Part 2 of a series about the (essential) minuscule details: On Pickles and Values

Last year I got a pickle subscription from Alons Pickles. I justified spending 20-something euros on pickles a month (as a student) with the ‘excuse’ that I have a case of horrid eczema caused by autoimmune problems. I read somewhere that pickled stuff is good in terms of probiotics: It is believed that immune systems like mine react to components of the skin, and building strong gut health by consuming probiotics can help strengthen immune systems and reduce flare-ups. As you can see, I don’t know much about this topic and it was admittedly not the main reason I wanted to get a pickle subscription.

Rather, picking up these pickles once a month always left me feeling hopeful; contributing to something worth maintaining. 
The post-corona landscape of the city had left me struggling to adjust, with chunks of culture disappearing, and everything moving at the same, if not a faster rhythm than before. In a city that felt invaded by swarms of Nutella tourism, my visits to (some) markets felt like stepping into a different time zone, a small oasis within a big mess, where you could find treasures for little, have a conversation with the stand-owner… walk at a normal speed. I remember, Alon saying to me once: “Markets are one of the last free spaces of the city.” On my way back from the pickle kitchen, walking along Schellingwoude to Zuiderzeeweg on the first sunny day of spring in 2023, I read on the back of my spicy mandarin mash jar: 

‘To help our community eat local, probiotic, organic food year-round. To increase security for farmers in choosing more progressive practices by crop planning and buying surplus. To create jobs we’d like to work in, that nurture us and our communities. To use food consumption as a tool for providing for our needs and solving our problems, not creating them. To do our part. We believe another world is possible.’

As you might remember, this series is about the dilemmas in integrating one’s values with art, the harsh realities of making a living, moral rigidity and authenticity. So who to pick as the next inspiring ‘artist’? 
Coincidentally I read ‘We are Nature Defending Itself’ by Isabelle Fremaux and Jay Jordan (2021) at the same time as I was writing this article, and found words that have become some sort of compass for our DIY documentary:

“Extractivism takes ‘nature’ stuff, material from somewhere and transforms it into something that gives value somewhere else. That value is always more important than the continuation of life in the communities from which wealth is extracted. So many artists make a career out of sucking value out of disaster, rebellion, animism, magic, whatever is a fashionable topic at the time, and regurgitate it into situation detached objects or experiences elsewhere”

What makes ‘Alon’s Pickles’ more meaningful art than I encounter in most contemporary spaces, is the effect it has on its direct environment, the ideals that are infused in each step of the process, the preservation of craftsmanship and the continuous efforts for structural change. Be aware: what makes his story one that is worth hearing are the many treasures and lessons you will find in the many twists and turns that he had to take to end up at a ‘perfect compromise’.

Part 1: A Metamorphosis of Identity
“The more I try to pinpoint the beginning, the further I go back”, Alon tells me when I ask him about the start of his pickling journey. He decides to start his story with his introduction to the punk scene in Israel, serving as his introduction to alternative narratives about Israel, but also consumerism and veganism. At this point, he saw not partaking in the economy around him as a way to become autonomous from the power structures of a society he did not agree with. Life and activism in Israel had become embodiments of all the things he rejected: to be part of the food production chain, to join the army. Being part of a band and building the necessary infrastructure for it, gave him a way to remain where his friends and family were; whilst remaining independent from the economy, and to a larger extent society.
Alon experienced a shift in identity: from an insular against-everything mindset to, what he calls, positive creative activism: acting from the desire for our version of utopia, instead of the anger at the reality we currently live in. After studying permaculture and arriving in Amsterdam, Alon was sure: “I did not want to become a mere shadow of everything I rejected”.

“For radical action and disobedience to take hold of the imagination and become meaningful, it also needed to be deeply desirable, changing our worlds had to be as joyful as it was irresistible” (Fremeaux & Jordan, 2021)

Permaculture is a practice that creates self-sufficient ecosystems which integrate and interact with their surroundings, rather than establishing segregation for them to exist. The three principles of permaculture are earth care, people care and fair share, and the common denominator of these values is the intrinsic value of our surroundings, apart from what sort of commodification we can draw out of them. 
From these values, Alon found his desire to “interact honestly with life” instead of creating yet another false reality of comfort. 

