A Plastic Nightmare

You've got to love New York.  It's easy to see why Manhattan residents are so smug.  The city is a permanent fixture in our popular culture, whether you love it or not.  TV shows from I Love Lucy to Seinfeld to Sex in the City are pretty spot on when showcasing the town's marvels and madness.  Pity the fool who goes there and eats at Starbucks or a fast-food outlet.  There's so much to explore.  True, if you can't find it there, you can't find it anywhere:  from $5 hot chocolate (sipping chocolate, excuse me!) to rice pudding stores to Korean fried chicken outlets, eating in NY is a journey in itself.  Then there is the shopping:  the extravagant boutiques, the riches you can find in its second-hand shops, the chain stores that are 5 floors tall, and the book stores covering every topic imaginable.  Did you walk past your favorite designer?  Never mind, there's another one of his or her stores a few blocks down.

 

New York's street fairs, flea markets, and farmers markets are also amazing experiences.  One day at our hotel's lobby, we were smitten with a 1970s American Tourister suitcase that another guest had found in a Brooklyn Flea market.  The street fairs are decadent, full of food you should not eat, such as funnel cakes and deep fried Oreos.  I love the Union Square farmers' market, since our apples out west just do not compare to those of upstate New York.  So as we were wandering down a random street fair in or around Little Italy, I was thrilled to find some vendors selling vegetables . . .

 

Only, they were not vegetables.  They were refrigerator magnets of very shape and color imaginable.  If I had the entire Carmen Miranda doll collection, I suppose I could have made some cool hats.  But seeing that display just reminded me of how prevalent plastic is in our lives.  Actually, it was downright disturbing.

 

I won't get into the evils of plastic.  Do a search on Bing or Google for "plastic consumption statistics" or the "Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch" and you can find out for yourself.  There are plenty of lists telling you what to do and how you can save.  Here's what comes to mind for me:

 

Those are just a few to come to mind.  I don't even want to think about the amount of plastic New York City's 8 million residents rummage through every year . . .