The Arts in New York City

Introduction

New York is nicknamed “The Restaurant Capital of the World.” With over 36,000 eating-and-drinking places and 1000 restaurants opening every year, it certainly does live up to its name. However, in 2007 the National Research Association concluded that only 1 out of 5 of these new restaurants will succeed.

Food Diversity New York City welcomes its people to an array of diverse ethnic foods. This diversity is a landmark of this city. It almost serves to give New York City, its own identity which is different from everyone else. One can easily find the many different ethnic foods, ranging from delicious Mexican dishes to the spicy Indian Cuisines, from the toothsome Chinese foods to the pleasant-tasting Jamaican meals, to just name a few. Jewish and Italian immigrants have made the city famous for bagels, cheesecake, and New York Sytle Pizza. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafels and kebabs standbys of contemporary New York street food, although hot dogs and pretzels are still the main street fare.

Commercialization A problem with the culture of NYC is that it is becoming commercialized. There are approximately 300 Starbucks and 250 McDonalds that populate this tiny island. What this group is trying to showcase is that this city is diverse and has a unique vibrant lifestyle that no other city can match. If it begins to have the same food chains as Kansas City, then where is its identity?

An interview with the subway manager on commercialization and the future of subway.

Food Availability Along with restaurants, there are many associations that give out food. One very popular association would be Food Not Bombs. The association was started because of the belief that if resources were not distributed improperly on weapons of war, then there would be plenty to meet everyone’s basic needs of food. They serve vegan food in Tompkins Square Park, every Sunday around 3:30 p.m. Funds are limited so the association relies heavily on donations, whether it be money or even utensils.

Added Value is a non-profit organization that serves the Red Hook area in Brooklyn and promotes the sustainable development of that area. “Food grown on the Farm is sold at our Farmers’ Markets, to local restaurants and donated to those in need. Today the Farm provides sustenance to residents, creates meaningful work for neighborhood teens, generates economic activity and improves the health and well-being of our community” [Added Value].

Food Wastage This easy accessibility to food leads to wastage of food. New York leads the nation in wasting food. The percentage of residential waste that is food scraps is higher in New York than the national average. New York’s average is 13% while the nation’s is 10%. This has given rise to a certain group of people who call themselves “freegan”. Their diet consists entirely of food left in trash cans, usually what restaurants or grocery stores have thrown out. Their dinner time usually starts around closing time near a dumpster. Freegans are not homeless or jobless, but are merely protesting a culture that discards tons of edible food while others in the rest of the world starve. Many stores throw out goods long before they’ve gone bad but instead they throw them out because it doesn’t look right or there’s no demand for it.

Another reason for wastage of food could be that New York is a city made of concrete, compared to the rest of the states that have much more rural areas. Many residents of other cities stick their food leftovers in their backyards to create a nutrient-rich fertilizer, and obviously New York has very limited space, let alone backyards. Many food scraps that could be ground down kitchen sinks usually end up at the curbside in New York.

Commercialization, discussed earlier, has a major impact on any society. This is seen through poetry and more specifically through the following poem by Robbert Fitterman. Following the poem is an interview with an English professor as he explores how the poem comments on commercialization.

Robert Fitterman, from Metropolis 16–29 (2002)

“Metropolis 16”

McDonald’s Dunkin’ Donuts

Burger King Taco Bell

Taco Bell Kmart

Home Depot Home Depot

Gap Sunglass Hut

Dunkin’ Donuts Staples

KFC Wal*Mart

J. Crew Gap

Home Depot McDonald’s

Staples J. Crew

Sunglass Hut KFC

Wendy’s

Kmart

Wal*Mart

Taco Bell

Staples

Gap

McDonald’s Dunkin’ Donuts

Wal*Mart Wal*Mart

Sunglass Hut KFC

Kmart J. Crew

Wendy’s Kmart

Starbucks Starbucks

Taco Bell Sunglass Hut

J. Crew McDonald’s

Staples

Home Depot

Gap

KFC

Dunkin’ Donuts

________________________________________________________________________

Starbucks Kmart

Taco Bell Taco Bell

Staples Gap

Kmart J. Crew

Gap Staples

J. Crew KFC

McDonald’s Starbucks

KFC Dunkin’ Donuts

Wendy’s

Taco Bell

Taco Bell Staples

Starbucks KFC

J. Crew J. Crew

KFC Dunkin’ Donuts

Staples Kmart

Gap

Dunkin’ Donuts

Kmart

________________________________________________________________________

K Mart

Taco Bell

KFC

Staples

J. Crew

Starbucks

KFC

K Mart

Taco Bell

K Mart

KFC

K Mart

Other Main Influences on Food

http://web.mac.com/dmitryktech/iWeb/Site/Podcast/3947BB12-A85F-4842-8E7D-3527CF54476A.html

If the above link does not work, you may have to install Quicktime. It’s a free and safe download available at

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

This is the script of the podcast with the quotes used included. There might be various differences with small choice of words between what is written and what is said on the podcast.

