trend that has been exploding throughout the summer, under the hashtag 'underconsumption core.'.... As I’ve written in the past, companies tend to be very sensitive to changes in consumer behavior because their financial success depends on responding to trends. The 'underconsumption core' trend has had a relatively long life, for an internet trend. It’s continued to bubble up for months now. Brands, take note...."

From "Why TikTok’s ‘Underconsumption Core’ trend won’t die/Brands, are you listening? Millennials and Gen Z are sick of poorly made products designed to fall apart. It’s time to change your business model" (Fast Company).

I noticed the "underconsumption" hashtag on TikTok today and saw it as a rejection of following trends, but, to Fast Company, it is itself a trend. Theoretically, "brands" can cater to it, with better quality items that won't be replaced and can be more expensive. That seems out of line with the heart of the "core," which is to love/accept second-hand, second-rate stuff that you already have.

I liked this TikTok from a young woman who bought a house and everything in it. The previous resident had died, and it was up to her to discover what was there that she could use and what to throw out or re-home. Her response to the scuffed up wood floors is quite charming.

Some of the videos show young people discovering things I figured out for myself long ago, on my own and inspired by various things, notably hippiedom and "The Tightwad Gazette."