If you live in Brooklyn, or any outer-borough really, I'm sure you've seen it before: the requisite post-work grocery bag getting lugged home on the train. Often it's the ubiquitous Whole Foods and Trader Joe bags bouncing along the platform awaiting voyages across the East River.

Recently, the City Council passed a bill – despite intense lobbying against it by food retailers – to issue street vending permits for vegetable stands in the city's poorer neighborhoods. It's clear to anyone living in the areas included in the measure – like my neighbors in Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant – that fresh, decent produce is not as readily available as it is in much of Manhattan. Cue that long trip home from Whole Foods.  read more »

Today's Metro takes a look at the planned Whole Foods in Gowanus, where construction has yet to begin despite its groundbreaking more than a year ago.

"What's the hold up?" reporter Amy Zimmer asks.

Well, for one thing, there is no building permit for the planned 68,000-square-foot store.  read more »

For all the clamor and crowds initially drawn to Whole Foods on the Bowery, which opened this past spring, the place is an organic ghost town during the daytime.

“Hello? Hellooooo?” huffed one silk-shirted gentleman who lingered several minutes without service by an unattended meat counter one recent Thursday afternoon.

Sure, there's some lunch-hour action in the upper-level food court. But the spacious grocery aisles looked desolate. The near total lack of hustle and bustle seemed to leave the dozen or so patrons in a lethargic daze, seemingly hypnotized by the maze of organic teas and spelt-made pastas.

One dreadlocked gentleman sporting cargo shorts stared for nearly 10 whole minutes at an expansive selection of syrup in the coffee aisle.

Molasses, anyone?  read more »