The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [48]
Because of this run-in, Matt tends to see freegans as lazy people, freeloaders of the more responsible, paying society, who are all too willing to compromise their values to subsidize their personal needs. I don’t agree with the generalization; however, as I found with the Dunkin’ Donuts munchkins, there are some things that I simply do not want to put in my body, rescued or not. And with any activist or political group, there are bound to be tagalongs who might care more about their self-image than the movement’s true missions.
Then there are people like Sam Gerlach. Sam plays the cymbals in a riot marching band called the What Cheer? Brigade, based in Providence, Rhode Island. My brother is also in the band, and I’d seen her several times when they came to play in New York. My first impression of her was, Wow, there’s a really stunningly pretty new cymbalist in the band. During shows, like most of the band members, Sam wore face paint in warrior-like streaks or glitter around her almond-shaped eyes, and her clothes looked like they’d been hand stitched from various pieces of fabric to create form-fitting, raucous ensembles. Several months later, I was chatting with Chris and another bandmate, Mindy, who happened to be Sam’s roommate. Mindy mentioned that Sam basically subsisted off of the Dumpster behind a major supermarket in their Providence hometown, and the middle rack of their refrigerator was constantly filled with food that she’d freeganed and was communal for the rest of the roommates. There was always Brie for some reason, according to Mindy, and lots of nice cheeses in general. Hence, the middle shelf was handy for snack food, or for entertaining guests. She offhandedly referred to Sam as a “frugalista,” a word that had previously been unknown to me. I looked it up immediately and chanced upon a recent William Safire article from The New York Times Magazine. “A person who lives a frugal lifestyle but stays fashionable and healthy by swapping clothes, buying secondhand, growing own produce, etc.,” frugalista was defined in the dictionary. Sam apparently also freeganed all her clothes, and if they didn’t fit, she sewed them to fit both her size and her sense of style.
I wrote an e-mail to Sam the same day, asking whether I could pick her brain on freeganism. An hour later, she wrote back:
I must mention ahead of time, though, the importance to not “blow up the spots” is really high. That’s one huge beef people have with the NYC trash-picking tour (which I’ve gone on with friends and enjoyed): they name spots and post photos online, and it leads to stores getting so annoyed or worried that they make throwaways inedible before they throw them out, and then no one can rescue/ eat them. But otherwise, a chance to talk about myself and my self-righteous beliefs? I’m in!
Then she added a link to a recent post she put on Instructables .com about how to fix a specific problem with Dell laptops that had previously not been covered online, obviously proud of her handiwork.
Frugalista is the word that William Safire, longtime columnist on etymology, wished had been named the Word of the Year for 2008. It was inducted into the New Oxford American Dictionary that year, and he painstakingly dissected its genesis in his column. He traced its origins to a 2005 article in the Palm Beach Post, and it was picked up by a Miami Herald blog written by Natalie Mc-Neal called “The Frugalista Files.” The blog is still in existence, frequently updated with posts on lifestyles and topics that could be deemed “frugalista.”
Getting back to Sam, though: She told me that she began trash diving as early as high school. Growing up in Rhode Island, many of her peers were into it, too.
“These days,” Sam wrote, “I go trash diving less for political outspokenness than to just get a few nice, extra things in my fridge to share with my friends and roommates. It’s a bit like going shopping—except, of course, I’m not spending any money.”
When I asked her if she had run into any trouble with the law, since trash diving is, after all, illegal,