The closest supermarket to my apartment is a Whole Foods. I do not shop there.

There is a Food Emporium many blocks farther away. I shop there.

The Whole Foods is easy to hit on the way home from the subway. I do not shop there.

The Food Emporium sits a couple of blocks in the opposite direction of my apartment from the subway. I shop there.

The Whole Foods lets you bring your food home in easy-folding paper bags. Two bags is ideal, but it looks entirely feasible to carry four. Either way the transportation is simple, elegant, businesslike. The bags could be briefcases. I do not shop there.

The Food Emporium gives you plastic bags that, with enough weight, test and stretch the handles that very nearly cut into your fingers, even beyond cutting off your circulation. I shop there.

One time – one time – I went into Whole Foods looking for some chicken. I found only thirteen-dollar-a-pound organic, spoon-fed, what must have been superchicken. I did not buy it. I left there and haven’t returned, and that’s pretty much all I know about that Whole Foods.

But what sticks in my craw are some of the actions of the people who shop at that Whole Foods. As I was walking up the block to the Food Emporium, I spotted a guy, late 30s-early 40s, carrying a pair of Whole Foods bags, happy as hell to be who he was. His bag was leaking but that’s beside the point: The Whole Foods was a long walk in the other direction, and here he’s passing a Food Emporium that I took not to have had the extraterrestrial, uberhealthy selection of food that will make this man live forever that the Whole Foods had.

Good enough for me, but not good enough for him. Just because he feels superior, doesn’t make me inferior by default.

But I know where I live. Crazy is normal here.

It seems so odd, though. It genuinely feels like there’s a stigma shopping where I shop, in this normal supermarket, narrow because of the city but that otherwise wouldn’t be out of place in any suburb. Some online reviewers demonize it for poor customer service. I buy what I need and sometimes don’t exchange three words with the cashier. I don’t see what the problem is. Other reviewers ridicule the selection in the bakery. Of a supermarket. In New York City, land of everything including a thousand bakeries. I don’t see what the problem is.

Am I so unevolved? Is this bitterness actually just fear? It’s insecurity, and it’s more than that.

If you’re vegan, I get it. Maybe Whole Foods – only from what I’ve heard – has a broader selection of vegetables and other stuff that doesn’t take as good as meat. If you’re rich, I get it. Maybe Whole Foods – only from what I’ve heard – matters more in its location and panache than in saving money on food whose healthfulness is, I’m betting, not your largest concern.

Whole Foods has its place. Not everything is overpriced. I suppose I should accept the difference in mindset, that my curiosity doesn’t extend as far into food as does that of others. But the judgments are palpable. I say that the quest for status has gone too far when good enough isn’t good enough, when the cleanliness of a supermarket and the freshness of its food and the comparative modesty of its prices isn’t the be-all, end-all.

And don’t even get me started on Fairway. Fucking clusterfuck. Can’t even find regular cheese in there. Fuck.