Food

Four and a half years ago I found a tattered passport photo and posted it on this site, kicking off an unexpectedly long run of noticing and posting similar stuff, one item at a time. It turns out that a lot of other people do the same; there must be something about the anonymity of found items and the anonymity of most of our readers that compels us to connect the two.

Over Christmas 2004 I was staying in Wimbledon, which as home to the legendary Wombles holds a special place in the hearts of found-item aficionados. Sure enough, it was there that I struck found-item gold. (Which means that I found, um, some items. Not gold.) Someone had emptied a huge pile of stuff into a skip in a quiet street, half of it overflowing onto the pavement — including dozens of sheets of blue cardboard covered in peeling rain-damaged photos.

Not just any photos. These were from some sort of sales convention (held in 1996, judging by the dates on them), and fell into two categories: one was Scholl footcare products; the other, some food court in Boston.

And so, ladies, gentlemen, and Wombles, I give you the Web’s LARGEST collection of found photographs of a Boston food court!