Seen & Heard: Fire (not serious) at Whole Foods

Thanks to S. and C. for their quick thinking and even quicker trigger fingers yesterday, when Whole Foods experienced what we think was a grease fire. (I use *think* since the manager at Whole Foods told me she couldn’t talk to me, and then gave me a bogus email address for the WF press office, blah blah). The alarm sounded before 9a yesterday, the sprinklers went off, the place was evacuated, the Fire Department showed up, and everyone was let in a short while later with no injuries. One worker there said it was a grease fire at the burger counter.

I’m going to take this occasion to say that I think I am now experiencing stage four of Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief for Whole Foods. First there was denial, when everyone kept saying things were changing and I refused to accept it (K., you were on to it first). Then I was just pissed at corporate America for messing with what was a perfectly great, if not perfect, grocery store. Then I started to think I could work around it – a bit of Morgan’s here, a trip to the suburbs there, but I could work it out. When I went shopping at 10:30p recently, they had shut down all the express cashiers and the lines on Warren Street were a dozen people deep. Then this fire thing.

So now I am just flat-out depressed. We really had it good for a while. And I feel like this is the beginning of the end. Not ready for “acceptance” yet.

TODAY IS NATIONAL OYSTER DAY
Who knew? Well, a few local restaurants did and they are donating 5 percent of sales today (August 5) to the Billion Oyster Project, whose cute invite to its party at Oceana tonight is above. So if you love oysters, and you support their natural ability to clean our waterways, go to the Grand Banks on Pier 25, Seamore’s at Brookfield, The Grey Lady on Delancey or Island Oyster on Governors Island. (And there are a bunch more uptown.)

WFC ARCHITECT DIES
César Pelli, the Argentinian-born U.S. architect who designed some of the world’s most famous skyscrapers such as the Petronas Towers in Malaysia and the World Financial Center in New York, has died, according to the Washington Post. He was 92.

NOT COOL: A SIDEWALK SHED ON STAPLE
F. sent a shot of a new sidewalk shed, this time going up on Staple Street and getting in the way of thousands of Instagram posts to come this summer.

 

4 Comments

  1. I was in WF (Whole Foods) right near that burger counter when the “fire” started. Grease was basically basically raining down from the top ventilation system. There was absolutely no one attending to the burger counter. All workers at WF just stood watching with no idea what to do. It was very strange as the sushi counter men were just trying to get their fish away from the area. Every time I go to WF now I feel the same depression and then anger because they don’t seem to have any sort of management in place. They are not stocked well with any normal items. Workers are the least helpful and have no idea where things have been moved from the previous week. It is the only option in the neighborhood when there is no time to get to Trader Joe’s on Spring.

  2. I spoke with the guy supervising the installation of this sidewalk shed, he told me because the sidewalk is so narrow in the alley (on the right side) — they had to erect this extra wide structure (for facade work on the building on Jay on the West side of the street.)

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