Do Greenmarkets Suck?

Greenmarkets are either great resources for supermarket- and fresh food-starved neighborhoods or the quickest way to be parted with $30 or $40 outside of Atlantic City (or both!). Now we have to worry that vendors aren’t just going to Costco and selling a bunch of wholesale junk. Bastards! The Times’ City section does its part to continue the whispering campaign:

The city’s greenmarkets have lately brimmed with August’s familiar bounty. At 54 markets, tables are piled high with bulbous eggplant, luscious blackberries, and at least a dozen precious varieties of heirloom tomato. But behind the selling booths, a rumor persists at a low din among farmers that some in their ranks sell items they neither grew nor produced themselves, in violation of the strict “producer-only” rules put in place by the city Greenmarket program.

At the market at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza last week, Tammy Osczepinski of S. & S. O. Produce Farms in Goshen, N.Y., said that such hearsay was typical among greenmarket sellers.

“I’ve heard these rumors floating around for years,” she said with a shrug while bagging a head of escarole for a customer. “But this is a grow-your-own market, and that’s how it should be.”

. . .

. . . Rachel Faber Machacha, Greenmarket’s farm inspection coordinator, said it was rare but not unheard of for a farmer to augment his own supply with produce grown by another farmer, or even bought from a wholesale market. During August and September, her busiest months, Ms. Machacha travels from farm to farm verifying that what producers submit to Greenmarket as their annual crop plan is what they are actually growing. If something doesn’t add up, she investigates further.

“We’re slow to accuse, but pretty quick to respond if we hear concerns,” she said. “We thoroughly look at something before we issue a violation.”

Only a handful of violations are issued a year, Mr. Strumolo said. The most recent came a couple of weeks ago, when a mushroom producer who worked at multiple markets was found selling morel mushrooms and suspended for a month. Morels, Mr. Strumolo explained, grow in the New York region only in the early spring, so the producer must have been buying them elsewhere.

That Sweet, Sweet California Hooch Is On Its Way

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s functional repeal of the 21st Amendment, Governor Pataki signed into law a bill to allow out-of-state wineries to ship wine directly to New York consumers (hereafter referred to as “connoisseurs and sippers”):

Gov. Pataki signed a new law yesterday that relaxes restrictions on wine shipments, prompting New York’s connoisseurs and sippers to raise their glasses in approval.

Since Prohibition, the state had barred wine shipments from out of state to private citizens in New York. That ban is toast as of Aug. 12, when a new law goes into effect that allows New Yorkers to receive up to 36 cases of wine – or 432 bottles – per year from wineries in or outside New York.

Busted Like An Underage Keg Party

Whole Foods got busted by the state for its landlocked wine store in the basement of the Time Warner Center. The Times explains:

Whole Foods Market has closed the wine shop in its store in the lower level of the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle after pleading no contest to charges from state liquor officials that it was illegally operating it in a grocery store.

Citing state law that requires wine and liquor stores to have a separate entrance at street level and prohibits them from selling food, the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control fined Whole Foods $5,000 on April 7 and gave it 30 days to sell off its stock. Whole Foods closed the shop on May 9 and surrendered its liquor license to the agency.

Keep in mind that other more sensible states allow grocery stores not only to sell wine but hard liquor as well! And don’t forget that New York State didn’t even have Sunday sales until last September.

Whole Foods plans to use their liquor license to open up a store (with a separate entrance) on Houston Street. Local merchants are unhappy:

David Lannon, Whole Foods’s Northeast regional president, said the company expected to transfer and use the surrendered license again for a wine shop occupying 4,000 to 5,000 square feet of space in the blocklong supermarket it planned to open on East Houston Street next year. State law also prohibits holders of retail liquor licenses from owning more than one store. The East Houston Street wine shop will be separate from the supermarket there, with an entrance on Chrystie Street.

Several owners of wine and liquor shops near the planned Whole Foods have asked Community Board 3 to oppose the shop before the alcohol agency. Alan Jay Gerson, the neighborhood’s City Council member, said he also opposed the shop.

But hey, I’m all for competition — just not this kind of competition:

Anthony White, an owner of Discovery Wines at 10 Avenue A, said Whole Foods’s buying power gave it an unfair advantage. “Competition is fine, but we’re not happy about the way they can underprice us,” Mr. White said. “We’re buying cases and they’re buying pallets.”

Functional Repeal of the 21st Amendment!

The Supreme Court has struck down state laws in Michigan and New York restricting direct sales to consumers from out-of-state wineries. The issue apparently came down to upholding the Constitution (vis a vis the 21st Amendment) and an “evenhanded” use of laws restricting commerce (the so-called “Commerce Clause”). Five justices thought the commerce considerations were more important, making it a victory for consumers (bring on that sweet California Pinot!) perhaps at the expense of the Constitution (wine is still better than the Constitution!):

“States have broad power to regulate liquor,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “This power, however, does not allow states to ban, or severely limit, the direct shipment of out-of-state wine while simultaneously authorizing direct shipment by in-state producers.”

“If a state chooses to allow direct shipments of wine, it must do so on evenhanded terms,” he wrote.

Kennedy was joined in his opinion by Justices Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

At issue was the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition in 1933 and granted states authority to regulate alcohol sales. Nearly half the states subsequently passed laws requiring outside wineries to sell their products through licensed wholesalers within the state.

But the Constitution also prohibits states from passing laws that discriminate against out-of-state businesses. That led to a challenge to laws in Michigan and New York, which allow direct shipments for in-state wineries but not out-of-state ones.

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the ruling needlessly overturns long-established regulations aimed partly at protecting minors. State regulators under the 21st Amendment have clear authority to regulate alcohol as the see fit, he wrote.

“The court does this nation no service by ignoring the textual commands of the Constitution and acts of Congress,” Thomas wrote.

He was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and John Paul Stevens.

Opinions here.

A Huge Victory for Consumer Rights

Perhaps caving to extreme pressure from both the New York City Council and the Connecticut State Legislature — two institutions on the forefront of the crusade to protect the little guy — Loew’s movie theaters have announced they will start advertising the time a movie will actually begin, allowing movie watchers to skip the commercials before the movie:

Coming soon to a movie ad near you – if not to a space-squeezed marquee – the time that the movie starts. The time that the movie really starts, not the time that the trailers and the commercials start. Or words to that effect.

Loews Cineplex Entertainment says that next month it will begin publicizing true starting times, sort of.

John McCauley, the company’s senior vice president for marketing, said the times in the company’s newspaper and Web listings would still be the times when the trailers and commercials start. But the ads will also carry a note advising that, as Mr. McCauley put it yesterday, “the feature presentation starts 10 to 15 minutes after the posted show time.”

In retrospect, I’m surprised Elliot Spitzer didn’t also avail himself of this tempting low-hanging fruit! And now on to bigger and better things about which the City Council can warn consumers — Neil LaBute, for example . . .