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

ROMA TOMATOES ON OLIVE AND BELLEVUE

"I watched these fall out of a guy’s brown bag and roll into the street,” wrote Pedestretarian contributor Anna Goren, “and I took a picture. Am I going to hell?” This is a question nearly everyone familiar with the concept of hell has asked themselves. According to somebody’s ideology, nearly everyone is deserving of eternal punishment, whatever form that may take. Nonetheless, based on my knowledge of hell, I would say Anna is probably not going there. Anything lasting an eternity seems implausible, and I can’t recall any circle of hell (I am best acquainted with Dante’s model) that was related to or contained tomatoes. However I would say it’s obvious that if such a hell existed, it would be one in which Anna constantly watched her own tomatoes roll away, perhaps while being laughed at by imps or other sinister mythological creatures. Of course, this damnation would be worth witnessing the actual moment of a food’s abandonment, as Anna did. She reports the tomatoes looked fresh, as they had just been purchased, but sustained some bruising on impact with the street.

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

GIN AND JUICE IN THE BUMBERSHOOT VIP HOSPITALITY LOUNGE

The Bumbershoot VIP Hospitality Lounge has many things—spaghetti in paper boxes, salad with many blueberries and one fig, Pop Chips, damp granola, Pop Chips. Drinks are a dollar off, and perhaps this is why Pedestretarian contributor Sierra Nelson and I found so very many of them abandoned on the balcony overlooking the “Tune In” stage, where Gary Numan was playing. I was very drunk; I think Sierra was only slightly drunk. We decided to sample this mysterious bounty. None of the drinks were missing more than a sip. They were in plastic cups covered in condensation, and were pale in a way that suggested they had once contained ice. We each tried a pink thing with a lime floating in it, then spent what was probably a long time figuring out what it was. Because of the music (which sounded fantastic, even from the height of the balcony) the conversation was mostly shouts of “It’s citrusy!” and “Do limes carry Hepatitis?” It was Sierra who identified the drink as some variety of gin and juice, causing me to call her a “palate sleuth.” I drank a small amount of a cocktail that looked like a Coke-based something, but was actually not carbonated and very sour. I spit it out and yelled “I’m drinking tobacco juice!” and then “I love this song!” because I was actually watching Gary Numan play “Down In the Park” and that is awesome.

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

WHITE BREAD ON S 176th AND 30th AVE S

This mostly-eaten bag of white bread was in a gas station parking lot outside a My Little Pony convention in Seatac. Teenagers in pastel felt pony costumes crowded the parking spaces nearest the doors, drinking bourbon. Some were eating Twizzlers and fried chicken, but there was no observable bread-eating going on. The bread looked soft, but its motel continental breakfast looks indicated it contained enough preservatives to stay spongy for centuries. No one buys bread from a gas station unless they desperately want bread, so it was odd that any bread had been discarded. Someone probably ate most of the bag of bread rapidly in their car, and then threw the rest into the parking lot, overwhelmed by nausea and/or a sense of defeat.

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

INFLATABLE TURKEY ON 26th AND ALDER

It was a uniquely exciting moment when I realized the object on my friend Rachel’s deck was a deflated rubber turkey and not a deflated beach ball painted to look like meat. She had been using it as a flotation device at the beach. “I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” she said, “It won’t inflate anymore!” I picked it up and blew into its rubber valve as hard as I could, but the valve wouldn’t open and it made my face hurt. It also made me a little dizzy. I stood there swaying slightly and recalling the intoxicating scent of the bin of beach balls at the Fred Meyer near the house where I grew up. The turkey still lay shriveled on the deck the next morning. The light an inflatable turkey makes the least sense in is daylight.

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

ZUCCHINI WEARING SOMBRERO ON OLIVE AND HOWELL

Pedestretarian contributor Bree Mckenna found this zucchini leaning against a telephone pole on Olive and Howell. Bree said she found the zucchini unadorned and “garnished it” with a hat. I wondered why she was carrying a tiny sombrero that day, though I can’t think of anyone more likely to have miniature articles of clothing on their person. When we lived together, we discussed constructing a popsicle stick house to store our bottles of vitamins in. Once we planned to meet for a drink at 8:30. 9:00 arrived and we had the following exchange of text messages:

Me:  “Hey, on your way?”

Bree: “EL gay cactus.”

Me: “Are you still coming?”

Bree: “New shoes, the lucky lass!”

I later found out she had been at a bar across the street.

