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