New York
She Goes to Trader Joe’s for the Art
Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at the art shoppers can find when they go to a Trader Joe’s in Manhattan.
Julie Averbach led the way into what she said was an art gallery.
It didn’t look like one. There were no velvet ropes in front of the most valuable pieces, and no little labels on the wall saying who had created the art.
But this was not really an art gallery. It was a supermarket, the Trader Joe’s at 2073 Broadway, near West 72nd Street, a place to experience “the joy of finding beauty where we least expect it,” Averbach said. Above the refrigerated display cases and the fruit and vegetable bins. In the aisles. On the packages that sit on the shelves.
“When we typically go to a grocery store, we tend to look straight at the shelves, put the products in our carts, buy them and go home,” she said. “I’ve come to look up, look down and go into a mode of art appreciation first and buying second. The store and the products themselves are art.” At Trader Joe’s, she said, “even a simple banana display becomes a 360-degree art installation” topped by King Kong, suspended from the ceiling.
She moved on to a mural scene above the avocados. It showed four figures dancing on the Lincoln Center steps, with the Metropolitan Opera House in the background: a package of Joe-Joe’s chocolate-and-vanilla-cream sandwich cookies, a bottle of pink lemonade, a shaker of “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning and a can of corn.
“The corn can is a recurring symbol through a lot of Trader Joe’s artwork,” she said. It turned up in a narrow painting of the Statue of Liberty a few steps away. Lady Liberty is holding a can of corn “as her torch of enlightenment,” Averbach said. In the other hand is a box of Joe’s O’s cereal. The actual statue holds a tablet inscribed with the date July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals.
Averbach is a Trader Joe’s fan with an art historian’s eye. She became so fascinated by what she saw in Trader Joe’s locations that she wrote the book “The Art of Trader Joe’s: Discovering the Hidden Art Gems of America’s Favorite Grocery Store” after devoting her thesis at Yale to Trader Joe’s as a contemporary cabinet of curiosities. She did her research on her own, based mostly on “what I could see in the stores as a regular shopper” who has visited more than 170 locations. She received no official help from the chain and put the word “unauthorized” on the cover of the book to emphasize her independence. An email to Trader Joe’s seeking comment went unanswered on Friday.
Looking for what had inspired the images in packaging like the label for the store’s Caesar salad, she spent “countless hours” eyeing Victorian ephemera and paging through 19th-century magazines. (It’s not Julius Caesar on the salad’s container; it’s Augustus, Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son.)
And the image on the can of Trader Joe’s French roast coffee? Averbach traced it to a 1913 book, “The Spirit of Paris.”
Averbach said that Trader Joe’s is unusual among supermarket chains: Each store has in-house artists who create handmade signs, she said, so no two Trader Joe’s stores look alike. And as Averbach discovered, the artists do more than make signs.
In a Trader Joe’s in Manchester, Conn., she found a chalk drawing of a figure that looked like the famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. But this one had a Trader Joe’s employee name tag with “Mona L.” written on it.
In other stores, Averbach found adaptations of Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker,” Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” and Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”
In a Trader Joe’s in Chicago, she found a representation of the late-night diner in Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” with a Trader Joe’s sign above the window. Hopper said the restaurant in his painting was inspired by one in Greenwich Avenue in Manhattan, but the Trader Joe’s image paid tribute to the painting’s longtime home, the Art Institute of Chicago.
Averbach talked about neighborhood references as she walked through the Trader Joe’s on Broadway. That store is “hands down the busiest Trader Joe’s in the world,” the company said in 2021. Of the Trader Joe’s locations in New York, it is her favorite aesthetically. But she also mentioned the store at 436 East 14th Street, where the illustrator Peter Arkle created more than 150 images called “East Village Drawings.” They are keyed to a map in the store showing “where you can find all the real things that inspired the drawings,” according to Arkle’s website.
In the Broadway store, even the elevators doors are art, painted to show dinosaurs shopping, a nod to the nearby American Museum of Natural History. The artists have also made something of places that are off limits to shoppers, as Averbach realized after seeing the exhibition “Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple of years ago.
“They could have simply written ‘staff only’ on the door,” Averbach said. “They instead used the door as a canvas for a trompe l’oeil painting,” with a green T-shirt on a coat hanger. “Who does that? It’s amazing.”
Weather
Expect a partly sunny sky, with the temperature reaching a high of 62. At night temperatures will drop to the low 40s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Friday (Purim).
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Dear Diary:
Back home from Boston for the holidays, Dean and Dylan and I watched “Anora” at the Angelika because we were the last ones still on winter break.
We walked uptown afterward, laughing about the movie and about the guy next to us who had laughed though the whole movie.
I was going to turn off at 23rd Street to go to the PATH station. Dylan and Dean were going to keep walking to 33rd Street to catch the Q train.