Part 2: Markets, Where Public Space is Still Ours (kind of)
And indeed, markets might just be the place to interact honestly with life. 
In a way, the market is one of the last remaining third places of the city, which are environments where certain desires of society are met: socialization, playfulness, and a home away from home. Where you can simply be without having to leverage your being with the continuous consumption of something -  and meet regardless of your background. Simply - A public space, where you are given space, to take up space.

In contrast, as Fremeaux & Jordan (2021) detail, the metropolitan logic that governs our lives compartmentalizes and commodifies until we are left without an anchor to hold onto:

“The metropolis is what you have when the modernization process is completed and ‘nature’ is flushed away, where everything is captured by the market. Everything is designed so humans only relate to themselves, where only ‘we’ govern, produce and create reality”

Part 3: The Many Twists and Turns
Before markets, Alon tried to make the most of working in places that utilized extractivism as a foundation. As a tour guide, he used the opportunity to share Amsterdam’s squatting history with tourists. He used his time at the cannabis museum to talk to people about organic agriculture. Eventually, he arrived at food production but realized that most for-profit ‘plant-based’ places “treat their people how they avoid treating animals” and “factory farm their consumers”, deciding to get a market stand. This was the most accessible way to get into food production, as getting a restaurant is virtually impossible if you don’t have hundreds of thousands to invest in permits and rent.
For two years, many people enjoyed what he had to offer, whilst Alon consistently made financial losses and lost all of his savings. In combination with the everlasting hurdles of the municipality and corona, Alon closed this chapter for the time being. 

Part 4: Money and Temporary Precarity as the City’s Autoimmune Issues
Alon describes losing all of his savings as a hard learning lesson. With time he realized that he didn’t hate working with money, rather he was afraid of it and what it might say about him. Afraid to calculate work hours and to pay himself, he would earn enough to cover business costs, but not enough to make his rent, resulting in a business that offered cheap prices - for a couple of years. Alon now understands becoming comfortable with the financial aspect of running a small business as the key to making a lasting impact, instead of being solely left with a nice story to serve as a superficial analysis of a ‘moral existence’. 

Despite working on markets again, his relationship with the municipality remains complicated. Alon observes a municipal attitude that feels like it owes its ‘small’ citizens relatively little. Many policymakers lack a deeper understanding of the city’s history and culture and plan ‘to clean the city up’ according to their ideas of what a metropolis should look like. The results are development plans that take years to realize and often don’t represent the current neighbourhood’s needs. In the meantime, the municipality shows an unwillingness to commit and often enforces rules, only when it suits them. Alon has encountered many problems with this phenomenon: “The only people who benefit from this system are the ones who can put up with the pressures the municipality puts on them, mainly in the form of fines”. The formula of temporary permits creating precarious living and working conditions sounds eerily similar to what I am encountering in our neighbourhood (Zuiderzeeweg, the last frayed edges) right now: a temporary attitude, whether it is the housing or food market, is harmful to all inhabitants and environment. Unfitting and insincere approaches, isolated fixing over holistic understanding, result in the municipality often setting itself up for failure. 

Pickling serves as a way to promote alternative food economies, fight waste and support local agriculture

Part 5: Pickling, a Means to Preserve and a Symbol for Much More
After the setback, Alon dedicated most of his time to food rescue. However, he soon discovered that big distributors participating in food rescues essentially did not intend to change anything - if anything, the food rescue missions helped them to create an image of fighting waste, when they were the ones creating it. With no income work due to corona, once and for all he decided to end a life of co-opting and ‘Alon’s Pickles’ was born.
Pickling serves as a way to promote alternative food economies, fight waste and support local agriculture. It was his way to stay in the city and practically make up for the lack of resources he had at that point. Indeed, the art of pickling has always been a way to make the most out of scarcity. Pickling has, amongst other things, traditionally been a way to preserve food and establish security during periods of precarity. 
You may be surprised to hear the main lesson Alon drew from his journey: to be less of a purist. Through non-violent communication, a way to dismantle structures of domination out of language, he realized that his way of life was dictated by binary judgements of good and bad. Internalising complexity has guided his process, achieved by staying in conversation with those who were not from his bubble, in the few third spaces that the city has left.

On the back of Alon’s pickle jars, you can also read: 
We maintain a work culture that enriches the lives of our colleagues and everyone around us.
We are preserving a craft and way of living that is more in tune with our social and natural environment.
We love dill flowers and our grandmas and we give things time.

Find Alon on the Nordermarkt on Saturdays, and find pickle subscriptions: 
www.alonspickles.com