Americans eat around 14 billion quarts of popcorn a year, according to The Popcorn Board, but Pat McCarthy is the first artist I’ve seen sharing it with the pigeons. Pigeon Fare is a working stainless steel pushcart that serves people and birds the same snack, made only from ingredients found in a pigeon’s natural diet.
Every surface on the cart serves as a label, and hand-lettered marker signs list the menu like a corner bodega: New York-grown popcorn, flax seed, serviceberry, safflower, Spanish peanuts, and vegan butter. A chrome pigeon with red striped legs sits on a vintage gumball dispenser full of seed mix. The popcorn is served in paper cones printed with black-and-white pigeon feathers. Even the drinks have their own branding, named Domaine Niknak, a 9% ABV Concord grape wine, comes in stubby bottles with yellow caps and photocopied pigeon labels.
I love the whimsy of it all. It’s funny and a little absurd, but it’s also a sharp reminder that packaging shapes who we think something is for. And just because you don’t have opposable thumbs or a large brain doesn’t mean you can’t share popcorn from a cart with humans.
