The Zhirinovskization Of The Local Bodega

I understand what is meant by the caricature. What I don’t get is why sunflower seeds:

A hateful image excavated from the annals of an unfortunate history has found its way on a package of sunflower seeds, of all places.

And the ‘seeds of hate’ were being sold right here in Brooklyn.

On Nov. 21, attorney Jeffrey Meyers got the shock of his shopping life after an otherwise uneventful trip to Net Cost Market, an import food shop located near the Department of Motor Vehicles on West 8th Street.

With a purchase of over $50, the store often gives away a free item. When Meyers returned home, he took a close look at the freebie, which while inside the shop, he assumed was simply an innocuous bag of sunflower seeds.

The package appears to be from another age.

It depicts a bearded, hunched over man with a skullcap, hands clasped, beady eyes, and an oversized nose–the classic, hateful stereotype of a Jew.

Cyrillic letters on one side of the caricature, reminiscent of Shylock from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” reads “Shalom, from Israel,” while the other side uses a slang phrase roughly translated to mean, “spit them out everywhere.”

. . .

The seeds are produced in the former Soviet Union by a company called Kremlin Kitchen.

Net Cost Market has four locations in Brooklyn, one on Staten Island, and one in Philadelphia. The company promotes itself as the Costco of the ethnic Eastern European market, offering a wide range of imported delicacies.

Forget It, Jake — It’s Avalon

There are amateurs:

A Manhattan woman has been arrested for allegedly trying to scam thousands of dollars in fees by placing a bogus ad in a newspaper offering cheap rents in fancy apartments, authorities said yesterday. Raadiya James, 22, is accused of buying an ad in AM New York on Dec. 2 that mimicked an official announcement from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development offering cheap apartments on West 57th Street.

In exchange for a $5 application fee, the home-seekers were offered a shot at studios for $538 and two-bedrooms for $823.

Over the next few days, more than 1,000 money orders poured into a post-office box.

But authorities picked up on the alleged scam and when James came to pick up the loot, she was arrested.

And then there are professionals:

“Of course, honey, we’re in a recession,” replied Jackie Sim, the building’s [Avalon Morningside Park, a new 20-story monolith capping Columbus Avenue at 110th Street] leasing agent, when asked whether units had been going more slowly than anticipated. “People are shopping around more.”

. . .

Ms. Sim would call the Avalon a “luxury” building rather than “full-service” — in fact, she did slip up a couple of times — if 20 percent of it didn’t fall under the city’s 80-20 affordable housing guidelines. Developer AvalonBay secured $100 million in tax-exempt bonds to keep 59 units rent-stabilized at “affordable” rates (studios for about $620, $922 for a three-bedroom). Though the apartments aren’t quite as swank — Corian countertops instead of granite, for example — AvalonBay won’t have problems filling them up: HPD was still inundated with applications for the lottery.

“Everyone applied,” said Kelly Garcia, owner of the overstuffed Hardware and Houseware store on 109th and Columbus-including him. “Nobody has said they got in. What I think is they keep it for their own people.”

She’s Got Sharpton — Reachin’ Out, Touchin’ Me, Touchin’ You!*

Although it does seem like the Reverend is lowering the bar for what passes as qualified when it comes to being a Senator:

Since the possibility of Ms. Kennedy’s candidacy for the Senate has, understandably, already generated a fair degree of debate and discussion, I feel compelled to state that I unequivocally disagree with those that say she is not qualified and could not bring needed leadership to this state and country. My knowledge of her in the area of education and on behalf of children generally, the fact that she has written several books[**], and her other civic involvement more than qualifies her to be Senator. Ms. Kennedy is an accomplished author on Constitutional Law, the Bill of Rights, and political courage. She is also a lawyer.

Elected office is not the only area of public service that establishes leadership in this country. We just elected a community organizer as President of the United States.

Harriet Miers was a lawyer, too! Oh, never mind . . .

On the one hand, it seems like it could be smart to have someone outside of politics hold the seat for a few years until an actual election happened with actual candidates who actually had to campaign for votes. But on the other hand:

In addition, a person with direct knowledge of the conversations said that Ms. Kennedy and Mr. Paterson had spoken several times in recent days and that the governor had grown increasingly fond of her. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the governor, said that Mr. Paterson also had come to see Ms. Kennedy as a strong potential candidate whose appointment would keep a woman in the seat and whose personal connections would allow her to raise the roughly $70 million required to hold on to the seat in the coming years.

Under state law, Ms. Kennedy would have to run and win in 2010, to finish out the last two years of Mrs. Clinton’s term, and again in 2012, to win a term of her own.

Another person who had advised Mr. Paterson said that Ms. Kennedy could offer political advantages to the governor, who was elevated to his position after Eliot Spitzer resigned in March and in two years must ask voters to actually elect him as governor.

“The upside of her candidacy is that the 2010 ballot will read Kennedy — Paterson,” said one of those advisers, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the governor’s thinking. “David craves national attention and money. If you connect the dots, it leads to her.”

Look at it this way — voting in New York has always been an academic exercise. At least now they’re finally getting rid of the pretense . . .

*Even creepier than it sounds.

**Which books? Glad you asked.

The Scottish King! The Scottish King!

More like “Macbeth!”:

“The last 15 years have been boom years for theater — I always expected the pendulum to swing, and I simply see this as a correction,” said Nancy Coyne, chairwoman of the theater advertising agency Serino Coyne. “The good news is that so many straight plays are now coming in the spring, and I think New Yorkers will come out for them once the tourists go away. We’re horrible snobs. We hate tourists from Cleveland.”

Just keep telling yourself that.

Personally, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into “the story of a world traveling photojournalist and a New York gallery owner who discover each other and also that there might be an art to repairing broken lives” (“Impressionism”). And nothing takes my mind off of a worldwide economic crisis like a new Moises Kaufman play about “a musicologist who travels to the Beethoven archives in Germany to unravel the mystery surrounding the composer’s enigmatic ‘Diabelli Variations,’ only to discover she has a fatal illness” (“33 Variations”). Oh and hey, what better way is there for New York theatergoers to forget eight years of Bush than an uplifting Ibsen revival? “Hedda sets out on a shocking path of destruction that affects the lives of everyone around her” — I remember that one! — but it does have the hot lady from Weeds. Aw, alright — send me a postcard with some midweek discount and I’ll think about it . . .

In Retrospect . . .

$530 million for a full platform doesn’t seem like such a hot idea. Think about it — the auto companies are looking for $14 billion. And you just spent a half a billion on four cars’ worth of platform. Would Lower Manhattan have been any less “rebuilt” without it?

Not that a full platform isn’t cool — It’s great! I’m excited! — but the cost almost makes one seat to JFK seem sensible.