Buy local and screw the corporations

One of the easiest things you can do to stop the greedy bastard multi national corporations from taking over your life completely is to buy locally made products from local or what's known as 'Mom and Pop' businesses.

If you don't buy from Wal-Mart then you are not helping Wal-Mart fuck over your local area. If you stop buying a few things at Target that you can get from your locally owned store then Target loses money and they lose clout in your area. If you go shop for produce at your local farmers market or from your regional grocery store chain then Kroger or Safeway or A & P or Albertson's or fill in the name of the mega grocery store chain near you make less money and more money stays in your community.

We here at el Casa de Monkey try to shop at locally owned businesses first and try to eat at locally owned restaurants, but that is becoming increasingly harder here in Johnson City. We stopped shopping at Wal-Mart altogether a few years back, and one day I'll tell you why, and we try to cut back on what we buy from Target. Yes we pay more for some things but we know that more of the dollars that we spend in locally owned businesses stay in our local area.

I caught the tail end of a documentary on the state of Mom and Pop businesses the other night on Sundance and they showed some shrill twat from Wal-Mart who was squawking that the anti Wal-Mart campaign was being funded by rich leftists and labor unions who wanted to bankrupt Wal-Mart. We almost died laughing when we heard that "woman" say that. Wal-Mart has gleefully put thousands of businesses out of business and then they turned around and hired the people they put out of work and they paid them a fraction of what they used to make and gave them no benefits. It's fucking insane. Yet people keep shopping there.

But I want to try and be a positive force for change so I'll stop bashing Wal-Mart (for now anyway) and I'll tell you about a locally owned businesses here in my area that rocks hard.

Scratch Foodworks is owned by a hardworking fun and funky couple who have a smart as a whip young daughter. They are basically a bakery that also makes all sorts of other foods. They make bread, pizza, and pastry in their wood fired oven and they also smoke meats and make other foods like pestos and the like. They also cater as well.

The wood fired oven of Scratch.

If they say the Habanero bread is vicious, believe it.

The bread runs $4 a loaf but it's a big ass loaf, that reminds me they also make something they call a 'Big Ass Danish' which I can't eat anymore since my heart attack but it looks delicious. We buy a couple of loaves usually on a Saturday and it lasts us all week. If you go on a Sunday you can get great deals because they try to sell off all their bread because they are closed on Monday and Tuesday.

If you get to Johnson City go by and buy something at Scratch and tell Jamie that Dr. Monkey sent you. And if you never get to Johnson City, then start buying stuff from the locally owned businesses in your area because it's the right thing to do and it screws the corporations when you do it.