@southbrooklyn - I do appreciate you feel my comments are heartfelt. Working at a non-profit and seeing the consequences of ideologically-tinged waste is part of my motivation. I like to think I have a brain, and can help ponder how to make things better. I like the idea of co-ops, and would love to join a sane one in my neighborhood. I care about Brooklyn, people and my city.

Not enough?

Posted by: dreamking at October 26, 2009 3:03 PM in response to NYT: Food Co-op Exile's Story Demands 2,000 Words

@southbrooklyn - I think this is how the process works. People complain about stuff. It raises the conversation amongst more people. Some respond with how everything's fine (or fine enough). Eventually, hopefully, some ideas or actions are set in motion that may or may not improve the situation.

It's not that serious people want anyone to stop going. They see some problems, want things to get better, and they're not getting better on their own.

You don't need to have a profit motive to want to make things better, or to grasp the idea that labor actually has a dollar value. Once you do, it becomes possible to plan better. It doesn't mean you have to judge all things (e.g., community service, maintaining a large-scale vegan-friendly shopping environment) as having a dollar value, but things do have a cost because they're still part of the real world.

However people motivate themselves to give up their labor on a consistent basis, it's the labor that allows the co-op to function. And that labor, in general, seems to be going to waste. It's not being respected, in aggregate, as much as it could be while still continuing to fuel the ethos behind the co-op's mission. When you start to not really care about the value of people's labor and time, that's how you get to places like this. It stops mattering how many hours are spent training/retraining. It ceases to matter you're making people chase/compete with each other for viable work slots. (Many people out of a pool of 15,000 - not all - have a hard time fulfilling even a measly 2.75 hour/month requirement if the only slots open out of 440 are Tues-Thurs 1pm-4pm.)

I'm sure most people are fine with the way things are now, but a sizable group are not. It doesn't make them evil, morally weak, or stupid. They're part of the community, and their concerns deserve a fair hearing. But reading the comments both here, gothamist and in NYT, what seems to be happening is that the population squeeze just encourages the motivated to push complainers to shut up or leave. They're encouraging people to ratchet up the motivation to overcome obstacles rather than see if the obstacles can, in good faith, be removed or smoothed over.

This is a bad sign. It means the improvement feedback process is in trouble, either due to a failure of leadership or due to institutional bottlenecks. Saying this out loud doesn't make you a traitor to The Cause, or ideologically impure.

I don't claim to have the answers to all this, but I've learned to be a little skeptical when people start saying, "Love it or Leave it". It's fine enough to dismiss un-serious people, or those with anti- co-op agendas. It's not fine to lump all 'complainers' in the same category.

Posted by: dreamking at October 26, 2009 1:48 PM in response to NYT: Food Co-op Exile's Story Demands 2,000 Words

Did anyone catch the 'makeup' terms? Talk about freakin' predatory penalties. It's like they're designed to get people out of circulation. Miss 2 sessions and you start falling into a black hole of hours owed. They really should change this regressive, punitive approach. It indirectly pegs labor at a certain rate to start, and devalues that rate for anyone who defaults. It's as if they counting on defaults and make-up work at some point in the past, as a buffer to ensure the time-sensitive work would always be done. Nowadays, there's too much labor going around but the mechanism for an old problem is still in place. (I'd love to see their stats on how many hours are done as a result of penalties.)

If they're overstaffed, there are TONS of things they can do reduce the ambient tension.

Start offering to have 20% of the membership pay a premium to not work. Pay a $400 annual premium to not work. Offer it to members in order of membership seniority, until you hit the 20% mark. They'd be making 1.2 million more a year, and reduce the overall labor pool at the same time. Use that money for a pool to either improve the store or buy/lease new real estate. Adjust the numbers accordingly, to ensure the labor requirements are being met.

Or make it a temporary event, for the specific purpose of amassing the capital to purchase larger property (or expand/improve the existing building).

Put all this scheduling nonsense online. No way at all they couldn't find a developer who'd devote their time to an online scheduling system - you could probably get people to do it using their hours, as a special project. All these horrible interactions, on the basis of written documentation or spoken conversations, creates bottlenecks and guarantees frustration on a larger scale than necessary.

There would be fewer people in the stores if online orders could be submitted, fulfilled with all this extra labor, and bagged for pickup. Payments could be done online to ensure food doesn't go to waste. Disabled or senior citizens within a certain range might be able to get home bike delivery.

An excess of cheap labor isn't anything to be sneezed at, or wasted.

Posted by: dreamking at October 26, 2009 12:35 PM in response to NYT: Food Co-op Exile's Story Demands 2,000 Words

Gabby's only writing was the title and the first sentence. That largely-unintelligible mass of words was a quote from a NYT article.

Posted by: dreamking at October 26, 2009 11:12 AM in response to NYT: Food Co-op Exile's Story Demands 2,000 Words

On the blog thread, you learn that it wasn't as a result of the blogger's call that work was stopped. A complaint came in independently 6 days earlier.

Posted by: dreamking at October 13, 2009 2:47 PM in response to Streetlevel: Lafayette Grocery Overhaul

"Anything that tries to cut down on scamming brokers gets our vote of support."

Seems like there's an extraneous word accidentally left in.

"Anything that tries to cut down on brokers gets our vote of support."

There, fixed it for you.

Posted by: dreamking at October 7, 2009 12:06 PM in response to New Rentals Site Tries to Cut out the B.S.

Whether or not farmers' markets accept food stamps isn't as important as the perceived payout you get. If it costs, say, $2 for a pint of blueberries at most places and it costs $3 at a B/S farmer's market, it doesn't matter that it usually costs $4 at Union Square. Some people are getting only around $100 a month in EIC. Why would you 'waste' even $2 of that purchasing power for regular blueberries when the same $2 buys you a big box of Crunchie-os? This calculus carries with many people well into salaries approaching 2500/month.

