Erik Moe: Critic at Large

WORD: Downtown. You may have noticed the inexplicable appearance of the word downtown on this website in recent weeks. It might be best to explain its use to the uninitiated. Downtown has recently become the synonym of choice for cool as hell. Please use it regularly. Its current revival is owed to a group of art students at Tyler (as is so often the case with contemporary trends). The earliest citation in this incarnation seems to have been an effort at distinguishing Downtown Debby from other Debbys (presumably those who do not reside in or near Center City, Philadelphia). This pattern was then extended to include yours truly. How downtown was then extended to mean cool as hell follows logically: Downtown Debby is cool as hell (Downtown Erik is too modest to consider whether his own downtown status was the cause of this shift in meaning). Lest there be any confusion, this has nothing to do with Julie Brown , who is clearly not downtown at all.

I discovered the random name generator while trying to figure out a way to find truly random names for THE POSTART PROJECT’s mailing list. The generator uses census data to return names of a specified obscurity. “Spring Galofaro,” “Mose Freligh” and “Elease Fesus” are some of the favorites that came up just now. Setting the obscurity level to 99 revealed that a surprising number of people either lie on census forms or go by single names such as “Brdar” and “Partinope.”

There has been an underground punctuation mark fighting for acceptance since 1962. You may not know about it, but it has made some inroads. It is almost certainly available on your computer, and someday you will be able to use the interrobang without going deep into one of your “wingding” fonts. From the interrobang website: “In an April, 1962 editorial, The Wall Street Journal deemed this punctuation exactly right for ‘Who forgot to put gas in the car?’ where the question mark alone just isn’t adequate.’”

Forgive me if I haven’t pointed you in the direction of the high-bandwidth flash/shockwave web-zine CBC Radio 3 until now. Every week or so they publish a new edition with an all-new soundtrack of lesser-known Canadian bands playing over some impressive documentary photography, art, interviews, etc. The latest edition (2.6) features selected books from the Philly-based airstream trailer Projet Mobilivre – Bookmobile Project that nicely simulates the experience of browsing inside the real trailer’s traveling collection of book art.

The first trophy for headline writing ever granted by this website was awarded to the Metro today for Friday’s brilliant and daring “FBI Plucks Street’s Blackberry.” The headline wins on so many levels. First of all, it assumes that the public knows what a BlackBerry is — not a safe assumption by any means — the foreignness of the word is the key to its brilliance. It is such a surreal, alliterative, and juicy word that readers will pick up the paper just to find out what it is and why Street’s was plucked. “Plucked” itself is a fun word — it rhymes imperfectly with Black, and paints a picture of FBI agents frolicking in the woods picking berries from the bushes alongside the path to grandmother’s house. “Plucks Street’s” is an awkward combo that you can’t say 10 times fast. “Street’s Black” subtly alludes to the underlying racial divisiveness of the mayoral election campaign.

The Knight Rider papers struck out with the bland “Street Computer Seized: Mayor’s e-mail device is in FBI Hands” (Inquirer), and the slightly more interesting “Feeding the Feds: Street Administration Coughs Up More Documents in FBI Probe” (Daily News). I like the word “Seized,” but “Computer” is misleading — it makes you think of a bulky desktop machine. “Feeding the Feds” does allude to the fruit, but “Coughs Up” is just plain gross.

Follow-up note (posted 10/12/03): The Daily News did come through with the headline “Blackberry Jam” over a picture of the email device on its reverse cover. “Jam” is a nice addition to the language of the competition because it’s sticky, but it is far from the poetry of the Metro’s “Plucks” headline.

WORD: Nemesis . I’m no William Safire, but I am today wondering when the word nemesis started appearing in every single sporting article, as in “Minnesota defeated its nemesis, the New York Yankees yesterday, 3-1.” And also, when did the New York Times become so removed from New York that it decides to describe the New York Yankees as another team’s nemesis (a term that can mean “unbeatable rival”, but seems to me to have a negative connotation). The term is the name of the Greek goddess of retributive justice and vengeance, according to my Dictionary. An American journalist during the cold war wouldn’t write of the Soviet Union negotiating with its nemesis, the United States. The usage makes the home town team seem like the bad guys. Of course, I know that the New York Yankees are the bad guys, but I wouldn’t expect the Times to be so enlightened.

As I listened to NPR this morning, this quote jumped out at me:

“I don’t care if Jesus is a member of your church, the city council zoning board will not pass a project that does not have the proper amount of parking.”

Just ponder that scenario for a minute… The story was about resistance to the construction of a mega-church in Chicago. The quote from a church leader was a response to criticism that prominent politicians who were members of the congregation would be able to influence the project. But, I couldn’t help wondering how a theoretical conversation between Jesus and a councilman on the occasion of attempting to influence the city council vote on the construction of a new church might go. Admittedly, I might have gotten it wrong.

