street eats
street eats is an instagram gallery run by rachel featuring a growing collection of dropped and/or abandoned food in the public sphere.
it’s a time capsule of modern city life illustrating the interconnectedness of communities and neighbourhoods, where residents agree to take on some degree of tolerance with each other on a level that can only be found within tightly packed cities, as hundreds of thousands of lives are buzzing about on the lookout each day for their sustenance du jour!
navigating a city often means spending a great deal outside with a need to be hyperaware of your surroundings. and more often than not, these surroundings can suddenly be interrupted by food.
food left out in public can be categorized as food dropped, food forgotten, or food intentionally abandoned, and what once belonged to the consumer now becomes a city affair, left to the rest of the population to deal with. as other people’s commutes cross paths with it, these food items suddenly become written into their journeys in some way or another, until eventually cleared out by the city overnight.
taking submissions! dm your piccys 🥒
the harvest was bountiful this year ❤️
0% care 50% rot 100% carrot
that bagel was snow good ! 😤
that’s a lot of carrots
while we have them here, who left it there and what were the events leading up to it?
are we seeing the whole meal or just a side?
did the owner fall?
did they set it out here on purpose, for the pigeons?
did they at least get to have one bite?
so many questions, rarely any answers, yet emotions were felt and actions were indeed taken leading up to the moment the food met its permanent resting place. all we get to see is the aftermath and how it interacts with our public urban space. pigeons, pavement, curbs, benches, etc.
street eats is ultimately about public and personal boundaries and what happens when the transient nature of food in urban space comes onto the scene, and now onto your screen.
just like the physical and mental interruption it causes in real life, the hope is that its effects are also similar online. street eats is a digital resting point. you’re invited to stop, stay a while, and contemplate the food you’re looking at, its contents, its journey, and the time and space it inhabits. :-)