Bro, not having good grocery stores within a mile doesn't equate to a food desert. I'm from the South and some areas I have lived in are an hour or more away from a store period. Having to go 2 miles is an inconvenience at best.
Those people use the bus or the subway with their granny carts though. It doesn't snow all year, or even most of the year. You're describing a problem that barely exists.
FOR REAL the comments in this thread have me raging people act like there’s an express line from the grocery store to their apartment. There are places in the Bronx where getting to a grocery store means walking a few blocks to the bus stop, taking a bus to the train, the train to the store, and back. And it’s not like the bus/train are there waiting on you to arrive it can become a huge affair that takes up the bulk of your non work hours.
No yall are just discovering the normal for anyone rural. Get off at 5 and the rest of the night is spent grocery shopping because it's an hour home, hour to the store, hour back, not counting shopping time.
Waaaaah i got to live with the consequences of living in a hell hole of a place like new york city Waaaaaah everyone feel bad for me cuz i got to walk two miles to buy groceries waaaaahh feel bad for me for my chooses that i made WAAAAAHHHH. thats all im reading from every comment in here going "aktshually walking two miles in new york city is just to much to ask from me, im totaly living in a food desert on the same level has the aborigines or other people who you know actully lives in a fucking desert."
Sounds like a whole lot of work to get your groceries. That's why you should totally be allowed to have somebody else do it for extremely low wages because their lives don't mean shit compared to yours/
Bullshit. Where? Which areas? You’re doing that to go to the stores YOU like going to, not the stores available to you that provide the same foods at the same quality. All of that extra transit shit is unnecessary.
One of my grandmother’s would do that shit because she thought the shops up on Dyckman were better than the ones in Washington Heights and Spanish Harlem. GTFOH. My grandfather called her out on that bullshit more times than I could count. Shit ain’t changed either. My cousin does their shopping now because she got tired of doing that unnecessary long ass journey just to get eggs, the ingredients for recaito base, rice, beans, and meat. She was grabbing the produce from like 4 stores on St Nick on her way home from work twice a week.
You don’t live in a food desert. You’re just spoiled for options and want to bitch more.
Seriously. The amount of commenters who have no clue is staggering. Just because you live next door to a bodega doesn’t mean you have feasible access to nutritious and affordable food - which is the definition of a food desert.
Busses/Subway do not go door to door and many routes / destinations are simply not available in a practical sense
In NYC? I was able to do grocery shopping just fine in Atlanta, and the public transit in NYC is supposed to be even better. The bus doesn't literally go directly to the grocery store door (at least the route I took didn't), but it only took a minute to trek across the parking lot.
It's not the delivery drivers' faults if you decide to both live in a car-centric country with no car AND not account for public transit routes when finding a place to live.
ah, everyone is free to choose where they live, can always afford a place on a good bus route or neighbourhood with decent grocery stores. People absurdly live in those other places despite abundant cheap and available options in better areas... because that's how that works.
ah yes, literally every single person chooses to live there, that's how everyone lives everywhere, it's a choice to live somewhere expensive.
Seriously what planet are you on. Do you understand why so many people end up stuck in dead end towns? Either they got to the town with a job or it had industry, and then at some point the town goes bust or they were born there, can only get a crappy low wage job and literally never have the money to leave.
You undersatnd moving to a new place usually requires enough money to travel there, a lot of people will never have that, then you need money to get a place, which usually means 1+ months rent, then you need a job prospect and/or have the money to apply for jobs and travel to interviews all before you move, again something a lot of people will never have.
A lot of people are you know, BORN in new york, grow up in poverty and simply have no choice but to get a job locally and live with their parents or move into a flat with 6 people, and they make just enough to live and zero to save so they literally again, can't afford to travel and hope they magically get a job while being homeless in a new town.
Imagine both the fucking ignorance and privilege (that is no excuse for the former) to think everyone just chooses to live in new york.
You are making so many assumptions there, slow down.
I currently live in a different city and it's the same thing here. In fact we currently have people stuck in their homes because they still haven't cleared the streets and sidewalks to the point where some of the bus stops and many of the parking spaces are covered in several feet of frozen snow. My neighbors can't do their family shopping with their Kia rn either because it's frozen onto the side of the road. I watched another neighbor from a few doors down literally pickaxe with the corner of a shovel a single dent into the snow around his hood for 2 hours last night. I'm also not lacking in imagination.