A Theoretical Conversation Between Jesus and a Councilman
On the Occasion of Attempting To Influence The City Council Vote on the Construction of a New Church.

BY ERIK MOE

JESUS: Excuse me councilman, could I speak with you for a minute about the Salem Baptist project.

COUNCILMAN: Ah! Jesus! Hello! Yes I would be glad to hear what you have to say, my skinny, long-haired, bearded friend who is almost certainly of African decent. But, you should know right now that my constituents are not happy with the ratio of users to parking in that proposal.

JESUS: That’s what I wanted to talk about, my pudgy, balding friend with greasy french-fry stains from Wendy’s on his pants. You see our congregation should be exempt from that ordinance because our members are leaders in the movement that has been asking, “What would I drive?” — except using my actual name instead of saying “I,” of course. Since I’m a member of their church, the research wasn’t hard. They followed me to the El station after the potluck last week.

COUNCILMAN: What about that little Honda hatchback I saw you driving the other day?

JESUS: Oh! Well, yeah — I had to pick up some water and loaves at Safeway — Paul lets me use his car now and then for that kind of thing — its hell to carry groceries on the train.

COUNCILMAN: Paul Olson? Mickie’s kid? Is he old enough to drive now?

JESUS: He’s been driving for awhile now, yeah. He’s selling phones for Verizon down at that shop on Fairview. How do you know the Olsons?

COUNCILMAN: Huh? Oh Jeez — it’s funny — Mick and I go way back. We used to skip out of our afternoon accounting class at Providence and head over to Ecklesby Field to bet on the polo matches.

JESUS: No kidding? I’ll have to talk to him about that next time I’m over there — but yeah, Paul and I hang out all the time. Hey listen — about this church?

COUNCILMAN: Yeah… I’ll see what I can do for ya’ kid, but I’ve got a thousand soccer moms breathing down my neck about this parking issue — worried about traffic on their streets on Sunday mornings. You know, when I was a kid my folks would send us out to make money off that kind of thing — we’d let church-goers park their S.U.V.s right on the lawn for a nickel — and a nickel was a lot of money in those days — now folks get upset about strangers parking within eyeshot of the living room window. I tell ya! Listen, I’ve got to get to this meeting, but it was great to see ya kid — keep outta trouble, OK?

The collective unconscious definition of Philadelphia is revealed through the magic of an unintentional poetry engine. Will this posting skew googlism ’s definition further? Let me just for the sake of experimentation declare the following: Philadelphia is home of the world’s largest aerially-suspended gondola transit network.

Googlism for: philadelphia

August 28, 2003

philadelphia is vital to

philadelphia is the only organisation offering birding

philadelphia is nothing new

philadelphia is

philadelphia is calling you

philadelphia is more fun when you stay up late

philadelphia is a winter

philadelphia is nuclear free

philadelphia is still hotbed of commerce during downturn

philadelphia is proud to announce the finalists to

philadelphia is fortunate to have own dna lab

philadelphia is both a

philadelphia is the place to be july 4th

philadelphia is the only public institution

philadelphia is content with wr

philadelphia is vital to growth

philadelphia is a city struggling to attain mediocrity

philadelphia is located in the strandja national reserve

philadelphia is a great place to raise a family

philadelphia is nothing new © august 2000

philadelphia is officially in for 2003 and beyond by john f

philadelphia is a winter “mummerland” this holiday season ? another great reason to sleep over in philly weekly mummers parades

philadelphia is proud to announce the finalists to be screened at this years festival

philadelphia is getting another skyscraper

philadelphia is fortunate to have own dna lab by william kenny times staff writer when the philadelphia police department reopened

philadelphia is approximately 1

philadelphia is one of the world’s most dynamic destinations

philadelphia is easy to get to and a convenient gateway to a true usa experience

philadelphia is coming awake

philadelphia is the fattest city in the us by whitty

philadelphia is basically laid out like every other magazi

philadelphia is a unique location that combines the

philadelphia is of an exciting

philadelphia is one big campus

philadelphia is kid

philadelphia is both a political party and an activist organization

philadelphia is no exception

philadelphia is a high

philadelphia is the place to be july 4th here goes

philadelphia is an unmanned generating station capable of local manual

philadelphia is considered one of the world’s most exciting destinations

philadelphia is a city where history is made

philadelphia is like a small village

philadelphia is the third best place to live in the country

philadelphia is a major urban center rich in history and culture

philadelphia is a city of small

philadelphia is a beautiful colonial city situated on the schuylkill and delaware rivers

