This Chinese spot with $5 General Tso’s. This beer spot with $1 tallboys. This Dollar General with the fire TP deals.

Spots I would hit, on foot, going forward.

That I wouldn’ta even known to hit, had I never had a reason to go straight north of my spot.

I had two types of routes: store pickups and home deliveries.

For store pickups, I unloaded up to a dozen boxes at a coffee shop or community center or school. For home deliveries, I delivered a single box directly to homes.

My routes, to start: North Philly home deliveries; Center City / South Philly store pickups; and Jersey ’burbs home deliveries.

Apprehensive af, early on, parking.

Certain streets drop-offs were on way blown.

Early on, circling blocks tryna find a spot, then walking for days carrying up to fifteen boxes—two, three, four at a time—to a given drop-off.

Before, taking cues from UPS and USPS and FedEx trucks I’d implicitly entered my box into the circuit of, whose structures were in the same structure-genre as mine, quickly learning the power of hazards.

Double park that bitch, flip em.

Act decisive.

Walk, carry boxes, open-close doors like you had a job to do.

Bc I fkng did bro.

Freakin finally.

And no matter how blown the street.

Even once I learned this, stressing about cars getting backed up behind me, on residential one-lane one-ways or rush-hour thoroughfares, say.

Before realizing it didn’t fkng matter.

HAZARDS.

AUTHORITATIVE MOVEMENTS.

Death staring the occasional impatient fuck getting their panties bunched when I skrt-ed to a stop in front of them, on their commute-route.

Like Bitch I got produce to slang, eat a bag o’ dicks howbout.

The greetings from baristas, bartenders, security guards I’d get pulling up with a three-stack bursting with dino kale, green onions, beet leaves sprouting out their tops.

This was everything.

And not even the greetings I’d get; the greetings the role I was playing, the hat I was wearing, would.

“Veggie Guy!”

“Fruit Dude!”

“Yo—Produce Bro pulled up!”

Like eagerly digging through the café box we’d throw employees of each pickup site, as a gratitude-offering for agreeing to be a pickup site.

Blasé-blasé, hella zatted, gothed-out South Philly hipsters, who’d otherwise, if a mere customer, shade me as OBVIOUSLY AGGRO CLEARLY TOXIC for my bro-fit, my baby tees, smiling openly offering me road espressos and shit.

Fkng gang bro, so sick.

“Oh no, I got it,” I’d say, snagging the ten-stack of broken-down empties customers had returned to be reused, that a lady-barista was struggling with. Tossing em into my van and hitting it.

But most of all.

My own produce game.

Juice game.

The real reason this job was my shit.

That fortnightly $50 veggie box credit.

Too clutch.

Picking out greens, fruits, root veggies. To add to the rotash.

Discovering all sorts of obscure shit I wouldn’t have fucked with otherwise.