Madeleine Albright likes “blond Oreo cookies,” a young woman explained to Scott Newell one recent morning.
Newell’s Big City Small World Bakery makes its own (infinitely superior) version of the Hostess Ding Dong, but he hasn’t yet tried to improve on Nabisco’s Golden Oreo. They settled on the bakery’s popular butter cookies, along with scones and a cherry-chicken-salad sandwich.
When another customer asked what was up, the woman explained that she worked for Nicola’s Books. The treats from the Water Hill corner bakery would sustain the former Secretary of State before her Michigan Theater talk on her timely new book, Fascism: A Warning.
“Madeleine Albright!” exclaimed a third customer, sipping coffee in the corner.
“I’m so lucky to have customers who know who Madeleine Albright is!” the garrulous Newell responded.
Does this sort of thing happen often? Well, Newell said, a week earlier he’d filled a delivery order for one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s kids–“he lives in a frat house on campus.”
Sure enough, googling turned up a 2016 Facebook post by Arnold’s ex, Maria Shriver, at the
Michigan Union with their son Christopher. A photo showed them with the plaque commemorating a 1960 campaign stop by Christopher’s great-uncle: John F. Kennedy.
