No ladies allowed! (Getty Images)

In the middle of a panic attack or 11th hour deadline, there's only one thing that helps with that horrible feeling that the abyss is staring back. It's not Valium, and it's not a warm cup of tea. It's Duane Reade. It's CVS. It's Rite-Aid.

Don't ask us why, but walking up and down the aisles of these drugstore chains soothe us in a way that the sanctimonious spirituality of church hasn't done in years.

Meander past the soap, and the Willy Wonka assortment of cheap makeup and find yourself at the holy grail: the "As Seen on TV" section of the store, where Ped Eggs or Pajama Jeans can finally be yours without ever having to pick up a phone.

We don't know what it is, but there is magic beaming down from those fluorescent bulbs. And we know we're not the only ones who feel that temporary reprieve from the world when we walk into a store that caters to our cheap desires. Why else would New Yorkers be in such a tizzy over Westside Market NYC's creation of a "man aisle"?

Selling everything from condoms to beer and chips (and hopefully some toilet paper for the bodily fluids that will need to be mopped up afterward), the aisle was unveiled yesterday at the market's UWS location on Broadway and 110th St., and it caters specifically to dudes. As in: No Girls Allowed!

The New York Post reported today that Westside's CEO George Zoitas had the inspiration for a grocery equivalent of a man-cave after reading an ESPN article about dudes and shopping. What started out as a joke quickly proved to be a successful marketing strategy, playing on the most  basic of stereotypes about men.

Consider some of these choice quotes from the Post piece:

-“Guys don’t like taking lists when they go shopping.”

-"If you’re going to have some guys over to watch a game, you can pretty much stand here — not move two feet — and get your beer, barbecue sauce, chips, whatever. It’s all right here!”

-“It’s your essentials...It’s your water, alcohol, soaps, shampoos, deodorants, razors."

And it's not just one store: a 2011 Chicago Tribune report noted that Procter & Gamble may already be testing "man aisles" in stores like Walgreens, Target, and Wal-Mart.

Are "man aisles" sexist? Maybe, but don't be naive. Most products are sold to us by gender stereotyping. (See: Axe commercials, Playtex commercials, every commercial.) It's already impossible to find a gender neutral aisle in most drugstores, even if they aren't blatantly called the "man section" or "stuff for the ladies."  There's no point in fighting it. Just grab your beef jerky or your Luna bar and accept that marketing has relied on these reductive tactics to appeal to consumers since the beginning of time. (Or whenever it was that Don Draper took over advertising.)

Brooklyn: Nice place, but the food is terrible, we hear...

It's good to change with the times, move to new neighborhoods (boroughs even!), expand one's client-base. But, you know, nothing too wild, like buying groceries in Brooklyn.

In a Real Deal profile, Brooklynite Elizabeth Stribling talks about how she and her brokerage firm have changed, expanding their focus beyond the most elite and elitist precincts of Manhattan, but reveals that she still does her grocery shopping on the Upper East Side.

The founder of the eponymous real estate brokerage famous for selling posh Upper East Side co-ops moved into One Brooklyn Bridge Park back in 2009 (when the building she was repping was struggling, a move seen by many as an attempt to put her money where her mouth was). Ms. Stribling promptly embraced most aspects of  borough life, checking out Brooklyn blogs to find the most interesting restaurants and activities in her new neighborhood.

"She has a way of finding all the hipster spots,” Ms. Stribling's daughter Elizabeth Ann Kivlan told The Real Deal.

But despite the fact that the borough has a Fairway, a Trader Joe's and numerous artisinal grocers nearby, Ms. Stribling admits to driving back to the Upper East Side to buy her bread and milk.

“I still shop on the Upper East Side,” Ms. Stribling confessed to The Real Deal. “I put my groceries in the trunk of the car, and then drive right back.”

Maybe Ms. Stribling will finally change her mind when Whole Foods comes to Gowanus?

kvelsey@observer.com

In the event you thought it would be a good idea to buy only the best of catastrophe provisions—thus limiting the chaos you're sure to endure by visiting one of those more pedestrian grocery stores—think again.

Fairway, as New York Times dining critic Sam Sifton can attest, is mobbed:

Whole Foods has "freak out lines." Exhibit A:

And Exhibit B (Via):

The notorious Park Slope Food Co-Op? Bet their shoppers won't protest the selling of  Israeli products during a hurricane panic. There, people are "losing their collective minds":

Let the smooth sounds of Puccini soothe you as you trample over the other Truffled Salt purchasers at the SoHo Dean & Deluca:

Just try not to die at the Brooklyn Trader Joe's. There are enough Heat and Eat Falafels to go around! Or not:

Even your uber-local gourmet grocer isn't safe from preparedness raiders. The ever-bougie Brooklyn Larder? But of course:

Back to the Upper West Side, well, it's the entire neighborhood. Good luck up there:

Some people, however, have their #Priorities:

And now you know: even in an unsure pre-disaster state, New Yorkers are painfully discerning. We're creatures of habit; snobby, self-righteous, overly-spoiled creatures of habit, but creatures of habit no less. Besides, some comforts you just can't live without.

fkamer@observer.com |@weareyourfek

City shoppers could slash their grocery bills by 33 percent if retail giant Walmart is permitted to open stores in the Big Apple, a Post analysis has found.

Hmm. Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah. City shoppers could slash their grocery bills by 30 percent if ragtag retail giant the Park Slope Food Co-op is permitted to open more stores in the Big Apple, an Observer analysis has found.

Chew on that.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

The web retailing giant launched nationwide grocery sales in the U.K. and Germany last year. It has been testing the service in its home base of Seattle since last summer, but it's planning to expand company wide, according to the Financial Times. 

