45. SURVIVAL TACTICS

"Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses...."
                      -- The Lord's Prayer

                    Bougereau, William-Adolphe, Le Jeune Mendiants (The Young Beggars)
     A) Dine and Dash : A Method Acting we apply in fashionable restaurants. One eats well, and in the floating moment between desert wine and the check, bolts surreptiticiously out the door. No looking back, run very fast! Drawbacks include being chased by knife-hurling chefs, and cursed-at-like-pirates in front of an assembled floorshow / captive audience. Great raw performance art! - tho' kinda unsettling on a full stomach. Keep in mind this works only once, before you're banned from this particular, fine dining establishment for life, never to return without a disguise. Warning : try to recall exactly which sides of the street become off-limits, never underestimate the long memory, and keen eyesight, of restaurant owners and knife-wielding personnel.

     B) Backdoor Begging : Less daring than the above, and downright ingratiating....while patrons inside are spending hundreds of dollars on fine wines, creamy sauces, and artistic arrangement of the latest cuts of bread, paté, and cheese, we appear like beggars at the back door, with only our sincere hunger to offer. Soon, we're sitting on the back steps (safely) slurping soup, relishing the same expensive tidbits as the bona fide clientele, with the grateful petulance of Charlie Chaplin's sad tramp / littlest hobo......

                                                                                    Charlie Chaplin's Tramp (1915)
     C) Grazing : "I'm all lost in the supermarket"1.......BULK BINS section, please? Free pickings of dried fruit, seeds, and nuts (Omega 3s!) and in obtaining a nefarious candy high. Discretion is the better part of valor. This technique comes more highly recommended than shoplifting; the evidence is eaten, smart and final. Warning : Escorted ejections out the front door by store personnel have been known to occur.

     D) Grazing with Pleasant Interior Ambiance : Salad Bars! The rustic restaurant Le Commensal, on trendy Saint Denis St., introduced a strange, new consumer concept: paying for the food buffet by the weight of the items on your plate...we like to eat as we weigh in! (to keep the balance). One of our favorite menageries, in which we star as the wild animals.........

     

                                
       E) Bakery Hand-outs : Walking all-night to beg kosher bagels at Boulangerie St. Viateur. No self-respecting man or woman from the old country, standing behind stocked-to-the-brim glass cases of bagels, baguettes, croissants, palm breads, day-old pastries, etc. can resist skinny, pale, kohl-eye-rimmed, gypsy punks in tattered black lace, looking like Transylvanian-transfusion refugees, mewling meekly for a hand-out. Brown bags are filled heaping-full for the whining puppy dogs!

     F) Beer Heists : In Québec, there are a million scams for stealing beer, about as many as people unemployed. We participated in several organized seizures and topplings of beer trucks in the street, much to our passing-by delight. Small compensation for local brewery monsters Molson to pay for dominating the scene, permeating the daily stink of fermenting hops in the air, so characteristic of Montréal. Our treasured spots were back-alley bar doors left ajar in the summer heat, where we'd venture heists of a case or two. Admittedly, we were brazen thieves, always on the verge of a justifiable comeuppance.

     G) Garbage and Dumpster Diving : Karma clean! (but not squeaky clean). Gleaners 2, freegans, Deadheads and Rainbow kids around the world live on riches others consider dross. You'd be amazed what supermarket chain stores throw out in the way of perfectly good food. Free for the taking - just don't fall in! A pair of wire cutters comes in handy to break-open chained lids. Sadly, it is a criminal offense. Waste not, want not. 

     Everyday's a flea market on big city streets and in alleyways, we live in an overflowing, throw-away, material culture; a glut, some would say, of material wealth. Recycling is the key to environmental sustainability. I took great care / piety in rescuing dead people's personal memorabilia from dumpsters and placed in sad heaps upon the sidewalk. Grim-reaped, black-and-white photographs provided hours of heaven-sent contemplation (the most shocking photos I ever found were of Korean War P.O.W. executions, while the sweetest were (what I imagined to be) fond remembrances of long-lost-loves). 

1 The Clash, "All Lost in the Supermarket"
2 Varda, Agnes, Les Glaneurs et Moi (The Gleaners and I) (2000)