Friday Bread Basket: 1/8/21
Putz putsch edition
This week’s Friday Bread Basket is a short one, because I’m not feeling particularly cheery these days, thanks mostly to all the madness going down in our nation’s capitol. Honestly, finding cheer from day to day has been a challenge for awhile now. (The news out of Georgia Wednesday morning was a moment of joy this week, but we didn’t get to bask in the glow of that one for very long, did we?.)
Like I said yesterday, it’s hard doing “normal” work under these circumstances, and really, I wish none of us felt like we had to:
On that note, I’ve just got one bit of bread related news to share with you this week, the story of Good Pizza Philadelphia, which I learned about from my Philly t-shirt making pal Noelle, of Xenotees fame.
Good Pizza Philadelphia
Good Pizza Philadelphia (@goodpizzaphl) is the work of Ben Berman, who has been dropping homemade pizza from his apartment window down to strangers below, in exchange for donations to worthy causes:
It started at the beginning of the pandemic, after he had to cancel a dinner party thanks to COVID. Rather than forgoing the meal altogether, he sent slices of his pizza down to friends below via a homemade pulley system. It was such a big it that he kept it up, all the while experimenting with different dough and styles of pizza including both thin crust and grandma versions. Eventually, he started asking his friends to Venmo him money, which he then gave away to charities involved in pandemic relief.
Word got out to others and his pizza-by-pulley operation became a thing. Ever since, he’s been slinging pizzas to strangers every Sunday night via a lottery system—20 people are randomly selected each week out of the more than 900 requests he gets. As of the holidays last year, he’d raised more than $30,000 to fight food insecurity and homelessness in Philadelphia. And he’s still at it.
If you happen to live in Philly, you should get yourselves on his mailing list.
Have a peaceful and insurrection-free weekend, see you all next week.
—Andrew
Ben’s pizza pulley reminds me of a pizzeria in Cuba who does the same thing! So interesting!
I love this! Thanks for sharing the pizza story.