Harvesting Winter

IMAGE: A block of Thompson Lake Ice, hauled onto the surface with tongs. All photographs by Nicola Twilley. In 1805, a twenty-three year-old Bostonian called Frederic Tudor launched a new industry: the international frozen-water trade. Over the next fifty years, he...

Food Cart Factory

IMAGE: A city on a trike, Worksman Cycles, Queens, New York (all photos by Nicola Twilley unless otherwise noted). The oldest bike manufacturer in the U.S., Worksman Cycles, also happens to be the home of two American food vending icons: the Good Humor ice cream...

Spaces of Banana Control

When Paul Rosenblatt answers the phone, he says “Bananas!” IMAGE: All photos from our visit to the Banana Distributors of New York were taken by me, unless otherwise noted. Rosenblatt ships a million boxes of bananas every year from the Banana Distributors...

Eating the Street

IMAGE: 2:30 p.m. in Mexico City…. time for a snack! All photos by Nicola Twilley, unless labelled otherwise. Mexico City’s streets are dense with food vendors. Statistics are hard to come by, since the industry is largely unregulated, but in her 2007...

The Axis of Food

IMAGE: Watermelons at the Central de Abasto in DF. All photos by the author unless otherwise noted. IMAGE: La Central de Abasto from a helicopter. Photo by Oscar Ruiz. La Central de Abasto de la Ciudad de México is enormous. It sprawls across a 327 hectare site on the...

Day Out | Sugar in the Raw

IMAGE: Mossman Sugar Mill. All mill photos by the author. Last month, BLDGBLOG and I joined a small group (consisting mostly of wheat farmers on a busman’s holiday) to visit Mossman mill, which is just up the road from Cairns. As it happens, we are apparently on...