philadelphia is not as well known as that of its neighbor to the north

philadelphia is rife with both fashion devotees

philadelphia is a well

philadelphia is project

philadelphia is located between the schuylkill river and cobbs creek

philadelphia is a vital

philadelphia is a public/private partnership dedicated to increasing the region’s entrepreneurial capacity and positioning

philadelphia is an excellent place to staff

philadelphia is proud to display the cornwall and isles of scilly health authority gold smoke free charter award

philadelphia is the second largest chapter in the facc network

philadelphia is an important part of the temple university experience

philadelphia is mad for modernism march 1

philadelphia is the new dallas

philadelphia is situated on a relatively level site and islaid out in a regular grid pattern

philadelphia is getting ‘smaller’

philadelphia is served by amtrak’s northeast corridor route which runs between richmond

philadelphia is the only public institution of higher education in the city of philadelphia

philadelphia is a diverse city

philadelphia is very proud of its newest performing arts venue

philadelphia is comprised of hundreds of unique neighborhoods

philadelphia is b qqlbh

philadelphia is the birthplace of american independence and home of the liberty bell

philadelphia is a regional affiliate of the inner

philadelphia is city hall and its statue of william penn

philadelphia is served by amtrak which operates rail service along the northeast corridor stretching from boston to washington

philadelphia is the united states? largest and second most active railway station

philadelphia is a walker’s town

philadelphia is undertaking this pilot project

philadelphia is one of america’s most historical cities

philadelphia is the largest city in pennsylvania and

philadelphia is a must

philadelphia is a good return to form

philadelphia is a good place to shop for trendy clothes and goods

philadelphia is not only a national hub for medical and health facilities

philadelphia is smart about growth

philadelphia is the nations fifth largest city

philadelphia is america’s first real city and the nation’s first capital

philadelphia is served by amtrak which operates rail service along the northeast corridor

philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the united states behind new york

philadelphia is always a favorite destination for travelers with a full agenda for any group and every

philadelphia is a dynamic business group that meets for one purpose

philadelphia is located on the mezzanine level of the widener building

philadelphia is usually very good

philadelphia is an immense city

philadelphia is comfortable hosting conventions—from labor unions to medical groups

philadelphia is a very old city

philadelphia is a thriving downtown with award

philadelphia is the rarest of the rare when it comes to hollywood mainstream movies ? a movie that has a message

philadelphia is the oldest amateur athletic governing body in the united states

philadelphia is part of the out in america

philadelphia is one of america’s great centers of patriotism and history

philadelphia is playing host to the national baptist convention usa’s annual session

philadelphia is the ultimate american city

The trouble with artists (nytimes clipping).

Nickel and Dimed at Cosi – It feels so good to write about corporations doing bad things. Especially ones that you used to work for. Here is a little paper I wrote for my labor class with thoughts on Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed as it relates to my illustrious tenure at Cosi a/k/a Xando (the bizarre neo-greasy-spoon gourmet fast-food coffeeshop/bars for squagel-eaters).

Nickel and Dimed:
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Experiment and My Life At Cosi.

BY ERIK MOE

In the debate over welfare programs that provide benefits to the poor, opponents often argue that the poor are lazy and unwilling to work hard. The Horatio Alger myth, that hard work will be rewarded, continues to color the debate over poverty. In the wake of welfare-to-work laws enacted during the Bush I and Clinton administrations Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich sought to better understand the issues facing the growing ranks of the working poor. Shunning the comfortable lifestyle she knew as a writer, she placed herself in the position of a divorced, middle-aged woman without significant job skills and inserted herself into the economies of three states: Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. Following (for the most part) a strict set of rules that required her to live only on what she earned, she gained an inside perspective on the conditions that keep the working poor working very hard just to meet their basic needs. Though some of the difficulties Ehrenreich faces are clearly caused by her experiment (most people in her assumed situation would move somewhere where they had friends or family to help them out instead of moving to a new town without a support network), the observations of her coworkers clearly indicate that there are a lot of people facing the same difficulties she did.