We walked a few blocks backpedaling as the cold wind blew hard at our faces.
“I’ll see you guys again for spring break,” I said as I got ready to turn.
“I think I’ll be on a spring break trip with some school friends,” Dylan said.
“All right,” I said. “Well, some time else then. Love you bro, see ya.”
Every week since 1976, Metropolitan Diary has published stories by, and for, New Yorkers of all ages and eras (no matter where they live now): anecdotes and memories, quirky encounters and overheard snippets that reveal the city’s spirit and heart.
For the past four years, we’ve asked for your help picking the best Diary entry of the year. Now we’re asking again.
We’ve narrowed the field to the five finalists here. Read them and vote for your favorite. The author of the item that gets the most votes will receive a print of the illustration that accompanied it, signed by the artist, Agnes Lee.
The voting closes at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 21. You can change your vote as many times as you’d like until then, but you may only pick one. Choose wisely.
Click “VOTE” to choose your favorite Metropolitan Diary entry of 2025, and come back on Sunday, Dec. 28, to see which one our readers picked as their favorite.
Click “VOTE” to choose your favorite Metropolitan Diary entry of 2025, and come back on Sunday, Dec. 28, to see which one our readers picked as their favorite.
Two Stops
Dear Diary:
It was a drizzly June night in 2001. I was a young magazine editor and had just enjoyed what I thought was a very blissful second date — dinner, drinks, fabulous conversation — with our technology consultant at a restaurant in Manhattan.
I lived in Williamsburg at the time, and my date lived near Murray Hill, so we grabbed a cab and headed south on Second Avenue.
“Just let me out here,” my date said to the cabby at the corner of 25th Street.
We said our goodbyes, quick and shy, knowing that we would see each other at work the next day. I was giddy and probably grinning with happiness and hope.
“Oh boy,” the cabby said, shaking his head as we drove toward Brooklyn. “Very bad.”
“What do you mean?” I asked in horror.
“He doesn’t want you to know exactly where he lives,” the cabby said. “Not a good sign.”
I spent the rest of the cab ride in shock, revisiting every moment of the date.
Happily, it turned out that my instinct about it being a great date was right, and the cabby was wrong. Twenty-four years later, my date that night is my husband, and I know that if your stop is first, it’s polite to get out so the cab can continue in a straight line to the next stop.
Ferry Farewell
Dear Diary:
On a February afternoon, I met my cousins at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Their spouses and several of our very-grown children were there too. I brought Prosecco, a candle, a small speaker to play music, photos and a poem.
We were there to recreate the wedding cruise of my mother, Monica, and my stepfather, Peter. They had gotten married at City Hall in August 1984. She was 61, and he, 71. It was her first marriage, and his fourth.
I was my mother’s witness that day. It was a late-in-life love story, and they were very happy. Peter died in 1996, at 82. My mother died last year. She was 100.
Peter’s ashes had waited a long time, but finally they were mingled with Monica’s. The two of them would ride the ferry a last time and then swirl together in the harbor forever. Cue the candles, bubbly, bagpipes and poems.
Two ferry workers approached us. We knew we were in trouble: Open containers and open flames were not allowed on the ferry.
My cousin’s husband, whispering, told the workers what we were doing and said we would be finished soon.
They walked off, and then returned. They said they had spoken to the captain, and they ushered us to the stern for some privacy. As the cup of ashes flew into the water, the ferry horn sounded two long blasts.
Unacceptable
Dear Diary:
I went to a new bagel store in Brooklyn Heights with my son.
When it was my turn to order, I asked for a cinnamon raisin bagel with whitefish salad and a slice of red onion.
The man behind the counter looked up at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
Teresa
Dear Diary:
It was February 2013. With a foot of snow expected, I left work early and drove from New Jersey warily as my wipers squeaked and snow and ice stuck to my windows.
I drove east on the Cross Bronx Expressway, which was tied up worse than usual. Trucks groaned on either side of my rattling Toyota. My fingers were cold. My toes were colder. Got to get home before it really comes down, I thought to myself.
By the time I got home to my little red bungalow a stone’s throw from the Throgs Neck Bridge, the snow was already up to my ankles.
Inside, I took off my gloves, hat, scarf, coat, sweater, pants and snow boots. The bed, still unmade, was inviting me. But first, I checked my messages.
There was one from Teresa, the 92-year-old widow on the corner.
“Call me,” she said, sounding desperate.
I looked toward the warm bed, but … Teresa. There was a storm outside, and she was alone.
On went the pants, the sweater, the coat, the scarf, the boots and the gloves, and then I went out the door.
The snow was six inches deep on the sidewalks, so I tottered on tire tracks in the middle of the street. The wind stung my face. When I got to the end of the block, I pounded on her door.
“Teresa!” I called. No answer. “Teresa!” I called again. I heard the TV blaring. Was she sprawled on the floor?
