Blackmarket bread.

Today I had my first foray into the black-market bread industry here in Greenpoint Brooklyn. After a good hour of sitting and drinking coffee at an outdoor café I decided I needed a change of scenery. The food at my gentrified (albeit lovely) café was just not as appealing as the sweet aroma coming from the neighboring Polish bakery.
I picked up my things and headed over. Nestled amongst low industrial rooftops is a very large and very well-established bakery. With an output that provides baked goods to many restaurants in the area one wouldn’t expect any kind of suspicious behavior. Then again, the suspicious behavior was rather comforting; it was a reassurance that the world wasn’t so clean and well behaved as surrounding condos and baby clothing boutiques would have you believe.
I walked in sensing I was possibly the only non-Pole in the building. Not so! I saw a table of Indian businessmen eating sandwiches and drinking coffee. “Ok, I thought, this place is branching out, they know how to do business, how to adapt.” I got on line and eventually ordered some grainy loaf and half a dozen shiny looking sweet rolls. This was decidedly something I had to share with my roommates. I had a good sized bag of bread and it only came to $1.80 and I thought about what a good deal it was. (Another testimony to not shopping at supermarkets but going directly to the source.) I did have to point at the loaves and create some makeshift phrases to express what I wanted, the thrill of it all carried me back to life abroad and I felt uplifted.
I had nearly worked up the confidence to say goodbye in Polski when one of the Indian men, so quietly sitting in the corner jumped up and ran towards me. He made eye contact which caused me to slow down, I could see he had a message for me. Then without warning he sprayed me with a very large bottle of Dolce & Gabanna and opened for me his entire case of perfumes. In the doorway of the bakery, on my way home to make lunch I was assaulted with what looked like the makeup counter at Bloomingdale’s. Good thing my bread was wrapped in two layers of plastic bags. He had doused me in my confusion. “You buy?” “No thank you” was all I could utter.
I am grateful for the black market perfume industry, as well as for the handbags and shoes and scarves. It helps me remember Florence a little more clearly, and feel less far away from those mercantile piazzas and bridges and back alleyways and churches, etc.