The Gloucester Clam

After a tough couple weeks for Market Basket’s loyal customer base and employees who were on the brink of permanent unemployment, news broke late Wednesday night that the “deal” had been done – Arthur T Demoulas’s offer to buy the 51% of Market Basket owned by his cousin, Arthur S Demoulas, and family, was accepted.

There was an immediate outpouring of gratitude and elation, followed by feverishly written grocery lists. At home, the Clam family is out of peanut butter, cereal, flour, pasta, rice, chocolate syrup, all kinds of cheese, frozen veggie burgers, and pretty much all meat products except hot dogs. This last week was like when you’re 85% through the Oregon Trail and rations are meager as all fuck and you’re just going hunting every damn day for what you need to make sure your kids don’t starve. Alkali water? Lost the trail? Goddamnit, MECC, you cruel overlords.

JESUS CHRIST EVERY DAMN TIME

If you’re following along at home, this is actually a pretty incredible story that happened locally, but impacts globally.  Here’s why:

1. First off, the little guy won. This doesn’t happen in modern day America, aside from rare instances. Employees without the protection of a union were able to successfully picket for what they wanted – not even a negotiable end goal like salary or benefits, but a concrete thing – reinstate Artie T as CEO. That’s it. Nothing less. While it started slowly, locally, the Market Basket story eventually grabbed nationwide media attention. Our local discount grocery with the never-fashionable floor tiling and the kids with the ties on was all of a sudden A Big Thing.

2. The employees had the backing of almost every single customer. Boycotts aren’t often incredibly successful – in this study, 53 out of 144 publicly-owned firms conceded to boycotter’s demands. That’s a 37% rate. While I couldn’t find the data, I have a hard time believing that any of those 53 cases had the groundswell of bipartisan support that Market Basket’s did. And again, that’s publicly owned firms that ostensibly are very concerned about their public image. Market Basket’s privately held board and double-dose of egregiously godawful CEOS Gooch and Thornton, at first glance, seemed relatively unconcerned about their public image, what with the whole “we will fire whoever doesn’t come to work” thing. This was a mistake. Oh my fuck, was this ever a mistake.

3. The protests were epic. The inmates ran the asylum, for lack of a better colloquialism. At every store, there were huge banners of Artie T’s face, receipts taped EVERYWHERE from other grocery stores, and dozens of protesters outside every entrance. Boycotts happen, but has there ever been a boycott where the upper management was unable to keep their stores from being completely overrun by protest signs? Picket line’s usually not INSIDE THE STORE.

Picture courtesy of the Concord Monitor

4. The family background behind the protest, as I have stated before in a thing that kinda went a little viral, is FUCKING CRAZY. The family is straight-up nuts and the fighting was a decades-long sawdust soap opera. Plus strippers and disbarred lawyers. People want a crazy drama background, and holy hell has the Demoulas family ever delivered.

Of course, *record scratch* the fairytale ending isn’t set in stone. Arthur T Demoulas bought the company and operations are returning to normal very quickly, but the devil is in the details of how Market Basket will be paid for. The purchase price was somewhere near $1.5 B.  ONE AND A HALF BILLION DOLLARS. DANG. Artie T and family put up $500m, leaving $1b to be financed – most likely through mortgaging properties. This is going to hurt profits – Market Basket’s key to low prices and relatively good employee benefits was their ability to be almost terrifyingly profitable – they carried so little debt. This is no longer the case. While some of their capital will be saved by not distributing willy-nilly to shareholders on Arthur S’s side like in the past, that’s still not a gigantic chunk of the difference.

In all honesty, though, it may not be perfect, but this ending was the best-case scenario by far. The other options were:

– The stores closing altogether. This would first of all “suck balls” as the kids say, but secondly have a terribly negative impact on our economy – thousands of laid-off workers, plus the ever-expanding lower and middle class that relies on cheap, fresh food to maximize their budget. I don’t want to imagine a world without the Basket, do you?

-Employees giving up and the Arthur S side and its “management” team maximizing profits at the expense of employees and customers alike. The further erosion of worker pay and benefits ticks along and we as a society get used to it. Pete Seeger rolls over in his grave.

It’ll be interesting to see how the whole thing turns out – but the Clam has high hopes for Market Basket in the future. For now, I need a gallon of sour cream and seven pounds of steak to make up for lost time.

Tonight was the finale of the wonderful movie series we’ve had down at the Harborwalk, and I left my husband at Midori with my kids and a bill for 2 Mai Tais and some spicy tuna rolls to go see JAWS. I have never seen Jaws. Clampadres, I was born in 1983, which probably explains a hell of a lot about my worldview (you know what’s awesome? Weezer. Weezer is awesome. Also, Cabbage Patch Kids. And Pete and Pete). My parents were like “blah blah violent movies probably bad for young kids,” therefore, I have never actually seen JAWS.

Looks totally legit and not fake in any way.

I was excited. I was a little concerned with the amount of small children present who were about to be horrified for life, but I was excited. As the movie started, I realized THE MOVIE IS RATED PG ARE YOU EVEN SERIOUS. You know what else is rated PG?

• Frozen.
• Muppets’ Most Wanted
• Planes: Fire & Rescue
• Tangled
• The Incredibles
• How to Train Your Dragon

You know, movies you bring your four year old to. Movies with Happy Meal Tie-Ins. Just normal every day kids’ movies. The 70’s were a weird time. Not that I’d know. I usually rely on Ol’ Man James Dowd to regale me with his tales of KC and the Sunshine Band and smoking in elementary schools and whatever else happened in the 70s, because again I was born in 198 fuckin’ 3.