Anyway, the reason she had a zucchini-sized hat in her purse was because she was on her way home to dress up a cat. She also had a cat poncho, which she reports does not look good on a zucchini. When asked if she had any thoughts about the zucchini, she said, “He looked hot, but cool.”

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

EMPTY PBR CAN BY THE EXHIBITION HALL AT BUMBERSHOOT

Surprisingly, this appeared to be the only secret beer discarded outside a beer garden at Seattle Center where drinks of PBR quality ran from 7-10 dollars. If beer gardens were actually gardens, I wouldn’t mind paying 7 dollars for a beer. I would love to drink Miller High Life out of a giant sunflower, especially if it was wearing lederhosen. Even a few marigolds in beer-themed planters would improve the standard beer garden experience. Beer Gardens are concrete corrals where confused, overheated people who are never quite drunk squirm on plastic chairs. I would rather discretely sip a PBR in the bushes outside one such “garden” any day. I was imagining a beer garden resembling Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory when a man reached into the bushes beside the lonely Pabst can and pulled out a half empty Mountain Dew bottle. He took a big gulp, dropped it back in the bushes and walked away.

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

POTATO WITH ANTS ON PIKE AND BELLEVUE

I discovered this half-eaten baked potato on the sidewalk next to a telephone pole one evening while walking to a party with friends. The potato’s lack of toppings apparently made it no less appealing to the many pavement ants that crawled on and around it. There were also several empty mussel shells, a package of wet naps, and an empty beer. The mussel shells led me to believe that at least some of this food assortment was from nearby Taylor Shellfish, where I once ate seven sautéed Mediterranean mussels for a review I was writing, although I am vegetarian and people eating shellfish always look to me like they are ingesting many small whole vaginas. The strangest thing about this group of discarded foods was that it was impossible to imagine how they had been transported. There was no plate to be seen, and why would anyone throw their plate away but leave their beer bottle and wet naps on the ground? Also, it didn’t make sense that someone who drinks on the street would be unable to finish a potato. I am considering buying a beer and a plain baked potato to find out if the beer somehow impedes the potato eating process.


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

REFRIED BEANS ON 13TH AND HARRISON

Pedestretarian contributor Timothy Rysdyke documented the three stages of his encounter with a to-go box of refried beans —the discovery of the box, the opening of the box, and the examination of the beans. The beans were in a parking space, suggesting either that someone drove off and forgot them, or a nearby restaurant has a compost valet service. He did not taste them and didn’t mention any noticeable smell. There was no sign of the beans’ former owner, but Rysdyke believes “It must have been someone really hungry, because who saves a big thing of refried beans like that?” To me the presence of only beans in the box implies there is another box containing a half-eaten burrito or enchilada without a side dish somewhere. Because this saddens me, I prefer to imagine they were left in a bean-phobic person’s private parking space as a prank.

MULTI-SNACK STRUCTURE ON 9TH AND PIKE

I was on my way home around 2 am one night in January when I found this snack-covered structure on a street corner near the Comet Tavern. The structure, which appeared to be made of a folding chair and a purple window frame, supported an eclectic variety of snacks, including microwave popcorn, Nutella, several half-empty bottles of fruit juice, salsa, corn chips, almond milk, and Frosted Flakes. A coat and an umbrella with a duck-shaped handle were resting next to the window/chair buffet, but it was unattended and the food looked like it had been exposed to the elements for at least a few hours. I approached it, considering eating a corn chip, but its resemblance to a shrine and/or a trap repelled me. There was something generally unsettling about it. I watched it for a while, and no one went near it or even seemed to notice it, though it was partly blocking the sidewalk. This menacing buffet’s apparent invisibility to everyone but me eventually bothered me so much I left.


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

TWO KINDS OF PIE FILLING ON BROADWAY AND REPUBLICAN

When Pedestretarian contributor Tara Atkinson told me she had seen two different types of pie on the sidewalk outside the Broadway QFC, I expected to find two whole smashed pies, or at least two semi-intact pieces of pie, and instead found what appeared to be just a pile of cherry filling and a pile of apple. The fillings looked like they had hit the ground with some force, and there was no trace of crust in the vicinity. When I pulled over on my bike to take a picture, a couple of panhandlers sitting on the curb told me I was one of many who had stopped for a closer look at the pastry wreckage. One of them said, “Kind of makes you want to eat off the ground, doesn’t it?” “Kind of does,” I replied, though in fact it was the most repulsive discarded non-meat item I have seen that was not partially digested. The characteristic QFC pie goo had dried just enough to remind me of dogs that sleep with their eyes open. It looked as if someone had sucked the crust off the fruit and spit it back out. I couldn’t even bring myself to smell it, though it likely smelled better than it looked. As I normally do not hesitate to eat off the ground, I’m not sure why I told someone I wanted to eat this notably unappealing pie filling.

