getting bagged in harlem

if you’re like me, growing environmental awareness has got you boycotting Kleenex, buying Seventh Generation cleaning supplies and bringing your own cup to the coffee shop. it’s also got you carrying some brand-new guilt-baggage (like when i forget to bring my tote bag to the supermarket) and, particularly if you live in a low-income neighborhood, fresh opportunities for awkward retail interactions.

for example, when i DO remember the tote bag, sometimes the supermarket down the street doesn’t let me bring it into the store. i might be a shoplifter.

“but this is how i’m going to carry the groceries home”

“it’s all right miss, we’ll give you bags for that”

“but i don’t want to waste all those plastic bags”

“don’t worry, we don’t charge extra for them”

there’s no getting past him, this very polite older man who spends hours at day at this door in exchange for minimum wage and likely gets many of his own groceries at the soup kitchen. if i have the energy to make a fuss at checkout i’ll insist that my tote bag be returned at that point so that i can avoid receiving half a dozen disposable bags that will only be used to walk my bananas half a block west, but even that is disheartening: the cashiers roll their eyes and shrug, look at me like i’m stupid if i mention that the bags are made of oil, apologize to the customers waiting on line behind me, who rightfully should be on their way out the door already, hurrying home to throw their own bags straight into the trash.

and that’s only the supermarket. just try getting your coffee served in a glass cup.

the other night i gave in to a strong bad-food craving and visited a fried chicken joint up the street, where the more well-to-do homeless get many of their meals. i wanted a big, fat, greasy, heart-killing chicken breast and by god i was going to get one. like the supermarket, Mama’s Fried Chicken is just half a block from my apartment. i ordered the breast and then, on a whim inspired by a handmade sign, a container of banana pudding on special for a buck and a half. if you’re going to kill your heart, goddamit, kill it good. (after wellbutrin, the best cure for depression is evil food.)

after the chicken was entombed in glassine and the pudding appeared on the counter beside it, i told the man behind the bulletproof window that i didn’t need a bag. he looked at me as if i’d farted, said i’d need a bag to hold the napkins and the spoon.

“i don’t need those, either”

he didn’t say another word but proceeded to put the breast (sans utensils) in a paper bag anyway. when he whipped out a plastic bag for the two items i slid them toward me, out of his reach, and put the pudding in my tote.

environmentally speaking, fast food is such a dreadful blight all by itself that the bag hardly matters. from headless chicken farms to e-coli in the beef and slaughterhouse blood, with its freight of antibiotics and bacteria, soaking the land. of course, if it weren’t done that way, no one would be able to pick up a fried chicken breast for $1.49 — and many people can’t afford to spend more than that for their dinner.

harlem’s not quite a low-income neighborhood these days, it’s more like a neighborhood in stripes: Mama’s Fried Chicken is flanked by luxury condos, winos sleep it off on benches beside middle-aged mothers rocking carriages that cost more than my rent. and many of the clerks and shopkeepers are confused, if not outright annoyed, when you try to break their process by skipping the bag.

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