Eating out of a dumpster a turn of for some

[Cass]

Patrick Lyons stands in the middle of a Dumpster, staring at a can of meat. "I don't know who eats this stuff," he says.

He chucks the can aside and keeps on digging. His ball cap is slung low over his face; it connects to his long, thick, brown sideburns.

He digs down and -- jackpot -- he's found what he's looking for. He holds three small potatoes and a yellow bell pepper up in the air.

He's one step closer to a complete meal.

He places his bounty in a cardboard box and keeps foraging.

"One time a lady walked up to me and offered me $5," he says. "I told her, 'I'm not homeless. This is political.' "

Lyons is a freegan. He doesn't want to contribute to consumer society, so he eats for free whenever possible. Sometimes that means digging through Dumpsters behind grocery stores.

It's not as if this 23-year-old can't afford food. He grew up near Rice University, went to Lamar High School and now works at the Menil Collection. It's just that he's got strict principles -- and he needs to feed a lot of people.

For the last four years, Lyons has been involved with Food Not Bombs. Several times a week, about a dozen people gather together in downtown to share vegetarian food with the homeless. The grub comes from all kinds of places, including trash cans. Most discarded food, after all, is perfectly fine. Lyons and his friends eat it all the time.


http://houstonpress.com/issues/2004-...ure_print.html