So anyway, some girl gets eaten, a kid gets eaten, there’s an asshole mayor in pinstripes, and it’s all Chief Brody and his terrifying baby that’s totally 10 years older than I am now.

TERRIGODDAMNFYING

Fun times! And then… it starts to rain. And I’m like well, that’s some bullshit, but I am watching this movie. I crack up at Brody smoking a goddamn cigarette in the ER (is he on the Hard Merchandise? WE NEED THIS FISH!)

But by the time Quinn and Brody and NOAA dude are in the boat, it is POURING BUCKETS. I’m down to stay. Brooke is down to stay. We’re in this, motherfuckers. I hid under my chair. Can’t get me, rain!

And then they finally cut the movie, right as the fucking shark is surfacing right in Roy Scheider’s adorably chiseled fucking face. OH MY GOD.

shoulda bought a chum cutter, bro.

But you know, part of my life is lugging sound and PA gear around, and that shit is not happy in rainy conditions or if you drop it on the escalator at the Museum of Science, so I understand and applaud their decision to cut it when they did. I’m super happy with how the movies went, wish I could’ve seen more, and can only hope it happens again next year. Thanks to all the wonderful people like Matt Coogan and Rob Newton and the dozens of others who made this happen. Seriously, you people rule!

Anyway, for those of us who haven’t seen JAWS before, this leaves us hanging! HOW DOES IT END? WHAT HAPPENS? OH MY GOD SAVE US CAPTAIN PLANET!

I came up with a few hypotheses for how the movie ends. I’m not sure, because again, I’ve never seen it, but these scenarios seem the most likely:

1. In an amazing plot twist, it turns out it’s been Brody killing people the whole time. Quint and the Shark team up to stop him.

2. The shark is Quint’s father, who knew of no other way to get Quint’s attention than a killing streak. The film ends in a tearful embrace between the two.

3. Brody is already dead. Everything that’s happened since his drowning as a child has been this dream on the stretcher as they tried to revive him.

4. The shark is captured but it turns out it wanted to be caught so it could destroy the aquarium and kill its director, who had betrayed him when they worked together during the war.

5. The Shark is Russia.

Am I close? I’m probably pretty close. Whatever, I guess I’ll never know. UNTIL NEXT YEAR!

With the smashing success of Wicked Tuna on National Geographic and its new spinoff Wicked Tuna: North vs South (which I guess I’ll have to recap… fantastic), we here at the Gloucester Clam realized that many millions of people will apparently watch hours upon hours of people mostly failing to catch fish.

We thought to ourselves, “Gloucester isn’t done cashing in on this trend. It’s been fifteen years of reality shows, and people aren’t tired of it yet. We can bang out a good dozen more reality series in this town alone.”

These were our clearly Emmy-worthy ideas.

1. Laundry Stars (on the brand new Laundry Network coming January ’15). A plucky East Gloucester laundromat owner faces the struggles of organic detergent clogging up the machines, sand and forgotten pocket chum in the dryers, and the constant smell of smugness emanating from somewhere they can’t quite find.

2. Storm Drain Heroes (Science Channel). Just like its predecessors, Storage Wars and Storage Wars: Sewer Edition, Storm Drain Heroes focuses on teams of bidders desperate to find that one lucky storm drain containing the historical maritime relics that will get them the cash to continue buying other storm drains. A true American underdog story, it will also contain hijinks like “Team Deborah finds a family of putrid, decaying raccoons” and “Team Bob Bought 5 cubic tons of dead leaves for $500 and he needs to pay for his daughter’s wedding!”ie

The cold hard cash is so close I can feel it!

3. Lobsteriest  Catch on National Geographic. This is pretty much just giving Joey C a show in which he can yell, which we are totally down with for reasons that include “pure awesome”. There will probably be high drama, some epic moments between boats fighting over lobster territory, random cutaways to butterflies and rainbows, and the entire thing will be underwritten by the butter industry.

This was a total stretch, but I just wanted to throw a Simpsons reference in somewhere.

4. Scrap Metal Men on the Military Channel. Cameras follow Gloucester’s elite team of scrap metal collectors in their 1987 Ford Rangers on their rounds during trash night, picking up stray bicycles that probably still belonged to somebody’s kid, fishing perfectly good beer cans out of the recycling, and ending up at North Shore Scrap Steel with their day’s catch. Each season will have a leaderboard, and the winner (if not predeceased in a terrible tetanus tragedy) will get bragging rights over the rest of the fleet. Kind of like the other show, but MORE METAL.

Exactly. Like. This.

5. Seagull Dynasty on Animal Planet. A ragtag “family” of unemployed men living out of campers invents a seagull-calling device to ensure dinner. Slightly less racist and homophobic than Duck Dynasty, but with all the folksy mannerisms and dependence on propane. The show lasts only one year after the creators realize no one actually has a need to call seagulls, and the company is sold for a pony keg of Natty Light.

6. Ed’s Mini Mart Ninja Warrior: A tournament where shoeless folks staggering like zombies, people pushing baby carriages with no babies in them, and rat-tailed men with open shirts picking half-smoked cigarettes off the ground compete in the most basic of physical feats to prove to the staff that they’re totally sober enough to buy $4 of Rubinoff vodka.