Unequivocally look like a dork sitting there, but the wagon’s called the Bale Queen. 📸: @bynickc
I’m not a tattletale on carryall politesse, but looking at a note I’d written some time ago, it seems obvious: Don’t bring a backpack on a first date.
Our aesthetics are a bit more cramped, our sartorial ethics compromised nowadays, given that the outside world is hazardous to our health. By design, totes aren’t very secure or built for compartmentalizing in a way that compliments a lifestyle where the best means of maneuvering from (point) A to (point) B is by bicycle. Well, actually, it’s not our fault. New York City wasn’t exactly built with our getting around in mind but rather is an expansive terrain, constantly uneven, car heavy but not car friendly. Despite its best intentions though, the city remains navigable. Most of the time, for most of us, it is any one of the emojis with the sweatdrop adhered to a corner of their forehead. You can choose whichever one you feel best correlates to your state of being.
I’m too chickenshit and too preoccupied with my looks to be a bike rider with any regularity and, despite my inches of progress toward a license, still can’t drive. So I schlep a lot. Typically, tote in hand for food shopping or whatever semi-daily routines we, a bit more carefully and deliberately, enact during quarantine. Shame of it all is that, roundly speaking, I love supermarkets. As a kid, while my parents were off performing ripeness checks, tapping the bottoms of cantaloupes and triple-checking a carton of eggs for any hairline fractures, I’d be in the magazine section, reading random passages from the Farmer’s Almanac. It’s a seismically boring read but you figure it was/is stocked in most grocery stores over a certain size as a token offering of appeasement for all the trouble we put the earth through, asking for so much quantity, variety, and fluorescence.
If anything, reading those odd texts implying meaning about the phases of the moon, cloud coverage, “pests to expect if you’re growing X,” and predicted rainfall three weeks after the mid-autumn harvests from the Farmer’s Almanac was a sideways and sophomoric entry into food politics. Caring about food cultures and food producers is my Woodstock, etc. is something I’d say and probably later regret. But still, it’s good enough for jazz.
Be less heady in 2020, oy. It’s chill, but long-absent a periodicals aisle to hang out in, schlepping around a Park Slope Food Coop tote (and to a lesser degree, this VEGGIES drawstring bag) are the most obvious if obtuse streamlined reclining into “just (vegan) desserts, please” politics.
Admittedly, the Park Slope Food Coop bag is a strong tote. A true NYC grail. As an extremely lapsed copy editor, I intuitively recognize that the absence of a dash in “Coop” is a riotous typographic power chord. And I wanted to contextualize all of this for you. But how? The Park Slope Food Coop is basically the only functioning club left in New York City. Only members can shop there (for everyone else there’s a Union Market down the block).
Luckily, I know a guy. Seiya Asada-Johnson’s been my closest friend since we were freshmen year roommates at a small liberal arts school where I learned next to nothing on the value and diversity of totes.
The Asada-Johnsons, supporters of high-quality produce and local producers since way back, are the first-family of Park Slope. (Dude de Blasio would likely argue otherwise, but he’s an ignoramus, so.) They’re og members of the Coop and for as long as I’ve known Seiya, I’ve been only so cursory to the magical gorpcore realism that pervades the Coop. This, despite the fact that I’ve been lucky enough to accompany Seiya on a couple of grocery shopping trips, having to wear a “Hi, I’m a GUEST” sticker so everyone could see me for the unanointed outsider that I am. It was like visiting a small town where everyone knows everyone else except for YOU.
Then, in a grand act of generosity, he gifted me the tote. And here we are. There is a very short list of NYC institutions that are worth buying merchandise form. The very famous Jewish Delicatessens of New York have incredibly strong brands but, ultimately, slouch in their attempts to put together a tote as strong as the Coop’s.
The Coop tote, also known locally as the “carrot bag,” was got sometime during the summer, right around the week both of our birthdays fall. Relatively speaking, if I’ve gotten any bit wiser since the summer the same cannot be said about my punctuality. So what follows is the extended conversation Seiya and I had months ago about the Coop, the tote, and all things relevant to anyone living a natty wine lifestyle in this country of perpetual crises.
