Dahon.Steve

Here's an article that upset me for two reasons. The first being the poorest communities suffer from large supermarkets forcing eveyone to overpay for groceries. Second, the attitude of some in the community that you can't use bicycles for shopping.

I used to live in a nightborhood like this but had no trouble using the bus to bring back groceries. Today, I would certainly use a bicycle to haul groceries back home even though the supermarket was two miles away. It's incredible that people would rather pay higher prices for food than be caught using a bicycle for grocery shopping.

During the summer, I was posting at bus shelters near the mall my flyer stating "This mall is accessable by bicycle" and it had links to sites on utility cycling. It looks like I'm going to have to start doing the same for supermarkets!

From the article:

"I can't drive yet so I'm not gonna do anything extraordinary like jump on my bike and ride it for two or three miles and ride it back with tons of stuff on it, oh no," said Lozoya

https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081218/...diet_disparity

rotharpunc

really? people are ignorant and car obsessed? It makes me sad really, but people will learn eventually, this country cannot possibly sustain this way forever. good idea on posting on the bus shelters though, I do love sticking up flyers!

Doohickie

People won't necessarily learn. My wife teaches at an inner city school, and it is amazing how stubbornly many of her students refuse to think outside the box. When in doubt, they do the safe thing, where "safe" is defined by what their mom and gramma does (many single-parent households). If it's good enough for their family, it's good enough for them, and to do something different would be an over-reach that would show disrespect for the way their family always did it.

It's not that they're stupid or ignorant; to live in poverty you have to be extremely resourceful. But they have been raised to not expect too much, and certainly not to reach above your station. My wife has a helluva time teaching them Advanced Placement history, not because they can't handle the work, but just because they don't expect to succeed.

If you can get someone to be more independent by putting up fliers, more power to ya. I know the battle you're facing.

wahoonc

Unfortunately this occurs in many inner city areas. I know that there are parts of North Charleston, SC that have the same issue, but the closest full service grocery store is over 7 miles away and requires at least one bus transfer to get to it. The roads are not particularly cyclist friendly in that area either. There was a Winn Dixie in the middle of the area, but it closed up 12+ years ago and the building sits boarded up to this day. The locals have tried to get a store to come to the neighborhood but none will because of the purported high crime rates. This problem is only going to get worse as the population ages.

Aaron

mackerel

then finding a job and making money should never be a problem

patc

Spoken like someone who's never felt poverty.

mackerel

I've eaten my share of potatoes and top-ramen for months at a time.
Lamenting that even peanut butter was too expensive.
That never stopped me from constantly looking for a job.

patc

I know plenty of people who are employed full time, yet still can't count on paying bills and feeding the kids every day. Saying that resourcefulness eliminates poverty is pretty harsh. I've been there myself, and grew up counting meals, seeing my mother make less money working two jobs than she could get from welfare - and don't tell me that getting an education is really an option for someone working 60 hours/week.

Poverty is a self-perpetuating trap, and while resourcefulness can help you escape that trap, it is by no means a simple or easy thing.

Dahon.Steve

In my town, all the roads are safe for bicycling with plenty of avenues under 30 mph. However, it's rare to see ANYONE taking a bicycle to the shopping center. There are no hills and it's totally flat!

Yet, I'm the only lone wolf who does this in both good and bad neighborhoods. As someone said before, you have to really think out of the box when it comes to utility cycling.

bragi

I'm sorry, but this young lady's attitude does not strike me as resourceful, or even sensible, in the least. Riding, or even walking, two miles to buy decent groceries isn't even remotely a hardship. I'm pushing 50, and I do it almost every day without even thinking about it, even in the snow, and so does my 75 year old neighbor.

There's clearly more going on here than perceived hardship: it's pride, pure and simple. Having to walk or ride a bike to buy groceries is possibly an insult to this girl, maybe even totally humiliating, so she won't do it. But because of this misplaced pride, both she and her relatives eat less well, even though there's a big building full of good food only 10,000 feet away.

Roody

The unemployment rate in Michigan right now is 10 % overall, and over 20 % in inner city areas. Do you know what that means? It means that over a million people will be unable to get a job, no matter how hard they look for one. That sounds like a problem to me!

Roody

The west side of Lansing is one of these "food deserts" with no grocery stores that are easily accessible by bus, bike or foot. One woman decided to do somethin about it. She approached the only store in the area--a Quality Dairy convenience store (we call them "party stores"). She convinced QD to sell fresh, high quality vegetables on an experimental basis. Then she marketed the vegetables to the community with recipe flyers and even cooking and tasting demonstrations. She also took charge of the produce display in the store to keep it fresh and attractive. I haven't been in there lately, but as far as I know, they're still selling produce and people are still buying it.

One person did this!

mike

The main thrust of the article is about a 17 year old girl trying to feed her "obese mother" and the difficulty she has trying to shop the local stores without a car.

She tries to adjust her mother's diet with her newly found shopping empowerment.

It is interesting that the obvious solution hasn't revealed itself to this child and obese mother;

Have mom walk to the grocery store and carry her groceries back home. Momma gets some excersize and limits her diet to how much she can carry with each trip. The irony is that the better condition she develops by walking to/from the store will allow her to carry more groceries. As long as the grocery bags aren't filled with kidney suet and Twinkies, it could work out pretty well for them.

chrism32205

Good point Mike.. The daughter and mother could walk to the store together. Sure 2 miles isnt a picnic for someone obese.. but its a start.