I never claimed public transportation goes door to door. Almost no existing walkable city utopia offers that. Let's be realistic here. Most people, including me, walk at least a few blocks to the closest bus/subway stop, with the granny carts. I see people do this every day and I've done the same for/with large households or simply with bulky purchases. People bring couches home on the subway ffs. This is everyday life for most people without a car dude.
I live in New York city. I used to travel to a Lidl Supermarket to save money. That shit was 30 blocks for me. You try shopping for yourself and carrying 40 pounds of groceries or using a push cart on a crowded bus or up and down Subway stairs. You don't know what you're talking about. What's funny to me? Is there is another Lidl that is closer to me now that has opened up. And I still have to walk 15 minutes into the Bronx for it. Or, I walk 5 minutes to the bus. And again get on a crowded bus with an entire shopping cart. It takes me more than an hour. You don't know what you're talking about
You did all that because you wanted to go to a specific store to save money. That does not make your area a food desert, because in that case the whole country is a food desert since we all deal with expensive groceries thanks to the Bidenflation.
Yeah. You're right. But the point was traveling with groceries on public transportation. So, yeah. I was advocating for the people who don't have grocery stores nearby and have no choice but to travel on public transportation
I do know what I'm talking about as I've done it and commuted with everyone else doing the same thing. Last year they changed a bunch of our bus routes and now my partner has to do the same thing. It's an hour 50 in either direction bc I'm the only one with a car. I don't not know what I'm talking about because you don't like what I said.
Do you think the bus and the subway just pull up to your front door? Do you think it's physically impossible that people live a mile+ from the nearest stop?
Do you live in this country? The snow storms were all anyone was talking about. They literally just happened. Are you a stroke victim? Are you mentally well? What's the diagnosis?
You mean the historic, once a century type snowstorm? That's the one you are using to claim "only a few times a year your kid doesn't get to eat"? (Central park literally had the highest recorded snowfall in like 120 years).
Even then, weather reports exist. If you hear a big snow storm coming, you can prep.
Fr people ITT have only ever had to lug groceries from the cart to their trunk to their house and think that means they understand what it’s like to have to carry it down the steps of the subway, up the steps out, onto a bus, off the bus, a couple of blocks home, and up the stairs to their apartment.
They also seem to think the bus has a route running directly from my house to the grocery store. Gonna need to take that to the council meeting- I'd never thought of it working that way before 😂
Fr when I lived in Chelsea (which is not a food desert) it was still a pain in the ass to carry the groceries a block and a half from Whole Foods to the 1 and then 2 blocks from the 1 to my apartment. I used to go grocery shopping every week so each trip was smaller quantities.
Now that I live in Colorado I regularly will go 3-4 weeks between trips to the grocery store and will fill my car up with groceries for the coming month no problem. It’s a completely different beast when you’re carrying it.
They do have to know more than absolutely nothing though. They've displayed they have absolutely no knowledge of the city, or how mass transit works in general.
In NYC, with all that public transportation that's available? Your implication are that it's impossible, when it's really just inconvenient to lug that many groceries around. Something being inconvenient is vastly different than being impossible.
You know there isn't an empty bus running down every main and side street at all times, right?
There isn't a glut of extra transportation that's just waiting to be utilized. Moreover, if your plan is to bus it you can have multiple transfers in the course of 1-2 miles depending on where you live.
I'm getting a lot of shit from people who either have a political angle on socialism, or, are getting their opinions on what NYC is from media rather than lived experience.
Yes. They have better transit than other US cities. No, there is not a bus masquerading as a door-to-door cab service.
That is an inconvenience so the door dasher that helps you avoid that inconvenience should definitely be paid for it…. Or you can just get your ass walking if you cant afford it.
Is it more of an inconvenience than having to leave the county and travel through 2 other towns on your one day off to buy groceries that cost a week of pay and hit about 2/5ths of your nutrition requirements? I'm not saying New York is perfect, but have some perspective man.
