DanMeade- GarbageCake.jpg

Last Saturday, I was getting on the F train at Herald Square just before midnight when I noticed this birthday cake sitting outside the 35th St. entrance on the windowsill of a building. It was still in its plastic case, though with a very thin slice missing.

I met Meade at Wogie's for a few boring drinks, then walked for 2 hours around lower Manhattan. We saw the typical, tourist sluttery of the West Village, the quiet, condoized East Village and SoHo, then the instant hipification of restaurant-supply Bowery, and the throbbing nightlife explosion of the L.E.S. (also haunted by shadowy condo towers rising everywhere).

After running into a soon-to-be-ex-co-worker on the train at about 2:45, I told Dan about the apparition of the cake. We returned to Herald Squaure and the 35th St entrance at about 3, to find a drunk thirtysomething woman sitting on the sidewalk a few paces from the cake, having a cell phone fight. The cake sat just where it had been three hours before. Someone had taken it out of its case and peeled back a layer of frosting, but it was unclear whether more cake was actually missing.

Dan's phone created this image for posterity.