My own experience of the years 1996-2002 in Minneapolis and Philadelphia is not unlike the parallel lives Ehrenreich leads during 1998-2000 in Nickel and Dimed. My comparatively privileged background allowed me to pursue schooling part-time and pursue arts-related activities while paying my bills by working a variety of full and part-time jobs of the types Ehrenreich found. The most recent of these jobs, which ended in Summer, 2002 was at an upscale fast-food restaurant and coffeeshop chain called Cosi (formerly Xando). While reading Nickel and Dimed, I could not help but notice the parallels between the conditions Ehrenreich encountered and the situation at Cosi. These parallels began at the hiring process and continued through my stint with the company. Though they did not require a drug test, their hiring process was otherwise nearly identical to the process Ehrenreich encountered at Merry Maids in Maine and Wal-Mart in Minnesota. A slow transition from applicant to employee eliminated the possibility of a confrontational wage negotiation stage. Shortly after I was hired, Cosi began administering the sort of personality test Ehrenreich encountered; “Agree/disagree” questions such as “there is room in every corporation for a non-conformist (135)” seemed to be intended more to judge a worker’s ability to understand the expectations of a corporation than to judge personality. Nickel and Dimed called attention to several illegal practices that store managers at Cosi engaged in while I worked there: including pressuring workers to clock out before their work is completed, shifting hours from one pay period to the next to avoid paying overtime, deleting hours from the computer, and pressuring workers to accept non-monetary compensation (such as food) in order to keep the location’s labor costs low in the corporate books. Ehrenreich also highlights the “money taboo” that corporations cultivate. At Cosi, corporate training materials specifically stated that disclosing our hourly wage to other employees was grounds for immediate termination. According to Ehrenreich, “the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 makes it illegal to punish people for revealing their wages to one another, but the practice is likely to persist until rooted out by lawsuits, company by company (207).” At Cosi, workers accept these abuses and other injustices in part because they are not aware of their rights, but primarily because they are living paycheck to paycheck and they cannot afford the time it takes to search for a new job.

The housing issues Ehrenreich encountered were much bleaker than my experience. Most of my co-workers at Cosi and other low-wage jobs I’ve held have lived in shared apartments with private bedrooms, or have lived in one-bedroom apartments with significant others, or have lived with family – often they have shifted among all of these options in a year’s time. In each city she worked in, Ehrenreich and her coworkers had extreme difficulty with housing. In Florida, at least one of her fellow waitresses lived in a car. Many of the servers, cooks, and maids she met were forced to rent rooms at a weekly rate from motels because they did not have the security deposit and first month’s rent needed to rent an apartment – even in the rare instances when affordable housing was available (in Philadelphia it is legal and common for landlords to request a first and last month’s rent in addition to a third month’s rent as a security deposit at the time of a lease signing). The high cost of the motel makes it much more difficult to save money towards that security deposit. It was not uncommon for workers to improvise housing solutions together – a phenomenon I witnessed while working at Cosi. In Florida, when one waitress’ housing situation with a boyfriend became unworkable, she moved into a motel room shared by her coworkers. In Minnesota, Ehrenreich found a record-level shortage of affordable housing. The only housing she could find for a time was in a dilapidated urban motel with toilets that frequently overflowed. In each city she visited, upper class prosperity had driven the real estate market out of the reach of the poor.

The difficulties these workers face are perpetuated by the demands on their time and energy. In each city, Ehrenreich was forced to work long hours seven days a week at two jobs to make her budget work. This schedule left her with no time or energy to hunt for better-paying jobs or to seek job training. While working as a housecleaner and as a waitress, the physical demands on her body were so taxing that eating and sleeping were the only things she could squeeze in to her free time. Many of my coworkers at Cosi worked such schedules. Cooks and dishwashers there often worked at second restaurants or would work double shifts with days off only rarely. Some of these workers are supporting families; others are enduring these conditions to pay for the schooling that they barely have time to attend.

Health care is largely non-existent for these workers. In some instances, health insurance is touted as an employee benefit, but the workers generally must pay for the expensive and sub-standard “benefits” through a payroll deduction. Such is the case at Cosi, for workers who remain on the payroll for several months while continuing to work an average of at least 25 hours per week (the standard was 20 when I was first hired). Though their work is infinitely more likely to cause health problems than white-collar work, most of the workers Ehrenreich encountered were uninsured.

Nickel and Dimed is a provocative exploration of the issues facing the working poor. Her work provided an excellent lens for considering my own recent life with one foot in that realm. For those without a personal connection to the modern food, cleaning, and retail service economy, the stories of Ehrenreich’s coworkers help to humanize the statistics of economic and welfare policy debates.

Additional Notes:

I wrote this little essay to fulfill a small undergraduate assignment. It seemed wrong to let it age privately on my hard drive, when it could be searchable by Google. Don’t you agree?

There are a lot more things I could tell you about life behind the counter at Cosi if you are interested. For example, the company began forbidding tipping of counter staff like me after I had worked for them for about six months. This policy amounted to a 25% pay cut that was not compensated in any way by the company. After about two months of complaining I received a small raise that was not retroactive and certainly did not compensate for the 25% cut… Breaks were discouraged at Cosi… Minors sometimes served alcohol… I’m sure there was more…

This is one tiny story in the ocean of bad treatment of low-skill labor by corporations. I don’t have the time to do it, but I would love to see someone build a website that would collect labor stories from workers at various corporations and allow workers to evaluate and rate corporations. It would be beautiful if it worked as a parallel to sites like Yahoo Finance, giving workers (and investors) the ability to evaluate companies labor practices in the same way that investors can.