The service will have no minimum purchase price, setting it apart from New York success story Fresh Direct, which has been expanding across the tri-state area. 

It will be interesting to see if Amazon integrates this service with it newly formed daily deal partner Living Social, which recently completed a monster $13 million sale of Amazon gift cards. 

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

SLIDESHOW: Admiral's Row Through the Years >>

The Yards DC argued that the homes were far too neglected and decrepit to be re-purposed, so they decided to tear them down and replace them with a new retail and industrial hub, which would include a sizable supermarket. Preservationists fought vociferously against the plan, arguing that the buildings were not only of architectural but also historical significance as some of the few remaining relics of the original Navy Yards. They put forward a strong argument for an alternative plan that would have saved all six buildings, behind which the retail would have been built, but, at least according to the Yards DC, that was economically unfeasible.

Strong opposition to the preservationists came from the community, particularly from residents of the swaths of public housing nearby who argued that the need for fresh groceries trumped the need for old buildings. Not that the two were mutually exclusive, but it is true there are few good supermarkets in the area. In the end, two of the buildings, the Timber House and one of the homes, were determined to be salvageable.

The silver lining to this architectural tragedy appeared today, when Brownstoner got its hands on some renderings of the new Navy Yards complex, designed by local firm Greenberg Farrow. At least the Yards has picked a good firm to design what looks far better than your average strip mall. When coupled with the redevelopment work already underway at Building 92, plus the expansive greening efforts within the existing Navy Yards, this is turning into a striking little pocket of design, one hidden in the least expected of places. (Well, maybe it's not a total surprise, considering many of the Yard's current occupants are architects and other artisans.)

SLIDESHOW: Admiral's Row Through the Years >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Here is what he and other co-op shoppers had to say:

• "You can buy individual tea bags for less than a quarter, which I'm pretty sure you can't at Whole Wallet."
• "I feel like Whole Foods is not something to be worried about. They're really distinct models. Do you want to be involved in your community and your food, or do you just want a fancy feast?"
• "If you're a working person, it sure is nice to have someone watch your kids while you go shopping."
• "The place where this place really kicks ass is the produce. They explain during the orientation--it's really cool--that every 12 to 24 hours, the produce turns over. At other grocery stores, it's every four days. I don't know what it is at Whole Foods, but it's probably about the same."
• "Here I get to have a nice conversation with my friend Bill Ferguson, the founder of the band Lotion. You're probably too young to know them, but they toured."
• "I'll definitely still shop co-op, 100 percent."
• "I respect that Joe Public can have more healthy food in general, but it's become corporate over the years."
• "This is so much more than just a grocery store."
• "There are plenty of supermarkets around the neighborhood already, so Whole Foods won't really change much."
• "The co-op's the shit and you can quote me on that."

RELATED: Whole Prudes: Why Is High-End Retail So Scarce in Park Slope?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

SLIDESHOW: Comparison Shopping: The Park Slope Food Coop vs. Whole Foods! >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

While the Upper West Side grocer has been around since 1940, most of that time has been spent in one location or another on West 74th Street. Not until 1995 did a second store open, under the Henry Hudson Viaduct at 132nd Street. But four more have followed this decade, at sites on Long Island, Westchester, Red Hook, and Paramus.

Another two are set to open this year, one in Stamford and a 60,000-square-foot whopper (slightly bigger than the Time Warner Center's Whole Foods) on East 86th Street, inside a former Barnes & Noble. That store has a groundbreaking planned for tomorrow, and NY1 already took a look inside.

This is all part of Fairway's plans for nationwide expansion, which began in 2007 when Sterling Investment Partners of Westport, Conn., took a $150 million controlling stake in the grocer. According to the Journal, the grocer plans to double the number of its stores to a dozen in the next three to four years. Should it keep up that pace, it could best its Austin-based competitior, which has 270 stores, within the next two decades.

At the very least, the new store will further stoke the grocery wars, which have been going on at least since Whole Foods' arrival. New York recounted in a 2005 article how the national company began to pressure the city's grocery fiefdoms--Gourmet Garage downtown, Zabars on the West Side, Eli Zabar's on the East Side, D'Agastino in midtown, and so on. But the launch of Fresh Direct, the arrival of Trader Joe's, and the continued expansion of the individual grocers has led to an all-out food fight.

Perhaps Fairway's plan is simply to get a toehold on the East Side before Whole Foods takes over there, too.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

According to prosecutors, Nevin Shapiro, the man behind already suspicious-sounding Capitol Investments USA, bilked more than 60 investors using the technique pioneered by Charles Ponzi in 1920 and perfected by Bernie Madoff through the 1990s and 2000s. And like Madoff, Shapiro found Florida to be teeming with suckers (New Jersey and Indiana residents are also included in Shapiro's count of con victims).

The trick is well known by now: Pay older investors returns with new investors' money, and hope to escape discovery before the con collapses on itself.

Shapiro's window dressing for the operation was a fictitious wholesale grocery distribution business. The pitch was that Shapiro engaged in a kind of vegetable arbitrage, buying low-cost vegetables in one part of the country—we're thinking arugula?—and then selling them where they'd fetch a higher price. Apparently his clients believed that such an undertaking could yield 26% returns without any risk.

Before getting busted in April, Shapiro, a huge University of Miami fan, donated $150,000 to the U to fund a lounge for student-athletes, and (this is weird) bought a pair of diamond-studded handcuffs for an as-yet-unnamed professional athlete. Go 'Canes!

Shapiro's plea agreement hearing is scheduled for Sept. 15.