I went next door and called for Kathy.
“Teresa can’t answer the door,” I said. “Probably fell.”
Kathy had a key. In the corner of her neat living room, Teresa, in pink sweatpants and sweaters, was sitting curled in her armchair, head bent down and The Daily News in her lap.
I snapped off the TV.
Startled, she looked up.
“Kathy! Neal!” she said. “What’s a five-letter word for cabbage?”
Nice Place
Dear Diary:
When I lived in Park Slope over 20 years ago, I once had to call an ambulance because of a sudden, violent case of food poisoning.
Two paramedics, a man and a woman, entered our third-floor walk-up with a portable chair. Strapping me in, the male medic quickly inserted an IV line into my arm.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his partner circling around and admiring the apartment.
“Nice place you’ve got here.” she said. “Do you own it?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, all but unconscious.
Once I was in the ambulance, she returned to her line of inquiry.
“Do you mind me asking how much you paid for your apartment?”
“$155,000,” I croaked.
“Wow! You must have bought during the recession.”
“Yeah” I said.
They dropped me off at Methodist Hospital, where I was tended to by a nurse as I struggled to stay lucid.
At some point, the same medic poked her head into the room with one last question:
“You wouldn’t be wanting to sell any time soon, would you?”
Illustrations by Agnes Lee.
‘Part of the job’
Edwin Guity was at the controls of a southbound D train last December, rolling through the Bronx, when suddenly someone was on the tracks in front of him.
He jammed on the emergency brake, but it was too late. The man had gone under the wheels.
Stumbling over words, Mr. Guity radioed the dispatcher and then did what the rules require of every train operator involved in such an incident. He got out of the cab and went looking for the person he had struck.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Mr. Guity said later. “But this is a part of the job.”
He found the man pinned beneath the third car. Paramedics pulled him out, but the man died at the hospital. After that, Mr. Guity wrestled with what to do next.
A 32-year-old who had once lived in a family shelter with his parents, he viewed the job as paying well and offering a rare chance at upward mobility. It also helped cover the costs of his family’s groceries and rent in the three-bedroom apartment they shared in Brooklyn.
But striking the man with the train had shaken him more than perhaps any other experience in his life, and the idea of returning to work left him feeling paralyzed.
Edwin Guity was prescribed exposure therapy after his train struck a man on the tracks.
Hundreds of train operators have found themselves in Mr. Guity’s position over the years.
And for just as long, there has been a path through the state workers’ compensation program to receiving substantive treatment to help them cope. But New York’s train operators say that their employer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has done too little to make them aware of that option.
After Mr. Guity’s incident, no official told him of that type of assistance, he said. Instead, they gave him the option of going back to work right away.
But Mr. Guity was lucky. He had a friend who had been through the same experience and who coached him on getting help — first through a six-week program and then, with the assistance of a lawyer, through an experienced specialist.
The specialist prescribed a six-month exposure therapy program to gradually reintroduce Mr. Guity to the subway.
His first day back at the controls of a passenger train was on Thanksgiving. Once again, he was driving on the D line — the same route he had been traveling on the day of the fatal accident.
M.T.A. representatives insisted that New York train operators involved in strikes are made aware of all options for getting treatment, but they declined to answer specific questions about how the agency ensures that drivers get the help they need.
In an interview, the president of the M.T.A. division that runs the subway, Demetrius Crichlow, said all train operators are fully briefed on the resources available to them during their job orientation.
“I really have faith in our process,” Mr. Crichlow said.
Still, other transit systems — all of which are smaller than New York’s — appear to do a better job of ensuring that operators like Mr. Guity take advantage of the services available to them, according to records and interviews.
A Times analysis shows that the incidents were on the rise in New York City’s system even as they were falling in all other American transit systems.
An Uptick in Subway Strikes
San Francisco’s system provides 24-hour access to licensed therapists through a third-party provider.
Los Angeles proactively reaches out to its operators on a regular basis to remind them of workers’ compensation options and other resources.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has made it a goal to increase engagement with its employee assistance program.
The M.T.A. says it offers some version of most of these services.
But in interviews with more than two dozen subway operators who have been involved in train strikes, only one said he was aware of all those resources, and state records suggest most drivers of trains that strike people are not taking full advantage of them.
“It’s the M.T.A.’s responsibility to assist the employee both mentally and physically after these horrific events occur,” the president of the union that represents New York City transit workers, John V. Chiarello, said in a statement, “but it is a constant struggle trying to get the M.T.A. to do the right thing.”
new video loaded: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid
transcript
transcript
Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid
Nearly 200 protesters tried to block federal agents from leaving a parking garage in Lower Manhattan on Saturday. The confrontation appeared to prevent a possible ICE raid nearby, and led to violent clashes between the police and protesters.
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[chanting] “ICE out of New York.”
By Jorge Mitssunaga
November 30, 2025
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