wesfoster_
The Kitchen Hand
I love an alley. I mean a real alley — not one of those faux alleys where trendy restaurants set up tables or those tidy mews leading to the entrance of an artisanal brewery. I mean an actual working alley.
I love the contradiction of alleys. They’re public spaces, but the public isn’t expected to visit them. Alleys are for working people. The people who are rarely seen by customers in the front of the shop. Delivery men, kitchen workers, stock-boys, garage hands. The ungroomed, unbrushed, unsuitable for public viewing.
I love the honesty of an alley. The complete absence of pretense. They’re strictly utilitarian spaces. Nobody cares much what an alley looks like, so the character of any given alley is organic rather than designed. People leave stuff there. They drop stuff, throw stuff away, abandon stuff. That stuff accretes slowly over time, in much the same way as a coral reef. The stuff in an alley grows and shifts and declines and grows again and moves and changes. Because that’s what life does.
I love an alley.
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