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

DOG FOOD AND PEAR CORE ON 14th AND PINE

Pedestretarian contributor Willie Fitzgerald found this pear core and can of “Pet Pride Good n’ Meaty” dog food outside Porchlight Espresso. They had been placed on one of two black wooden boxes near door of the café like slime-covered and slime-filled candles on an altar. Willie says neither of these objects smelled, though he prodded the pear core and found it to be “moist” and “kinda gross.” While fruit cores are left in all sorts of places year-round, the can of dog food was puzzling, especially outside of the warm “discarded food season” when people throw half-eaten hot dogs and pizza slices around like rice at a wedding. According to Willie there was no indication of why the pear core and dog food were on the box, and “sadomasochism is a possibility, as is astral flux.” Because there is no one in the photo naked and covered with can-shaped bruises, the most likely explanation seems to be that someone ate the pear and then was too full to eat the dog food.

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

MARBLE CAKE WITH SPICY CHEESE TOPPING ON N. 9th AND DRIGGS (BROOKLYN, NY)

Pedestretarian contributor Baiju Prafulkumar Bhatt found this food item resting on top of a corduroy jacket in a Brooklyn neighborhood inhabited mainly by a mixture of “old Polish families and twenty-something recently graduated liberal arts majors.” Baiju says the dish, which was accompanied by a mostly empty, melting iced coffee, looked like a “moist, bready substance,” possibly a Reuben sandwich, topped with cheese. Poking at it with a fork made him curious and hungry enough to take a bite, revealing that the dish was in fact something resembling marble cake. The cake tasted of vanilla and chocolate, and the substance blanketing it was a cheese with a “spicy, Southwestern twang” Baiju believes was jack. He speculated that the cake/cheese was a “KFC Famous Bowl” style concoction, and noted that the cheese was melting visibly in the morning heat.

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

BAGEL SANDWICH ON DENNY AND OLIVE

Pedestretarian contributor Web Crowell found this bagel sandwich on Denny and Olive at 4: 37 PM. It was lying under a bike rack outside the Bus Stop bar, wrapped in cellophane and completely uneaten. Its neon-orange price tag read “1.75.” The sandwich’s wrapping was covered in droplets of what was hopefully rainwater by the time I retrieved it at 10: 32 PM. The sidewalk around the sandwich was scattered with enough cigarette butts to make me wonder if its owner had quit smoking and eating bagels simultaneously and hurled the sandwich out of their car along with their ash tray. The Bus Stop was empty except for a bartender and one patron, who both watched as I shook the water off the bagel and put it into my bag with expressions which seemed equally likely to mean “I was going to eat that,” and “Someone’s taking the roofie bagel.” Tasting it in the privacy of my living room revealed that it was not in fact a roofie bagel, but poppy and sunflower seed, with a thin cracked rectangle of cold, slightly dry cream cheese between its sliced halves. It tasted of the sidewalk in the same way old ice cream can taste of the freezer. The following night my roommate added hummus, avocado slices and a fried egg to the sandwich, which improved it drastically. We ate the whole thing, with beet and goat cheese salad.

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

MILK ON 11th AND THOMAS

The complete lack of even shattered remains of a bottle make this milk appear to have spilled in a violent and unusual way, like that lava lamp that exploded and killed its owner because he put it on a stovetop to make the blobs go faster. Pedestretarian contributor Kelly O did not report any corpses nearby, so either the corpses had been removed or the milk bottle had been recycled. Kelly noted that the milk had no smell, and that there was a large amount of milk, probably a whole bottle. It called to mind a time a bottle of olive oil fell out of my bag in South Lake Union, causing me to yell “shit bag” loudly enough to startle a group of Amazon employees. While profanity did alarm people around me, had I stood there sobbing, they would have assumed I had “emotional problems,” or perhaps that I was “schizophrenic.” We are probably warned against crying over spilled milk in order to avoid these labels. “The milk was a nice reminder not to be a crybaby,” said Kelly, “No use being a crybaby.”

