What you see is not what you get: Like tiny Ziplocs and Bondage-a-go-go

My trip to Nowhere

Multipurpose items

One thing can be many things. These things are often called “multipurpose.”

There was a multipurpose room in my elementary school, which operated as both the cafeteria and auditorium. At my child’s school now, they call that building the “cafetorium.”

There are things like multipurpose tools, which overtly contain many tools; Swiss Army knives are one example. So is the Instant Pot.

Smartphones are multipurpose. Dr. Bronner’s soap lists its multiple uses in its expansive meandering small print.

These items are overtly multipurpose; they were designed to be multipurpose.

Other items have become multipurpose over time and are now regarded as such, like vinegar, baking soda, coconut oil, mason jars, duct/duck tape, and IKEA’s Kallax shelf system.

Viagra, too, was originally used for cardiovascular issues and is now better known for treating erectile dysfunction. Metformin, used for treating Type 2 Diabetes, was used off-label for targeting insulin resistance in women with PCOS. Ozempic is known for treating Type 2 Diabetes and is even better known for inducing weight loss.

But then there are things that are covertly multipurpose. Advertised as single use. These are the things that are not what they seem. And the alternative purpose is sly, evading detection from those who don’t get it.

Who doesn’t get it?

Me.

Nowhere

Recently, I went to Erewhon.

I wanted to go to Erewhon because I had never been there before. I had to deal with some shit things in LA and I thought a trip to Erewhon might be whimsical and otherworldly enough to distract me from my main errand for which I would be in LA for precisely four hours.

I’d read about Erewhon, initially in The Cut’s overview of Erewhon’s origins in post-atomic-bomb Japanese immigrants, Michio and Aveline Kushi, who went looking for macrobiotic food in mid-century Boston and couldn’t find any (surprise). They started Erewhon in their basement. In 2011, the Antocis acquired Erewhon and pivoted its marketing towards the well-to-do set (read: $20 celebrity-influenced smoothies). More recently, private equity investors will likely expand Erewhon’s presence beyond Southern California.

For the record: there are no Erewhons in Northern California and certainly none anywhere near macrobiotic-food-loving Berkeley. The next expansion steps are likely Manhattan.

Okay, but I digress.

tl;dr Erewhon is a posh atrocity that no longer resembles the little food market run by Japanese American immigrants operating out of an apartment’s basement closet.

And I had to see this in person.

At the tail end of my four-hour sojourn to Los Angeles, my brother and I met up with a friend at an Erewhon.

I’d already told him Erewhon was an anagram of Nowhere. He knew about it. He lives within a mile of an Erewhon. But he’s a guy who loves fast food and takes advantage of Wendy’s free Frosty days, so no, he doesn’t go to Erewhon.

It feels big (it is not that big). The facades are blinding white. The store’s sign is a stark black customized font based on Barlow. And the name is an anagram of the word Nowhere; Erewhon is almost nowhere spelled backward. Why they didn’t go full bore and spell it Erehwon is beyond me.

When I got there, I tingled. It was beautiful. Mason jars! Organic food! Plenty of dairy-free food! Harry’s berries! I think the target customer is me!

But wait. Why was a smoothie drink $40? Why were dried chili lime mangos $36 per pound? (Um, they’re half that price at Berkeley Bowl). Why was an Erewhon-branded baseball cap $85? Why was the Erewhon-branded hoodie $165??? It was not gilded in gold. It was a simple sweatshirt with Erewhon printed in white.

I recoiled.

The longer I stayed in the store, the more I felt repelled. Who were the customers in this store? I tried to understand what this was. Who would pay for this? Why did this exist?

I went through the entire rage of human discovery. From curious observation to amusement to horror.

There’s no better way to describe my process than to present you with this video of my daughter from years ago when presented with a filter that removed her nose from the camera:

Transcript is as follows:

Toddler (in a curious voice): WHERE DID MY NOSE.

Toddler (in an amused voice): Where did my nose!

Toddler (in a horrified, haunted whisper): Where… did… my… nose.

The lost baby

I people-watched while eating the worst sandwich of my entire life in the Erewhon patio. The sandwich, comprised of a few turkey slices, a glob of cranberry sauce, red leaf lettuce, and a whisper of soy mayonnaise, was $18.

I split it with my brother, who both complained about the sandwich and thanked me for buying him the sandwich (an ambitious balance beam routine). He took the rest of his thoughts to social media.

While munching on the sandwich, my mouth getting drier by the minute, I watched customers walk in and out of the doors, trying to find a pattern. Most wore yoga outfits, but not all. Everyone was younger than me. No one had visible gray hair.

One woman sashayed to the doors with a baby in a stroller. She stood tall next to the stroller, sunglasses shading her eyes, her blonde hair cascading to her shoulders, skin glowing, using her phone, before entering. She may or may not have taken a selfie. She wore a denim shirt and white jeans printed with red cherries. I assumed she was the baby’s mother, even though she was smug in the way dads can be when they watch their own babies.

