Ahead of Hurricane Sandy’s landfall on the East Coast Sunday, New York residents and businesses made preparations, stocked up on supplies, and stopped to grab a pint along the way. Marketplace Reporter Sally Herships walked the streets of Brooklyn Sunday and captured some of the more interesting “signs of the storm.” The follow is her dispatch report:
Last night grocery shopping at Fairway, in Brooklyn’s Red Hook, was a non-event. Carts were filled and wheeled smoothly down not-terribly-crowded-for-Brooklyn aisles. Food was purchased. Produce: apples, pears, cucumbers, were ample and shiny and piled high. There were roasted chickens, the largest variety of gourmet olive oils I’ve ever seen and one worker appeared to be building a pyramid of yams. All was as it should be on the Brooklyn grocery shopping scene. One man walked by me pushing a case of Evian in his cart. That was the closest I came to experiencing hurricane prep.
But, today was another story. “Everything.” That’s what the woman behind the counter at one of the multiple delis in my Brooklyn neighborhood told me people were buying today — and they were waiting in long lines to do so. When I took a walk this afternoon I passed up shopping at one Korean deli, Bodega and specialty organic market after another, every time because of long lines. In Brooklyn, there’s always another deli, so you just keep moving. At almost every store I visited, shelves that had previously held bread were empty.
Workers were unloading cases of water. The wine, store, in particular, was bustling. There, the man behind the counter told me it was “Christmastime busy” because during a hurricane New Yorkers prioritize wine over water.
Today, RedHook has been evacuated. I hope the pyramids of yams are ok.
It’s true: 24 hour delis are neighborhood heroes in Brooklyn. But will they stay open during Sandy?
Follow Marketplace’s expanding coverage of Hurricane Sandy here.
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