Flag 11

CANTON (Stars)

The Open Door Food Pantry | Second Glance Thrift Shop - Gloucester, MA

Marks gathered over multiple weeks of exposure to the processing of items at the food pantry and sorting/pricing of donations at the thrift shop.

FIELD (Stripes)

Trader Joe’s - Peabody, Massachusetts

Shopping cart tracks from people waiting in line outside Trader Joe’s during COVID restrictions on how many people could be in the store at the same time.

CANTON DETAIL

CANTON STORY

This section of the flag was created at two different locations: the Open Door - a food pantry and distribution center dedicated to alleviating the impact of hunger in the Gloucester community, and Second Glance - a thrift store run by Open Door. Proceeds from Second Glance are used to support the work of Open Door.

I thought that Open Door/Second Glance was an important location to use for one of the flags because it’s a place used by so many different kinds of people. I think a lot of people overlap in spaces like these in America. Of course, many people receive support through food from Open Door, but it also provides a place for people to volunteer, opportunities for people to support their neighbors, a way for consumers to recycle their used goods rather than throwing them away, a place for local art projects like the Open Bowl dinner (where local artisans create and donate ceramic bowls to be used at an annual fundraiser), and Second Glance provides affordable clothes and home goods that would otherwise not be available at such accessible prices.

My family goes to Second Glance a lot. We drop off a lot of unused items for donations to be sold and we buy a lot of our clothes and home goods there. It’s a fun trip for us and we see a lot of friends there who also enjoy shopping at thrift stores. I don’t know that thrift shopping is particularly American but it’s a big part of how I live here and I wanted to include that in this project.

FIELD DETAIL

FIELD STORY

This section of the flag was made by shopping carts from people waiting in line outside Trader Joe’s during COVID restrictions. There were only a certain number of people allowed in the store. These marks were collected on an extremely cold night and there were a LOT of people waiting for their turn to go in to shop. When someone left the store and brought their cart back after unloading in their car a Trader Joe’s worker would take their cart and do a total wipe down to ensure that it was clean and safe for another customer to use. The clean carts were then lined up and ready for the next shopper.

I asked one of the workers there if I could put the flag section down under the queue of cleaned carts to collect marks. They agreed and put the plywood down under the carts. They said I could leave it there for a while to get good coverage from the cart wheels. My son was with me and we decided to go skateboarding at the other end of the parking lot to stay warm. After 15 minutes we came back to get the board but I didn’t see it there. There was a new person organizing and wiping down the carts and they hadn’t seen it. I asked them to go inside to find the person who had been helping me (I wasn’t allowed in due to COVID) and they grabbed him for me. He couldn’t find the plywood for about 10 minutes - someone had seen it and, thinking it was trash, had put it in the back room to be thrown out later that night. Finally he showed up at the front door with a huge smile and my piece of plywood. He was a super nice and helpful guy who definitely didn’t have to put the extra time in to help on such a cold night. We ran back to the car to turn on the heat and warm up.