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It's been a while since we had a good, old-fashioned, Brooklyn-hippie-yuppie mocking of Park Slope Food Coop story—it was last spring, in fact, right around this time, that we were all abuzz about the vote about whether or not there would be a vote about boycotting products from Israel. It was decided there would be no vote, and then Adrian Grenier got our attention for a bit, and now, suddenly, it's a year later, and our Coop carts feel a little bit empty. Fortunately, the dearth of Coop-talk has been remedied by the New York Daily News with the article, "Park Slope Food Coop and the Holy Kale." This article is primarily interesting because it's ridiculous, taking all the Park Slope Food Coop tropes we've ever known and loved and making them larger than life. Because who among the Daily News readership and beyond does not want to mock these kooky Brooklyn hippies? (Don't read the comments.)
We can take our easy chuckles from this article, but I sense there may be something deeper afoot. Might this piece be an indicator—even to me, a frequent writer about the Park Slope Food Coop—that Park Slope Food Coop mockery is on the tip of jumping the shark? Or that, perhaps, it's gone way over the shark and is now deeply embedded in a net of fresh-caught sustainable seafood?