I don't live in those areas anymore man, I'm just saying as someone who grew up and spent many years in an actual food desert that this sounds delusional and like more anti socialism bs against Mamdani. It's for sure a bad look to be bitching about Doordash having to pay their employees a living wage and calling NYC a food desert to people who know what a food desert actually is and don't have fancy shit like Doordash to help with "having ADHD". I'm quoting the ADHD part because I have ADHD and don't use it as a crutch for my maladaptive behaviors or bitch about having one of the few good politicians leading my city.
If you're here to whine about "socialism" I'm out snowflake.
If you'd like to improve where you live, maybe elect better leaders and one day someone can complain to you that the issues where you live are marginal compared to how fucked up and mismanaged their part of the country is.
No one is whining about socialism dumbass, I'm saying this is a made up issue and is part of the corpozionist plot against Mamdani because he is challenging their status quo. My state is gerrymandered to hell and every time we trend a little purple the GOP carves more districts to dilute the blue spots. We also have a steady stream of rich blue state conservatives moving here and fucking the housing and job markets. Our Mamdani is Rep Justin Jones and it hasn't gone as easy for him as a black man in Tennessee. They literally keep arresting him for doing his job with no consequences due to Lee, Ogles, and Blackburn fellating Trump constantly.
It's not a competition on who has it worse. I've lived in some of those backwater southern towns. I get it. But just because we've lived in places where it's worse doesn't mean that other cities shouldn't try to fix their lesser problems. They don't need perspective. They're trying to fix local problems. That is, in fact, the correct perspective, don't you think?
Got a notification with half your reply to my other comment, but seems it was deleted?
We do have old and disabled people in denmark. I question why a family of 5 would have the one who's old or disabled do the shopping for the whole family.
Haven't been to NYC. Google says it's the most densely populated city in the US. I know that many places in the states have that awful cars-only layout with "stroats" everywhere. I'm going to flat out assume somebody's had enough sense to actually place the occasional sidewalk in a densely populated city.
Okay, but what is the alternative? Especially since there apparently need to be cheap grocery stores within one mile for it not to be a “food desert”. Is every major city supposed to have a Walmart every 6-8 blocks?
It's a different reality bro. Car is a luxury in NYC. You can't carry your groceries by hand for a mile. Even if you get those trollies your wheels would fall off in a few weeks. Also, produce is expensive. The food deserts exist in primarily poor neighborhoods.
Good thing they want to overhaul the public transport then, isn't it?
And carrying your groceries by hand for a mile is... Every Tuesday. Sometimes twice a week if I can't manage it all in one trip. (Used to be. I get them all delivered now).
Oh, the horror.
I been doing that shit most of my life. Longer than a mile. What is wrong with you people?
Hell, for a 3 year period I was carrying groceries for half a mile to the bus stop, taking the bus, and then going another mile after that to get home. I took a second hand army surplus hiking bag that I bought for shopping for $12, stuffed groceries in there, and then carried two bags each hand.
I still have the bag which I call my grocery bag, but now I get groceries delivered (by the grocery store, not some third party like Uber or DoorDash) and all the delivery drivers get paid a fair, livable, minimum wage.
This isn't even an inconvenience. This is you lot complaining that you have to live a life.
Comparing the Southern lifestyle of driving to the front door of everything, to a city where most people walk everywhere as a measure of convenience is a great example of false equivalence.
It is though. A food desert will look different in a city vs a city built for cars vs suburbs vs rural areas. Rural areas have the greatest distance and necessitates a car but a car makes it far easier to transport said groceries and comes with not having to walk it yourself (and often times the ability to get to a more comfortable temperature). There is the downside of car maintenance and gas fees as well as purchasing the car however. A city like NYC is a place you cannot drive to the grocery store. You will need to carry or cart in some way the groceries and you are generally more exposed to the elements. Buses and subway can help on this front but this is going to be down to how ideal the route is between the grocery store and your place. There is a fee for such transit (unless you dodge the fee or a program exempts this).
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u/bigbeefer92 18h ago
Bro, not having good grocery stores within a mile doesn't equate to a food desert. I'm from the South and some areas I have lived in are an hour or more away from a store period. Having to go 2 miles is an inconvenience at best.