Food. We all know where it comes from, how it’s grown, and where to find it. Or do we really? Do you know if the food that you eat is fresh? Did it come from a local farmer or from a distant land? New York City is a concrete maze in which you can get lost finding fresh food.

One solution is the CSA, Community Supported Agriculture. There are numerous benefits to joining a CSA. You get fresh produce, form bonds in your community, and help to keep money and jobs close to home. But this all comes with a hefty price tag, about $200-$400 per member for a season’s share. CSA’s have programs in place to ease this financial burden. Some offer monthly payment options or work-for-food programs. A third example is sliding scales, so that consumers pay only what they can afford.

The Greenmarket has been on the northern edge of Union Square since 1976. But in 2005, a 50,000 square foot Whole Foods supermarket in Union Square opened. The Greenmarket offers personal contact between customers and farmers, a lot of local products, and specialty items. But there are only a limited number of farmers and customers that it can accommodate. Whole Foods offers a wider range of products, especially organic foods, but at a drawback. The Whole Foods shopper forfeits the freshness of local produce for this wider selection. Both the Greenmarket and Whole Foods have different constituencies, so the clash between the two is not as bad as everyone fears. Farmers stand to benefit from this battle. With both of these in Union Square, farmers can become wholesalers, who are middlemen who sell products to other firms. Farmers are able to sell at both locations.

The food that we eat comes from an array of different places, for example supermarkets. The supermarkets are located in various socioeconomic neighborhoods. Within these stores it can be seen that there is a disparity of prices for foods. Three main causes of this disparity are competition between stores; the store’s operating costs; and their buying power. When dealing with competition, two scenarios arise. One is that when there is a lot of competition in a certain area, a store is forced to keep the prices low, in order to attract the most customers. The second is the opposite; sometimes there is not a lot of competition in a certain area. This gives a store the power to raise the prices, since it is able to afford the increase. A store’s operating costs are defined as the day to day expenses that a business incurs, for example, sales and administration. The administration includes jobs that are in retailing. These jobs have high turnover in supermarkets because employees move on to higher paid jobs in other sectors. This results in lower efficiency and increased training costs. Buying power is the third and last cause of this difference. Buying power is the third and last cause of this difference. Buying power is defined as money or other forms of assets that is available for a store to spend to get goods and services. Stores that have less buying power are not able to negotiate directly with manufacturers, like Wal-Mart is able to do. This in turn causes the stores to have higher product costs. If the products that a store buys cost more, then this cost gets passed on to the customer in the form of higher prices.

Quotes in podcast:

-“Finding fruits and vegetables that haven’t trucked and jetted their way from California or Chile can be a challenge that even Whole Foods can only live up to a fraction of the time” (Huck).

-“I think you’ll see people shopping in the Greenmarket carrying Whole Foods bags” (Fabricant).

-“The Whole Foods stores is physically gigantic as well as psychologically imposing: no one wonders whether the Greenmarket is a threat to Whole Foods. And yet, the Greenmarket has raised the bar for evaluation of quality and freshness at other upscale markets, despite obvious differences between them” (Marton).

-“Inevitably, in the inner city or in rural areas where there isn’t much competition among stores, grocery prices are much higher” (Terek).

Any pictures that are not cited are taken from clipart in Microsoft Word.

 

Works Cited

“Added Value.” Added Value. 23 Dec. 2007 <http://www.added-value.org/index.php>.

Fabricant, Florence. “Wary Greenmarket Greets New Neighbor.” The New York Times 16 Mar. 2005. 20 Dec. 2007 <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/16/dining/16unio.html?_r=1 &oref=slogin>.

Greenmarket Poster. New York City. Union Square Park and Greenmarket - Great Public Spaces. Projects for Public Spaces. 21 Dec. 2007 <http://www.pps.org/great_public_spaces/one?public_place_id=24>.

Huck, Sarah. “Food Matters.” 2005. New York University. 10 Dec. 2007 <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/nutrition.olde/PDFS/foodmatters_05.pdf>.

Marton, Renee. “Food Matters.” 2005. New York University. 10 Dec. 2007 <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/nutrition.olde/PDFS/foodmatters_05.pdf>.

Terek, Donna. Groceries Cost More for Poor. 2006. 16 April. <http://www.detnews.com/specialreports/2001/poverty/821lead/821lead.htm>.

USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) 2005 Food Pyramid:. Food Pyramid. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 21 Dec. 2007 <http://web.mit.edu/athletics/s portsmedicine/wcrfoodpyr.html>.

USDA Sign. USDA Organic Seal. United States Department of Agriculture. 21 Dec. 2007 <http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/Consumers/Seal.html>.

View of Greenmarket. New York City. Union Square Park and Greenmarket - Great Public Spaces. Projects for Public Spaces. 21 Dec. 2007 <http://www.pps.org/great_public_ spaces/one?public_place_id=24>.

Whole Foods Sign. New York City. Whole Foods Market: Stores: New York City - Union Square. Whole Foods Supermarket. 21 Dec. 2007<http://www.wholefoodsmarket.co m/stores/unionsquare/index.html>.