TOAST, JEWELS AND DOLL HEADS ON HAVENMEYER AND S. 5th

"I think the doll parts had something to do with it," was Pedestretarian contributor Stella Rose Saint Clair's explanation of this pile of burnt toast, plastic jewels, doll heads and other assorted snacks on the sidewalk in Brooklyn. The snack-and-jewel mixture had no smell, but Stella noted that it was damp. She was unable to tell whether the pile had been part of a performance or whether it was a performance itself that she and perhaps all of us is now involved in against our will. That's how I like to think of it--that like a bejewelled, starchy dominatrix it is forcing us to be part of something we always wanted but had never imagined and may initially be intimidated by. The kitchen it came from is probably made entirely of colorful felt and pipe cleaners and narrated by Ringo Starr.

If you find food on the street, send location and description to sgalvin1000@gmail.com

BELL PEPPER WITH STRAW ON 12th AND JOHN

It was midnight and raining when I found this green bell pepper under the bumper of a van on 12^th and John. It sparkled with drops of water and looked fresh enough to float through the air in slow motion with other produce in a commercial for some invented health food item. When I picked it up, imagining how I would incorporate it in a stir fry, I found a red drinking straw sticking out of it, crusted with black stuff. My first thought was that it must have been used as a pipe, but there were no burnt spots or holes. I remembered the Tropicana commercial in which juice flows easily out of a straw stuck into an orange, and how frustrating it was, as a kid, to suck and suck and not even get air. I finally peeled the orange violently and ate its mushed insides. I thought of a line from a Ben Lerner poem: “It was when we tried to drink a straw through a straw that we learned our first lesson about form,” and decided someone stuck a straw into the pepper to avoid any unrealistic hope for orange juice. 

If you find food on the street, send location and description to sgalvin1000@gmail.com