NY Times Ode to Fairway's Elevator

Photograph of the sign inside the UWS Fairway's elevator by Jen Chung

Only in New York, kids: The NY Times front page* features an article about a very slow elevator at a Manhattan grocery store. To be fair(way), it's the elevator that goes between just two floors at the Upper West Side grocery institution, Fairway, where shopping carts are turned into instruments of, if not death, then serious bruising amid well-priced products.

The store is full of so many items and so many shoppers that getting into the elevator requires a lot of cooperation (those doors close fast!) and the mindset of a straphanger at rush hour. Cartoonist, playwright and novelist Jules Feiffer tells the Times the elevator is "like an unruly dog that doesn’t come when it’s called... When it finally does come, it moves at such a slow pace that, well, you have to bring food.” Which is why senior manager Steven Jenkins placed the sign acknowledging the elevator's lack of speed. He also explained the wiring is the problem: "We’d have to rewire the building to make it any faster. And we can’t make the elevator any bigger because there’s no other place to put it.”

Shoppers at Fairway seem to consider enduring the elevator ride a badge of honor. In 2002, an AOL Cityguide commenter wrote, "Fairway has the worlds slowest and funniest elevator to the second floor organic dept." Today, those who squeezed in chatted about the Times article, "We do help each other!" But is it a coincidence that this Fairway gift basket is touted as being perfect for someone "trapped on an elevator"?

A word to the wise: Besides the organic food section, Fairway's restaurant is on the second floor. And you can bypass the elevator by...taking the stairs, which is what the shopping cart- and stroller-less do.

*The NY Times national edition does not feature the Fairway elevator story on its page A1; for the national edition, there's a story on Rod Blagojevich's successor, Pat Quinn.