Survival Eating: Life On The Street

A few months ago she lived with her parents in the suburbs of Toronto. When friends from Saskatchewan finished a visit, and were about to leave, she impulsively dove into their car almost literally as they pulled out of the driveway and came west with them.

Taliah* came to Saskatoon with just $60 in her pocket and the clothes on her back. She quickly found work in a retail shop and couch surfed at her friends place for the first few weeks until she managed to save up enough to get an apartment.

I met her just as she was moving into her new place. She had overheard her boss asking me how the starvation project was going and, as a recovering anorexic herself, took interest. We began to hang out off and on, settling into a sibling-from-another-mother friendship and she’d excitedly tell me of her new apartment, her new girlfriend, and her new life here in Saskatoon.

To her it’s a spontaneous adventure, one she’s young enough to jump into with a devil-may-care attitude but mature enough to appreciate for the life experience that it is. There are ups and downs, but she’s more or less on her own, doing her own thing.

Which means paying her own bills. With rent, a damage deposit, utility hookups, and several other costs coming out of her first few paycheques, Taliah found herself with not a lot left over for food.

During one of her visits I discovered that the only thing she’d had to eat that day was some expired baby food that she had been told to throw out at work. As she talked animatedly from the living room couch, unaware of what I was doing in the kitchen, I heated up a Lean Cuisine meal for her. As she ate I packed her a care package of tuna, fruit, and a few other odds and ends.

When I handed it to her she took it, thanking me, but taking a handout from a friend can be tough on someone’s ego. Especially on an independent someone.

A few nights later she dropped in for another visit. We’re both night owls, so hanging out and chatting at midnight wasn’t uncommon. On this night I asked if she needed more food, thinking she’d surely gone through the meager amount I’d given her by then. She grinned mischievously at me. “Dude – let me show you my world”, she said.

Some of the Burlesque performers enjoying the sunshine before heading to the venue for their show

Since her earlier visit the annual Fringe Festival had started up. Sections of the artsy Broadway area are shut down for a street fair and neighbouring venues host plays, burlesque shows, and other entertainments from around the globe. Buskers perform music and stunt acts in the street alongside face painting, caricature, and jewelry merchant stalls. Down one side street food vendors hawk everything from strawberry shortcake to dry ribs to cinnamon butter fried perogies.

During the day the streets are full of people taking in the various shows and wandering from food booth to food booth, enjoying mini doughnuts, Thai food, or basic hamburgers. At night the cops round up those who are silly enough to have open liquor in the street and as bright sunlight gives way to the glow of sodium arc lamps the crowds of university students and middle class families thin, their numbers replaced by the pub crowds and, in smaller numbers, the transients.

Taliah lead me to the “Security booth” area; a collection of chairs beside one of the food vendor tents. Thus began a music free version of musical chairs as some get up to go smoke a cigarette or a little pot, or beg for change from the bar patrons, and others take their place.

“It’s only 1:30″, she notes. “Let’s hang out here for an hour or so.” And there we sat, swapping stories and jokes with the security guards, cooks, and transients in that little corner on the fringe of the Fringe. There were one or two jib heads among them, but the mix of young and old faces belong mostly to clean, articulate people who happen to be either homeless or so broke they’re close to it. They have one thing in common: hunger.

An hour later (2:30am, for those keeping track) the bars had let out, people had bought their drunken munchies, and the last food tent was shutting down. “Showtime,” Taliah said with a smile. “The trick is not asking.”

This chap doesn't believe throwing out leftovers in front of hungry people is the right thing to do. I tend to agree.

I was still puzzling over this last sentence of hers when one of the cooks came out with a pizza and a half, the leftover slices that won’t keep overnight, piled into a pizza box.”Who’ll give me five bucks for this pizza?” he barks.

Blank stares all around.

“No? Ah, I tried” he shrugged, then set the pizza box down unceremoniously on the asphalt in the middle of the circle of chairs. “Dig in, folks.”

Taliah joined in on what was a very polite feeding frenzy, each person taking a single slice of pizza. The unspoken preservation of decorum among a small crowd of starving people isn’t, I’d wager, what most people outside of this group would have expected to see.

They ate slowly, savouring each mouthful before reaching for another slice. As the hungry people feasted the cooks gathered up the dry ribs, souvlaki, and chicken fingers left over when they shut down for the night and dumped them into a second pizza box. One man reached in, grabbed two fistfuls of dry ribs, and stuffed them into his pockets.

When it was apparent that the rest of them, with bellies full of pizza, were wandering off and the second box of leftovers was going into the garbage, she gathered it up to take home. “This is a few days worth of food,” she stated matter-of-fact-ly. She tapped the box. “The Fringe will be over soon, so I may as well enjoy this while I can.”

Living off of stale dry ribs and chicken fingers goes against everything I’ve been preaching here at The Hungry I as far as nutrition goes, but these are people with limited options.

Even so, the generosity of the cooks with the food they were about to throw in the dumpster had its limits.

One young man, who admitted he was “homeless” because he just “didn’t get along with [his] parents”, but planned to go back home in early fall when the temperature begins to drop, wasn’t willing to wait until the food tent shut down for the night. He went up to the booth among paying customers and asked “k’n I have some free food?” The cook chased him away.

He returned about a half hour later, shifting his tactic to “Come on, man, give me some free food. You’re going to in an hour anyhow and I’m hungry now.” Once again, he was chased away.

“The trick”, I recalled Taliah saying, “is not asking.”

***

*Name changed to protect the innocent. Well, when I say innocent I mean name changed to protect her identity. Well, when I say identity I… look, I changed her name to cut down on stalkers, okay?