The South Street Can-Can

“That pigeon is drunk as fuck.” F.M.R.

I haven’t checked-in in a long time. One might ask what has prompted me to return to the Red Dazibao after such a long hiatus, a blog that just as well could have slipped into the dust bin of bad, blog history. One might wonder why I have returned to blog this dead horse. Well, I can’t say why exactly. I can only say that it has nothing to do with Ben Waxman’s blog. I will also pose that I make no promises to return in the near future. Some would note that my submissions (Submit to no one!) stopped promptly after I forced my way into full-time protesting, provocateuring, and agitateing. Well, as I am still a full time organizer, I don’t think that I will be able to write more often than before. I would like to. We will see.

I want to share a quick tale of woe.

I was walking home tonight after a nine hour day, anticipating round two, with only one desire. I wanted to go home, heat up the carne con chili I had cooked up yesterday, top it with a pile of canned black beans, a hand full of cheese, a dollop of cream cheese, a layer of diced tomatoes and shredded lettuce and a long pour of red wine and a hot tortilla on the side. I walked briskly to Tenth and Pine, mouth dampened with expectoration. Only one small task separated me from my first real break of the day: I had to buy a can opener for my can of beans.

My first stop was Super Fresh on South St. I zig-zagged through the isles like a dumb rat sniffing around for a stupid nibble of cheese for a full twenty minutes and found nothing. My low blood sugar was getting the better of me. I finally got fed up and headed across the street to Whole Foods where I remembered seeing fancy Good Grips can openers before. I slid past piles of over-priced food to the small utensil display. I found the can opener gleaming beneath a soft, spot-light, twinkling seductively in the “yogurt-smooth jazz” environs. I looked like the most progressive can opener in the world until I noticed the $10 asking price. $10 for a can opener? I simple could not justify such a lavish expenditure even if it would bring world peace, racial understanding and cleaner drinking water. I left Whole Foods as my hands began to shake with weakness and as the hole in my belly ebbed its way to my pelvis.

I turned next to CVS on 9th St. Once again I searched high and low to no avail. Scratching my head as I left the store, I could tell that I was getting wretched “hungry breath.” I thought, “Super Fresh must have a can opener. I must have just missed it.” So, I walked back the way that I had come to Super Fresh.

Once in the store, I immediately saw a store worker in the produce department. I went over and asked if he could point me the right way. He sent me to the second to last aisle. Once there, I saw that the top of the aisle was lined with a menagerie of kitchen gadgets and assorted doodads. I went from spoon holder to plasti-whisk, spatula to egg-timer, apple-corer to corn cob holder. Finally, I found one, single can opener hanging on a lonely hook. It too was $10. Desperate with hunger at this point, I did the math, $10 divided by $.74 (the average price for a can of beans) comes to roughly 13.5 cans of beans. That’s a lot of beans. Though this adventure has now eaten up more than an hour, most of my patience and the entire lining of my stomach, I could not bring myself to buy it. The memory of paying $2 for a simple can opener mocked my every rolling, belly thunder clap.

I walked to 2nd and went into Chef’s Market…none. Eckerd’s…nothing. Wawa…nada. CVS…zilch. The guy at CVS told me, “Yay, its weird. I think that the State Store sells them with their wine openers (In PA you can only buy liquor in state run stores).”

Now, for the benefit of those who don’t know about South St., let me point out that South St. is a shoppers delight. It is the kind of place where girls come to buy Van Dutch tank tops and where they wear them. Anyone who would go out of their way, and spend big money on one of these shirts is trying to tell the world one thing, "I love to buy things."

You can find damn near find anything here. Within a five minute walk you can pick up the latest reggae cd, get a tattoo, natural oils that enhance your natural sweat stink, high healed flip flops, inspirational Michael Jordon posters, sex technology to fill every orifice and to adorn every limb, water ice or ice cream, sandwiches slathered in cheese wiz (!) or a slice of pizza as big as my torso. If you want a can opener, on the other hand, you are opening a whole different can of worms.


Addendum: Just so you know how hardcore I am, I finally ate some food and made my way back downtown to make a postcard of Health Care Action Day, which I am helping to organize on June 17. I finished my day at 11:30, sans the beans.