The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket

by Benjamin Lorr

the needs of a tropical papaya are radically different from a Bartlett pear, but ultimately our nation’s storage facilities can build for that, creating an eerie array of these chemo-cryogenic chambers, all evoking some madman’s humidor, little pods keeping each type of immature produce in dreamless stasis until the market leans over and kisses it awake.

“It’s obvious now, but these are men that aren’t comfortable with their emotions,” he explains. “And that means they can’t read emotions. Which means they don’t know when they are validated by other men.” Back around a table on Melrose, his team realized one of the few things that did validate these men was danger. Or rather, the image of danger that was a Harley. And so Kevin and his team began to pour themselves into rituals of man making, looking everywhere from the martial arts to precontact Amazonia, trying to connect their findings to the rituals in the Harley community. “Once we knew what we were looking for, we found man-making rituals everywhere. But new riders were terrified of them,” Kevin says. “We discovered that if we could make those rituals a little easier, we could build the community these guys wanted so badly.” From here, the team got tangible, and prototyped a series of “Harley bars,” carefully constructed to take a slight edge off the unspoken initiation rituals while still allowing the men to confront symbols of danger. Places where a wannabe rider could come, drink a beer, and for a moment, experience what it might feel like to belong.