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

ONION ON EASTLAKE AND MERCER

This onion was mostly hidden under a parked car on Eastlake outside the Mars Bar. It seemed intact except for a missing patch of papery outer skin. This exposed spot was whitish-yellow and embedded with tiny gray rocks from the pavement. Juice leaked from the punctures. An ambulance was parked next door with lights flashing and I imagined someone had dropped the onion because they were having a stroke. From then on I thought of it as the “Stroke Onion.” I imagined the onion’s former owner as a Russian peasant like the ones in old movies like The Battleship Potemkin.I always picture disasters as being very bizarre or dramatic and when I witness them sometimes the most horrifying thing is that they appear insignificant in comparison to the way I imagined them. The idea of an old Russian lady being rushed away in an ambulance while her new onion rolled under a car was so depressing I decided to make the Stroke Onion into the most cheerful dish I could think of, which was a stir fry. I sliced up about a third of the onion and sautéed it in olive oil, then added chopped bell pepper, asparagus, broccoli, and tofu. I seasoned the stir fry with soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, and rice vinegar. I added chopped zucchini last so it wouldn’t get mushy. The sauce-saturated onion slices covered the vegetables that couldn’t be cooked long enough to absorb flavor. I wrapped what remained of it up for future dinners.

BANANA PEPPER ON PINE AND PIKE PLACE

The corner of Pine and Pike Place is ghostly and magical on a May evening, like a single jelly bean left in a bag because no one knows what flavor it is, discarded on an ancient burial ground. Pike Place Market closes at 6 PM and some tourists are still wandering between Post alley bars in the fading blue daylight. At this hour of the day, in the absence of flavored honey and Pike Place Fish’s airborne fish corpses, Pike Place Market’s popularity with tourists seems even more arbitrary than usual. It looks the same as any brick or cobblestone street in town that was built on a foundation of hundred-year-old garbage and toilets that all overflowed simultaneously when the tide came in http://www.senior-inet.com/articles/article5.htm, but with a few remnants of the day’s business, like this shriveled banana pepper. It was near a produce stand that was enclosed in after-hours plastic. There was something sinister about it, lying withered on the cobblestones in near-darkness. I expected it to be intensely spicy, but the piece I shaved off with a pair of scissors tasted just like a raisin. Leathery, sweet and mysteriously not spicy, a shred of this pepper was the perfect thing to eat on a street deserted except for a few people who had travelled thousands of miles to watch someone throw fish.

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

APPLE ON PINE AND BOREN

Boren is so steep southbound traffic looks as if it’s dropping off the roofs of nearby apartment buildings, and this apple on Pine and Boren had shattered with such force it appeared to have fallen from at least that height. It was actually unclear whether it was one apple or two. Irregular chunks of apple littered the sidewalk, turning a glossy brown from what had probably been a day or two of exposure to the elements. The chunks were covered in narrow grooves that could have been carved by impact with the pavement or by a hungry rat or pigeon. The apple seemed so exposed on the bare stretch of sidewalk, cars rushing past it, it made me feel more exposed the longer I looked at it. A young couple carrying grocery bags from Whole Foods walked by and I stepped out of their way, avoiding eye contact. The apple looked as if it had been stared at since the sidewalk was paved, though the lack of mold proved it couldn’t have been there more than a couple of days. My increasing feelings of conspicuousness and my own lack of mold made me identify with the apple to such an extent that when I ate a piece of it, carved carefully out of the center of the biggest chunk, it felt like an act of cannibalism. It was warm from the sun and slightly too sweet, with a faint taste of decay. It was probably a honeycrisp apple.

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

PORK CHOPS ON 12th AND HOWELL

Countless things have been have been put in this mailbox on 12^th and Howell—utility payments, seasonal postcards, letters to grandmas and other relatives. One has to wonder why this package of pork chops was excluded. Perhaps it is because it was unwrapped, perhaps because of its lack of appropriate postage. The ability to raise questions like these is the essence of what we call “mystique.” Pedestretarian contributor Kelly O provided more questions than answers about this wayward meat. She did not witness any attempts to mail the chops, saying that rather they appeared to have been “abandoned.” Graying slightly around the edges, their complete scentlessness was inexplicable. Kelly stood alone on the sidewalk and felt overwhelmed by nostalgia for summer barbecues. Like the sex lives of celebrities, haunted houses, and all things that possess true mystique, the pork chops inspired an intense longing for barbecue, but completely failed to cause a barbecue to happen. There is nothing one can do in the wake of such failure but step away from the slightly spoiled precipice of the unknown and continue down 12^th to get pizza or something.

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