A pod is what I call a small lighting fixture that snaps into a track.
I do not like track lighting but since my kitchen has low ceilings and is narrow, I knew I’d have to cope with it. Three pods live in the track. One of them has been wonky from the beginning and the other day went splat. Died.
The place I’d bought the fixture had gone out of business a while ago. I wasted some frustrating time in an on-line lighting store. (Am also currently dealing with the related question, “Why hasn’t my vacuum cleaning bag-and-filter combo, ordered from an on-line store, arrived yet — necessitated because my vacuum cleaner place has gone out of business?”)
No luck with the pod. I realized I’d have to — oh, gasp, horror! — travel crosstown to the original version of the store that had gone out of business.
Delete the “oh, gasp, horror,” because getting crosstown meant a glorious walk through Central Park carrying my dead pod in a canvas tote from Porto Rico Coffee Shop.
Why am I telling you all this? Especially since my pod hunting may have been the impetus for, but is not the point of, this wee tale. I don’t know really, except I am tuckered out of gut-wrenching rage and wish to soothe myself down with this story.
I arrived at the original store — which had shrunk radically. When I produced the pod and related my need for a replacement, and the saleswoman said, “We don’t carry those things anymore,” and I began to launch my face into a fiercesome glare, both she and a customer said, “Go to Clarity Lighting, 77th Street.”
I did. It’s one of those special little New York shops where everything excellent is possible. The man who owned it did not sell me a new pod. He tested my old pod, saw the bulb was dead, removed the old bulb, put a new one in, noticed a prong on the back was bent, straightened it out, tested the pod again, said, “And then there was light!” And there was light! And I was happy. And paid him around $14.
Then I went into a Citarella branch where I could purchase lettuce and fruit. (Hang on, I’m almost at the point of the story which is: my memory is long and my need for vengeance never slakes.)
Picked up lettuce, picked up seedless grapes and joined a very long line for the cashier. A clever long line: we who moved slowly forward did so in an aisle on either side of which were enticingly displayed Citarella’s special products, from smoked fish, through delectable sweets. A subtle, yet blatant invitation to pick up a lot of stuff you don’t really need while on line.
I resisted. And then we came to the pasta collection.
Citarella has its own label but sells other labels as well, one of which is Cipriani. I never buy anything Cipriani. My long memory recalls how the Cipriani family bought the Rainbow Room and fired all the unionized workers. They opened other venues, expensive venues, and ignored the unions.
You don’t come from Venice into New York City and screw union workers, not on my watch. You just don’t.
… Tishman Speyer Properties, the landlord at Rockefeller Center, told the Cipriani company that it was terminating the lease because the company had failed to pay millions of dollars in rent since September. Under the lease, the Ciprianis have three days to get out.
So, as I passed the Cipriani pasta selections, I gave a nod to myself and to my memory and my undying vengeance toward anyone who fucks with my ideals.
(I don’t buy Barilla pasta either since Signore Barilla grandly announced years ago that he was adamantly against gay marriage. For commercial reasons he has since repented. For commercial reasons I haven’t.)