Black Lives Matter.
ooga booga,
fc
“Hello?” “Hi, yes, this is 2015 Instagram calling you about this pic…” 😹
P.S. As a members-only institution that trades in Health Foodstuffs, it was only natural to start with an all-important question:
Baggage: How do you get kicked out?
Seiya Asada-Johnson: You’ve got to miss OD shifts!
B: Is it dark? Is it mean?
S: It’s not mean. People often get kicked out due to self-sabotage, or at least that’s the vibes to me.
B: But what’s the ceremony for when you’re getting kicked out? Is it very “We’re not mad, we’re disappointed”?
S: Well, there are many reminders. There’s consultation on how you can get a plan going. There’s a lot of understanding. It’s not push me to the edge; it’s not that combative. It’s all love.
B: But at the end of the day you’re letting everyone down. You’re letting the team down.
S: It’s a cooperative.
B: It’s in the name. Do you still do shifts there?
S: So, I’m on the family plan. Legally, you have to start your shifts when you turn 18. But I was in college at the time so I didn’t start working there until I got back. The most popular and the most available are the receiving shifts which are just, well, stocking shelves. And that helped because it made me really familiar with what the Coop offers and now I work an easier and less demanding shift which is just working in the office.
B: Were you always aware they had merch?
S: Thinking about merch, this goes hand-in-hand with my earliest memories since, for me, the first place I can remember totes being prevalent is at the Coop. The tote with the carrots on it, that’s the biggest symbol of the Coop for merch (which also comes as a t-shirt, too). But for the most part, it’s the carrot tote bag that stands out because you don’t see too many tote bags with a colored base and colored handle since it costs more to do so.
B: Why carrots?
S: I don’t know but I think the orange pops. Carrots are an enduring vegetable. They’re an all-ages vegetable. There’s a sense of nostalgia with them. Everyone has a carrot moment. Maybe that’s too organic-driven family snacks, but that’s the ethos of the Coop.
B: You’re describing a universal theory of carrot familiarity: Carrots have always been good; they can rep the Coop because, yes, a Coop, any Coop, would sell carrots.
S: Apples are kind of played out.
B: Apples are for Manhattan. Did it feel like you were seeing a lot of totes that were the home brand—Coop private label—or were you seeing people bringing their own?
S: I’d say boxes are the most prevalent and you’ll see a lot of tote bags and one thing that keeps the tote bags cool is that it’s not so uniform like liberal arts school kids with Patagonia snap tee fleeces. People in the Coop will use different totes—it doesn’t have to be the home brand. In a sense, that’s refreshing. I assume most members have a Coop tote bag and just might use it for different functions. Is it like, you know, you don’t want to wear Gucci to the Gucci show so you don’t pull up with it? Probably?
Still, there are a lot of people at the Coop who think about reusable bag culture. The tote bag stays prevalent.
B: No data, this is all a hunch, just something I’m pulling out of the air. The Trader Joe’s tote bag, the og one, has become synonymous with a certain type. And from a certain point of view, there’s plenty of crossover between the TJ type and the Coop member. Do you think the Coop started making totes because of how popular the TJ tote is or does it predate the Trader Joe’s tote altogether? Somewhat relatedly, the Trader Joe’s brand is really popular in Japan.
S: Really? I didn’t know they had Trader Joe’s in Japan.
B: I don’t think they do. It’s kind of like how the London Review of Books tote was popular in South Korea for a time.
S: True. It’s kind of like how Japanese people have Harrod’s bags. But honestly, I swear that Park Slope had it first and only because the Coop’s been there for a minute. I can’t imagine Trader’s coming first. Trader’s with the navy blue and red font, they're coming in more of the vein of the L.L.Bean weekender color scheme.
B: We’re not saying that the Coop chases trends here.
S: Not chasing trends, definitely not. I don’t think so. I can’t imagine it.
B: How pervasive then is this tote? How strong is this brand in Park Slope? Do you see it elsewhere?
S: I won’t lie, I’ve seen it a couple of times in Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy, but it’s really a rare Mew. You don’t really see it too often and you can’t even cop it unless you’re a member. Unless you got a member to buy it for you as a guest(💁♂️), you can’t go and get it. It’s not on a website or anything. It’s extremely valid and you’ll probably only see it on the F and G train lines. I’ve seen a lot of people who’ve lived the natural wine lifestyle who’ve flopped as members. So, to really have that experience and to have that tote bag, I think, it’s not as pervasive as you think.
