MILK SHAKES, LOCKDOWNS AND GHOST TOWNS

When I worked in Trenton, New Jersey, I often walked downtown (pictured above; note the absence of humans) to play lunchtime basketball at the Y or to eat lunch with various co-workers.

One late 1990s afternoon, I walked five blocks into the city center with a friend to buy lunch. On the way back, we passed a pizza place with a sign that said it also sold ice cream. The power of suggestion made me think, “Hey, I want me some ice cream.”

We entered and approached the counter. On the wall behind it was one of those ridged, black felt message boards with white capital letters pressed into it. Though the board had room for more items, it said only, and in sloppily spaced letters: “MIL K SHAK ES 225.”

I liked the idea of a shake even better than the idea of ice cream. And 225 was a good price, even at that time. 

A short, stocky, white-hair-sprayed, sixtyish woman with Eastern European features, wearing a snug, all-white diner waitress uniform, wordlessly approached me. I assumed that she lived in North Trenton’s Polish neighborhood, about a mile away. She made an inquisitive face, suggesting that she wanted me to order. Given her facial features and her non-verbal greeting, I suspected she didn’t speak much English. Pointing to the sign, I said, “I’d like a vanilla shake, please.”

She nodded, walked away and fetched one of those large silver cups typically used to make shakes. Then she reached down into the ice cream freezer, scraped out several scoops, put them in the cup, grabbed some milk from the fridge and poured the milk into the ice cream. She attached the cup to the upright milkshake maker and let the motor rip. Ten seconds later, she poured the shake into a wax-coated cup and placed it on the counter in front of me. So far, so good.

Then, in a thick Polish accent, she said, “Three dollahs.”

The price surprised me. I pointed to the sign and responded, “But the sign says 225.”

Seemingly perturbed, she replied, “I make you BIG milkshake.”

I responded, “Well, that’s good. But the sign says 225.”

I wasn’t indignant. I was simply noting the discrepancy. The sign didn’t say anything about large or small. I note for the record that the shake wasn’t especially big.

Saying nothing in return, she knitted her eyebrows, angrily snatched the cup off the counter and walked away toward the sink. I was surprised and didn’t know what she’d do next. I thought she might pour off part of the milk shake so I’d get a shake that she considered worth 225. That would have been mildly wasteful, but OK with me.

Instead, in one abrupt motion, she dumped the whole shake down the drain, threw the empty cup into the trash can turned her back to me and walked away.

I had a friend with me. We looked at each other, burst into laughter and left the premises.

My friend was a Black guy. Black people are amused to see Caucasians angry at each other. And reciprocally. It dispels the notion that everything is tribal. If you like someone, it doesn’t matter what they look like. If you don’t like someone, it doesn’t matter what they look like. And unfamiliar cultural manifestations of conflict can be funny to the outsider.

On the sidewalk I said, “That’s the Eastern European mind. If we think we’re right, we’d rather walk away from a deal, even if doing so costs us something, than compromise.”

Yeah, I know: I shoulda just paid the $3. And I would’ve if she didn’t pull the shake off the counter.

—

Be that as it may, a year later, another friend came to town. We played lunchtime basketball at the Y and, taking the afternoon off, went to lunch at a chicken place. After lunch, my friend, coincidentally half-Polish like me, said, “You know what I could really go for right now? A milkshake. Do you know where we can get one?”

I thought for a moment, smiled and said, “Uh, yeah. Maybe.”

We walked a block to the place with the 225 shakes. When we entered, I saw the same woman behind the counter who had dumped my shake a year earlier. Perhaps detecting some Slavic ancestry in both of our faces, she smiled at us. But another, younger woman sought and took our order and made our shakes. We happily paid her $3 for each shake, or whatever price the upgraded sign said.

We sat down at a table and drank the shakes, which, post exertion, were especially delicious. As we did, I noticed the older Polish woman beginning to glare at us. With a little time to reflect, and seeing us drinking the shakes, her memory seemed to have reminded her where she’d seen me before.

We finished the shakes and walked out. As we passed the Polish woman, I winked and gave her the thumbs-up sign. She was not amused.

An Irish friend once told me that Irish Alzheimer’s means that you forget everything but the grudges. I guess Polish Alzheimer’s is about the same.

—

People say “Covid’s over.” They compare it to a storm that blew through society and simply vanished. They’ve convinced themselves that it was disruptive but temporary. And ultimately, worth the dislocation.

They’re wrong.

First, unlike the Scamdemic, storms are natural phenomena. Governments and the media don’t cause and exaggerate storms in order to terrify populations. Though when storms occur, the media now portrays these as evidence of climate change.

And what storm has lasted four and a half years? How often do governments spend at least 5 trillion dollars, as they did during the Scamdemic, to address storm damage? Though storms cause damage, this damage is geographically limited. Most storms cost merely millions to repair. Even Katrina recovery cost a comparatively paltry $120 billion. And at least when cities are rebuilt, actual, visible work gets done and some of it is upgrades. Compare post-hurricane power-line restoration, new levees and houses to such nonsensical theater as mass-scale testing and tracing, various germ barriers, rimless public basketball backboards and sand-covered skateparks.

—

Most importantly, Coronamania’s residual harms are far wider, deeper and more persistent than is storm damage.

For example, Coronamania has visibly damaged American cities, including Trenton.