I continued eating my dry cranberry and turkey sandwich in the dry Southern California air, wondering if I should have bought a $20 smoothie after all, but mostly craving a Sprite in spite (which, for the record, I never crave). Watched others go in, either wearing loose denim jeans and crop tops or yoga bottoms and crop tops. So many crop tops.

Ten-ish minutes later, the lady with the cherry pants re-emerged empty-handed and free, turned to her right, and headed out onto the sidewalk.

“Where is her baby?” I asked. I’d already pointed her out to my lunch companions when she entered.

“Maybe,” offered my lunch companion, “It’s a custody exchange. Or maybe she’s an auntie giving the baby back at Erewhon.”

That made me feel better.

But where was the baby if she was the mother? It bothered me. Maybe a baby had been abandoned next to the $40 sea moss gel? Was this the Erewhon customer base? But here we were, $18 sandwiches, and there she was, leaving empty-handed.

In literal terms, we were Erewhon customers, and she was not.

Erewhon dissonance

The Erewhon dissonance stayed with me all the way home. The thoughts in my mind were not about my dead parents or my brother’s mental health, but about Erewhon and how nothing in there made sense.

What kind of grocery store was this? Why was half the food inedible? Why was it priced like that?

Erewhon is many things. But. It is not what I thought it was.

After listening to me trying to unpack Erewhon for twenty-four hours (“I don’t get it! Why is it like that? Why would people shop there? Where is the baby? Who buys that regularly? Why was the sandwich $18? Why was a grocery store hoodie $165? Also, where is the baby???”), my partner (whom I will call Mr. Paddington, even though he’s more Liberal Ron Swanson) leaned back and said, “Do you want to hear my opinion?”

Yes, please, I said. All I’d found online were memes making fun of Erewhon. Not any information on why it is the way it is. (Googling, “Why is Erewhon like that?” only brings up very serious Erewhon-stans justifying its vibe and prices in Erewhon’s own marketing-speak).

“It’s like your thing with the tiny ziplocs, Christine.”

“My thing with tiny ziplocs?”

My thing with the tiny ziplocs (and the Hitachi wand and also Bondage-a-Go-Go)

Here’s the thing with me and tiny ziplocs.

Once upon a time, Mr. Paddington and I walked into a hardware store. It was not our usual hardware store, and I forgot what we needed to pick up, but we were there, browsing the aisles of a smallish hardware store the size of a bodega.

I found a little box full of teeny tiny ziplocs. And next to it, a box of teeny tiny vials. OMG, SO CUTE! SO TINY! AMAZING!

I said as much out loud.

Mr. Paddington was somewhere else, looking for the doodad he wanted to find.

There were SO many teeny tiny ziplocs. And I loved them. But then I wondered why they would need to have so many? And the vials! For crafting!

“Wait!” I shouted. “What are these for!? Who would buy them? Why are there so many?”

Mr. Paddington peeked over from his aisle to mine, glancing at what I was holding up, which was a tiny ziploc, about one inch square.

“Drugs,” he said.

Huh, I thought. I didn’t quite get it. What kind of drugs?

“But these will fit like, maybe one liquid gel Advil! Or one multi-vitamin!” I shouted.

At this point, the hardware store employee had moved from the counter to the edge of my aisle to see who the batshit naive person was and looked like take in this interaction.

Mr. Paddington also walked closer to me. “Druuuuggggggs, Christine.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s so tiny, you can’t fit more than one multivitamin. And the vials, what would go in there?” I said it like one would say “duh.”

“Druggggggggs.” He repeated. And stood there, looking into my face. Waiting for my epiphany.

And then. I realized. It was for street drugs. Oh. And then I wondered why tiny ziplocs and tiny vials would be in a hardware store. Didn’t the drug dealers shop at a drug dealer supply—OMG. No. They would NOT shop at a drug dealer supply store, because those do not exist for reasons obvious to anyone else but me. OMG.

I did not say that part out loud. Instead, I was like:

“OH.”

“Oh!”

“Ohhhhhhhh.”

What is it about me that overlooks the obvious? Is it because I’m in denial? Is it because I have no exposure? Is it because I’m unable to see?

When I used to go to Bondage-a-Go-Go in the early 1990s with a group of friends regularly during the week (ah, the life of a college student), I thought it was just a dance club until I visited the BDSM gallery upstairs. Dear Reader, I did not venture upstairs until months into our weekly dance outings.

There were cages. And whips. And lots of leather. Masks. Ball gags.

“Why is there bondage at a dance club?” I asked my friend.

“Hey Christine. Did you know the club is called Bondage-a-Go-Go?”

“Yah,” I told him. “I just thought it was a random name?”

He looked at me in disbelief.

“Does it bother you?” he asked.

“Nope. I just didn’t realize.”