But it is true about urban areas not having grocery stores, and very true for my city. The downtown area is constantly building high rise condo's in the downtown area, but there is only 1 grocery store, a winn-dixie that isnt very clean or a nice place to go, and a retail store, those are even harder to find without going across town to a mall.

Downtown landscapes have really changed in the past 30 years, everything is farther out, and in a mall that has a huge parking lot. It is depressing.

gwd

When I left J'ville 25 or so years ago, one reason was that it seemed like what I called a 'fake city'. Meaning that the people there wanted to be thought of as a city but didn't know what a city is. You make it sound just the same. I biked around Jacksonville then and noticed that their idea of a bike lane was to put up signs that say "bike route" along sidewalks without curb cuts. Just the old signs. You're describing infill development without mixed use, the concept of a walkable neighborhood seems to have escaped the urban planners. Its such a shame, Jacksonville could be a nice place but the people there have decided to accept Kunstler's geography of nowhere as a goal to be attained rather than avoided.

Roody

That's a good idea when the store is relatively close. If the store is 5 or 6 miles away, or more--as is often the case--walking is not a sane option.

(Until recently, the entire city of Detroit did not have a supermarket with a good produce section.)

mackerel

To patc & Roody:

I agree with you both that my comment was unnecessarily insensitive and rather ignorant.

Thanks and Merry Christmas.

Doug5150

How many ghetto stores have you worked at?....

It's kind of like that line from "The Matrix" movie: I could try to tell you what goes on, but you kind of need to see it for yourself.

Could be, oh, she's afraid of getting mugged/*****/kidnapped & ***** repeatedly?
I'd bet if you asked them, most of your own female friends wouldn't want to go for a solitary bike ride in a crappy section of LA, either.
~

mondaycurse

Good job for her. 50 pounds off yourself is something, but 50 pounds off someone else?

Here is the alternative. She might not share the same ideas we have on bikes, but she respects health, and even the health of her neighbors.

Extended alternative.

patc

Water under the bridge - now go eat a turkey or something ;-)

mike

Not having grocery stores in downtown and urban areas really is a problem. I remember when I was a young teen, every neighborhood had a small grocery store. You could walk 3 city blocks in any direction and hit a string of small mom-and-pop grocery stores. They somehow had most of what you needed - cream of this-and-that for casseroles, a meat counter, packs of noodles, rice cereal - you know - the staples for the middle class.

By the 1980's, most of them were gone - poached by the big warehouse type grocery stores. By the 1990's, the big warehouse grocery stores closed down due to competition from the newer and bigger grocery store chains. By 2006, those bigger chains were lost to Walmart superstores.

In the intererim, some low-cost cash-and-carry grocers like Aldi's and Save-a-Lot moved back downtown. They aren't huge - about the size of a 'big" grocery store in the 1960's (maybe six short aisles). They are doing well - lots of business. The customers are mostly lower income - downtown folks; the folks that seem to wears something on their heads all the time for whatever reason.

Anyway, it seems that in some cities, the downtown grocers are making a comeback. It is surely needed.

dynodonn 

In my area, mom and pop stores were abundant when I was kid as well. There's a couple of reasons why a lot of mom and pops in my area went under. The reasons that I saw locally was the entrance of the gas station convenience mart, and then the final blow for most was the deep discount food chain making it's way to town. There's a few corner stores, and small supermarkets left, but they only cater to a small nitche of customers where there are no convenience marts or discount food stores close by.

BarracksSi

Thank goodness there's a small store a block away from me. There are a few others, too. I haven't wanted to go to a big box grocery store in a long time.

*add-on* Part of why there aren't any big stores in my neighborhood is that there just isn't room for them. It's a designated historical district, which means that buildings can't be torn down or replaced.

Rowan

Nice play on a word. Maybe "exorsize" could fit in there, too.

As to the picture, and way off topic... I often wonder at the engineering marvel that is the toilet pedestal that can cope with the weight of something like that plopping itself down on it without breaking the porcelain.

And then I wonder how that individual makes its way through the aisles -- with a kind of arrogant, get-out-of-the-way attitude and a scowl on the face.

Sorry, these are the thoughts that come to mind when I see someone like this.

Gratuitous on-topic content -- my nearest shops are expensive even when compared with the supermarket that is 25km away. When you live country, you take what you have to.

However, my previous residence was in a suburban area with a grocery 1.5km away, a pizza shop around the corner, a pub and bottle shop 2.5km away, and the best of all, a bike shop next to the pizza shop! If I wanted fully fledged shopping centre, that as 4km away, next door to the public golf course, and required a ride along the river waterfront.

I sometimes miss those days of convenience.

ChipSeal

There used to be plenty of neighborhood grocery stores in the area. Most of them were burned up in riots, because they were operated by folks with different skin pigmentation.

The few enterprising souls who sought to re-establish neighborhood groceries found that banks and insurers thought such locations carried a high risk of being burned to the ground so they needed high interest and high premiums to cover that likelihood. They found other locations to start their businesses.

Highly capitalized grocers (The supermarkets) who locate near the area have to charge their customers more to cover these higher operating costs. Sadly, the local citizens have brought this calamity upon themselves.

Many evil acts are justified by the perpetrators notion of being a victim. A community steeped in the feeling of victimization is unlikely to improve because it is always some outside force "keeping them down". South LA is an example of this community malaise.