Trenton has been in decline since the late 1960s. As with the vast majority of American cities that lost their industrial bases, and thus significantly lost population, it was hard for urban merchants there to make a profit. Downtown stores were distant from many shoppers’ newly suburban homes. Additionally, shoppers had to find and pay for parking and wonder if their cars would be there, intact, when they got done shopping. The internet worsened things. How could a small merchant compete on price and selection against mega-retailers with warehouses of un-shopliftable stuff?

But at least during the mid-day, Trenton’s downtown remained viable into the 2000s. For a while, there were still a Woolworth’s, various storefront luncheonettes, pizza shops and a couple of big, architecturally impressive banks. There had also been a jewelry store, a well-stocked stationery store, a record store, a lively barbershop, a milliner, a very friendly cobbler, a few haberdashers, a drug store, several thrift shops, and two old, shabbily elegant YM/WCAs. Now, nearly all of those are gone.

The merchants at these places in Trenton, Newark and New Brunswick, where I also spent much time, tended to be more personable than those who worked in chain stores or restaurants. In contrast to people employed for a few months at Subway or McDonalds, people that run businesses make commitments to a location and a line of work. They liked bantering with people. They could be a little odd, but usually in an endearing or amusing way. Customers and merchants got to know each other.

I’ve written before at greater length about a Trenton man named James Wells, a/k/a Wellsy, who owned and cooked for a one-of-a-kind, eponymous restaurant in the living room of his narrow, red brick row house a block from Trenton’s main street. Wellsy’s kitchen was open to view from his restaurant’s entrance. Wellsy looked up from his work, smiled and greeted you as you came in. The usually full room had a beat-up upright piano. On Fridays, a lanky, fortyish guy wear a kufi would skillfully play jazz.

As Wellsy lived upstairs, his first-floor bathroom was the restaurant’s bathroom. It was unlit, except for a speckled glass skylight over the bathtub. Some days, the tub had sunfish, which Wellsy caught in Trenton’s downtown canal three-blocks away, swimming in his tub.

You won’t see such things at the food court at the mall.

—

American businesses, including restaurants, have been trending monolithic and boring for decades. National franchises have taken over much retail commerce. These places are aesthetically dull, and the products and experiences they offer are predictable and standardized. Typically, the food in the chain restaurants isn’t as colorful or flavorful, nor are the portions as big, as those in the TV of billboard ads or on the big photos displayed above the counter. Small places, like those in Trenton, served up interesting ethnic foods like pulpo salad and platanos, guanabana licuados, fried whiting and collards, pierogies or masalas.

Or milk shakes made with milk and ice cream, instead of some faux powder mix delivered in bulk from corporate. Interesting, stylish old buildings, friendly or quirky merchants, varied food and the wabi-sabi decor of independent businesses appeal to me far more than do the chain stores and eateries.

Even before 2020, some of these places struggled to make enough money to stay open. But strolling state and city workers provided a core clientele for affordable food and goods and services.

Walking through downtown a decade ago, I would run across and exchange greetings with various local men with whom I played basketball at the Y over many years. Now, even during lunchtime on nice days, very few walk downtown. And the big, elegant old Y sits closed and abandoned.

Locking down corporate and state government offices, and related businesses for two years and, thereafter, allowing people to continue to “work remotely” two or three days/week at home has been a death blow to Trenton’s downtown and other downtowns, nationwide. How do merchants make a profit when there’s no foot traffic? Nationwide, 3.3 million small businesses closed during the Scamdemic.

Downtown Trenton looks post-apocalyptic. Most of its storefronts are now boarded up. A few of these places have become new “cannabis dispensaries,” with glossy murals and glossed-over consequences. Over the long-term, herb causes more harm to healthy, younger people than a respiratory virus, or the overreaction to it, ever could.

The above, people-free photo of Trenton was taken on a typical weekday at mid-day. The owners of private buildings there and in other cities lack tenants and aren’t collecting rents on vacant spaces. What will happen to the many banks holding loans on commercial buildings, whose newly unprofitable owners default on their loan payments? And to the accountholders/stockholders, including pension funds, at/of those banks? How will building owners make enough money to pay taxes to cities in which some social services might do some good?

Though Trenton has been sliding for decades, post-lockdown, it’s distinctly worse. As are many other formerly busy urban settings, Trenton is downright desolate. Who would spend the time building a small business in places where there’s far less foot traffic than they used to be? Many other cities, with workers who only have to be in their offices two or three days/week, also have desolate downtowns.

—

NJ Governor Murphy disingenuously justified his lockdowns by saying “Public health is economic health.”

This was the type of cynical blather in which he, and other lockdowners, specialized as they ran society and the economy into the ground for political gain and to further enrich the already rich. Hiding people from each other doesn’t improve public health. Antidepressant use climbed 20% during 2020. Multiple studies have concluded that 40+% of Americans gained over 15 unwanted pounds during in 2020-21.

Public health improves when people are interacting and working. It’s good for their minds, bodies, spirits and wallets. The United Health website states the obvious: “The correlation between income and health manifests itself in countless ways, but all lead to the same conclusion: the poorer you are, the sicker you are, and the more likely you are to die young.”

Aside from needing money, people need things to do and interesting places to go. Those who killed small businesses, especially in the cities, took jobs away from many and deprived customers of places that fed, pleased, and sometimes entertained, them. Even if the entertainment wasn’t always intentional.