Yesterday, Daily Editor Pierce Stanley decided to sacrifice a day's work on a ten page paper in order to bring you this report on yesterday's academic affairs. He hopes you, and a sympathetic professor, will appreciate his efforts.

While most Columbia students were holed up all day in Butler yesterday in preparation for exams, academic life carried on in the outside world yesterday. Thankfully, outside Butler, these affairs carried on with a less perfunctory (and to be honest, less smelly) air than that which has pervaded among the poor and huddle masses of the library in recent days.

After three long years, the Westside Supermarket reopened its doors last Friday. When it closed in 2004, disgruntled shoppers covered the store closing sign with graffiti that related stories of loves lost and found in the market's produce aisles and threats to move away from the neighborhood as a result of being left without a "decent" supermarket. Having arrived in Morningside Heights too late for firsthand experience of the original Westside Market, foodie Elizabeth Grefrath made her inaugural trek to the legendary store this Monday.

The delightful aroma of nearly ripe produce greets the customer steps before entering the new Westside Market, tempering the sweaty stink that overtakes New York in the summer. The sight of fresh fruits and veggies is almost as refreshing—and at the Westside, unlike you can buy your roughage without breaking the bank.

Towers of tinned tuna! Exotic foreign juices! Nutella for $1.99/13 oz! You'll never do to Fairway again--a trip down the aisles reveals that Westside prices on cereal, rice, soup, pasta as good or better than the mother of all grocery stores on 76^th and 125th.

The cheese area, not an aisle but an island of fromage surrounded by outlying sample stations, quickly becomes my favorite part of the store. The astonishing array features everything from delicate and tender mozzarella di bufala to designer hard cheeses, such as the exquisite Emmanthal, and some melting-out-of-its-rind brie. After aiding a vertically challenged customer in reaching for water crackers located about the cheese, I heard a child mope that "this place probably doesn't have lemon ice pops." The mother answered, "oh no, I'm sure they do."