I grew up in a money-poor household (didn't realize it at the time!) and while my parents made an effort to keep fruit in the house, they never would have gone to a farmer's market. Going to Chinatown for a box of mangoes was a luxury that happened twice a year.

To this day, it bewilders them that people regularly spend more for such ephemeral things as 'locally-grown' and 'organic'. For them, at best, these are 'would be nice'. No way you trade precious purchasing power for 'would be nice'.

No one should have kidded themselves that a farmers market would be automatically embraced by the people who most need to eat more healthily. Maybe if fruit/veggie prices for EIC users were 60% off it would better accomplish stated goals.

Posted by: dreamking at July 29, 2009 11:18 AM in response to Closing Bell: Malcom X Farmers Market on the Ropes

anyone have a better sense as to the outdoor space that makes this a beer garden? It must be tiny and surrounded on all sides, if it's inside where the former hardware storage was happening.

Or do they mean sidewalk seating will be set up?

Posted by: dreamking at June 30, 2009 2:10 PM in response to When's Der Schwarze Kölner Opening?

Are they serious? A Farmer in the Dell and a Farmer and the Deli both in proximity to each other?

Posted by: dreamking at June 23, 2009 2:23 PM in response to Streetlevel: New Deli for Myrtle Avenue

They told the Dillon families that during construction nearly all of the whole yard will be unavailable, and when construction is done half the yard will be lost to the new structure.

Posted by: dreamking at April 24, 2009 10:41 AM in response to St. Joseph's Gym Plan Meets Local Resistance

I've been in an exact duplicate of this apartment. It's nice but it feels like you're in a newly-constructed hotel. There is an entire absence of charm except for what you might be able to do with furniture and rugs.

The doormen are nice. The elevator is a little slow. The hallways echo like a mother.

Posted by: dreamking at April 23, 2009 5:56 PM in response to Condo of the Day: 70 Washington Street, #4S

Why would a contract between a tenant and the former landlord have any bearing unless you agreed to it in the transfer? Her only real protection is if it's rent-regulated.

Are buyers obligated to accept the terms of a rental agreement between tenant and former owner? I wouldn't have thought so, even in NYC.

Posted by: dreamking at April 23, 2009 5:50 PM in response to Buying house w/ low-rent tenan

Nigerian food can be really good. jollof rice (an all-in-one rice dish) and various tasty stews.

Posted by: dreamking at April 9, 2009 11:58 AM in response to Playing Ball with the LPC at 120 Lafayette

Checkers indeed rocks. Mmm, curly fries.

There is (was?) a Checkers in Jackson Heights. Just a regular walk-in store.

Posted by: dreamking at April 7, 2009 10:45 AM in response to Checkers Checking Into 111 Court Street?

Speaking as someone whose kid will be attending Dillon this fall, tearing down Dillon was never something discussed or planned. St. Joseph's is dedicated to Dillon and its value as a teaching resource.

Posted by: dreamking at April 6, 2009 2:19 PM in response to St. Joseph's Planning Gymnasium for Clinton Avenue

Have to agree with that. Alongside the owner's backstory bad-neighbor vibe, it's not a winning combination.

Posted by: dreamking at April 6, 2009 11:05 AM in response to Playing Ball with the LPC at 120 Lafayette

The new gymnasium is unfortunately going to take up almost half of the existing yard. Construction's supposed to take a year, and during that time almost all of the yard will be off-limits. I'm not sure of the exact start date. They're going to build an enclosed play-yard on the roof of the Dillon Child Study center so the children have a place to be outdoors during construction.

Once it's completed there's talk of making the gymnasium - at least for now - available for neighborhood events.

Posted by: dreamking at April 6, 2009 11:00 AM in response to St. Joseph's Planning Gymnasium for Clinton Avenue

I'd pay 5 bucks a year. The point is that it has to be nominal. One or two of these moderators might be getting antsy about resume gaps or somesuch and led us to this place.

And from what I understand, that 30,000 count is not strictly accurate. It includes both the membership of the main yahoo group and the classifieds group, which are almost guaranteed to have huge membership duplications. The real count is likely to be closer to 15,000. And I haven't read anywhere if they're counting low-activity (less than 1 login/month) or inactive members. Might have just missed that.

Posted by: dreamking at April 3, 2009 11:23 AM in response to Majority of Park Slope Parents Won't Pay to Play

Think this means a market owned by Asians (Asian-Americans), or a place catering to the Asian expat market?

Posted by: dreamking at February 11, 2009 2:08 PM in response to Streetlevel: Asian Market for Wallabout

Hmm, but do they deliver, or are they going to continue that rule from the other store?

Posted by: dreamking at December 23, 2008 10:52 AM in response to Streetlevel: New Pizza Place Open on Grand Ave.

I've been in this apartment. The windows don't leak.

The courtyard behind the building is really something to see. Great for gatherings.

Posted by: dreamking at December 2, 2008 1:27 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 141 Lafayette Avenue

I think it's a poorly-understood thing to use Manhattan as a baseline for what constitutes a retail sq. feet per capita baseline. Manhattan has a much denser population, has a higher commuter-worker rate and has many tourists.

I also think it's lame to imply there was a method or overall plan guiding Brooklyn's retail patterns. It smells more like they tried to come up with something to hang a hat on, rather than an actual explanation.

Posted by: dreamking at October 14, 2008 11:16 AM in response to Brooklyn Solves Retail Puzzle