B: So, you’re either among the committed or have received one as a gift?
S: I feel like if you’ve got a Park Slope Food Coop tote bag, you gotta respect the culture. No matter what, it’s love. And I think just because it’s hard to get…
B: It can’t just fit your fancy.
S: You can’t just have gotten it because you like it like you like The Strand. Do you actually shop at The Strand? Probably not. Realistically, you shop on Amazon. That is not the case here, however. So, if you’re seeking it you know what’s good and I have to give you some props. It’s definitely a rare gem and you’re either into tote bags—it’s kind of at a size where you have to be into tote bags. It’s not really a daily tote. It’s a symbol of the Coop’s ideology.
Sailor is a viscious animal but her heart’s in the right place.
B: If you do see it out in the wild, do you pay attention more?
S: Definitely. You definitely look that person up and down and you’re trying to figure out who they are, what they’re doing, what type of shift they might work, how long they’ve been a member, and how many digits are their member ID which is a flex these days. So, when you see that person you’re wondering how they fit into the paradigm. It makes you curious about how they got that tote. Because even now when you become a member, they give you the fugazi tote.
B: The fugazi tote?
S: So, the fugazi tote is one of those weird, waxy cotton totes that stack like 8 x 11 Xerox papers. It’s that thin and there are so many of them. When I was working night shifts in the office, I would lead orientations or members’ interest meetings and we’d give those out. So, some people already have that [the fugazi] tote or an even cheaper, plastic one that’s a dollar. But if you’re carrying the canvas tote bag I feel like that says something about you.
My number-one use for it is going to soccer games, going to the beach, and going on trips with friends. Maybe big dinner shopping, too.
B: Do you think of bags, broadly speaking, with utility foremost and do you think this kind of thinking then extends to your average Coop member?
S: I think it stems from the culture of reusability. It shows that you’re not buying janky produce. You’ve thought this out.
B: The world’s slowly (maybe) coming around to this thinking. But the Coop’s been thinking this way for a long time. You talk about the bag so much as a vector for the values it represents. It’s not really about the tote; it’s often about something else.
S: It definitely keeps a strong badge of values. When we’re thinking about being anonymous with normcore aesthetics, this minimalist style that’s pervaded lately, statement pieces come from designs that have a little more integrity. We’ve come to a point in life where we can be vain but we might not want to show that vanity with labels. With tote bags especially, you’re really able to show your philosophies of life in a pronounced aesthetic while keeping it more attuned to your sense and sensibilities and values.
B: Are you using totes a lot, then? Does a tote matter to you? Do you have totes to match your fit or experience? Pairings, I guess.
S: Lately I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like totes are following me on my deli run. Since I’ve been more… what’s the opposite of uprooted? Since I’ve been stuck at home, since COVID, my shopping trips have become less bulky so I find myself using those typical day totes as well—totes for holding books and a camera and just a couple of things from the grocery store.
B: This North Face bag you have with you right now has a lot of utility to it. It’s got layers. It’s not just: Open the bag, throw everything inside, and see what happens. That’s rare and it speaks to the kind of company that TNF is known to be.
S: This TNF tote, you just don’t see it in America. You kinda love the sensibilities. Japan has such a wide-ranging baggage culture. For one, this one’s unique because you don’t see TNF really have a tote bag. And two, it has this secured fastener and the biggest thing for me since I’ve been biking so much lately is the messenger strap. I need that. I can’t really be caught wearing that Manhattan Portage, Jack Spade kind of vibe. That’s not the aesthetic. I’ve got to keep it close with the canvas.
Thinking of the utilitarianism of the wine tote. Like with the Zev Rov tote, those are good totes now when I’m bringing a couple of bottles of natty over to a friend’s and that’s just gonna be the kind of tote that I use. Those totes have an open canvas with a direct message similar to the TNF tote which is why I appreciate it. Even though it’s branded, it has iterations, its own kind of variety to it that makes it more than normal.
That’s what the stylish people are going to go for.
B: Have you, personally, ever been asked about the Coop tote?
S: I have but mostly in more professional situations as ice breakers and small talk. It’s a flattering identifier considering that it’s just a supermarket.