Three Fun Things for March 31, 2024
The nation's best spice shop, gardens for everyone, and jaywalking as a political act.
An NYC thing, but one you can access from anywhere
I spent a couple of weeks on the East Coast recently, including a week in New York, and as usual, I prioritized a trip to Kalustyan’s—a place packed absolutely to the rafters with every spice, tea, grain, pulse, and baking ingredient on the planet, plus a killer selection of bulk nuts, dried fruit, and Turkish delight. My haul this time included three types of chai, two kinds of peppercorn, smoked basmati rice, and a bag of white Cheddar cheese powder (for popcorn!). There’s no replicating the experience of squeezing past other shoppers, basket in hand, through its narrow aisles, but Kaluystyan’s does have a website, with nearly 7,500 items on offer. I like to head straight for the recherché stuff (the food additives aisle, where you can ponder the possible uses for gum arabic, trisol powder, and carnuba wax flakes, but there’s also a vast assortment of ordinary kitchen spices, 100 kinds of dried fruit, and more than 100 types of salt.
Seattle’s P-Patch program
The planting season may be well underway (I’m running late this year, having just dug in last year’s cover crop this weekend), but this is actually the best time of year to sign up for a new plot, according to the city’s P-Patch program website. If you’re not familiar with the P-Patch program, it’s a citywide network of community-managed gardens available to Seattle residents for a low annual fee, plus at least 8 volunteer hours a year. You just put your name on a list, identify three gardens you’d like to join, and wait for a plot to open up. I’ve been a P-Patch program participant since 2008, and it really is an unbelievable deal—in addition to your own little plot of land (invaluable to renters and gardeners without a lot of open space), you get to know your neighbors, gain access to free gardening programs, and learn new skills while volunteering—like how to divide dahlia bulbs or fix a leaky garden hose. Sign up for your own P-Patch here.
Jaywalking as a political act
While I was walking around New York, a place where people basically dare cars to hit them, I kept thinking about former state legislator Reuven Carlyle’s recent lament about how people in Seattle never used to jaywalk. In his day, Carlyle said, Seattle had a “gentle culture,” one where people were willing to spend a little time standing in quiet contemplation rather than rushing across the street . I responded that I love to jaywalk, and laid out some of the reasons I believe the simple act of crossing the street shouldn’t be a criminal act.
For one thing—as supporters of legislation that would have decriminalized jaywalking this year emphasized—police enforce anti-jaywalking laws disproportionately against unsheltered and people of color, Black pedestrians in particular, and often use jaywalking stops as a pretext to run warrant checks. A related issue is that jaywalking stops are more common in neglected areas cities have handed over to cars—places like Rainier Ave. S. in Southeast Seattle, which for much of its length functions as a controlled-access highway with few concessions to people who travel by bus, bike, wheelchair, or foot. The city creates the problem, then penalizes people for solving it.
As someone who used to ride the Route 7 bus almost daily—schlepping to places like Lowe’s and Safeway without a car—I was radicalized by the experience of trying to cross Rainier Ave. S on foot. Seattle’s twee attachment to standing around at stoplights is a relic of the last century, held dear by the same people who bought their houses for $20,000 in the ‘60s and ‘70s and think younger people who still rent are just mismanaging our money. Renting may be a necessity for most of us, but jaywalking is—or can be—a political act: A tacit protest against Seattle’s car-centric transportation system, and a statement that it’s time for Seattle to grow up, stop penalizing pedestrians, and focus on making our streets safer.