See You on Saturday: We’re Very Excited About this Free City Conference about Food. Logo by Nikki Hiatt.
Nicola Twilley may have only been a Manhattanite since October, but with the help of Californian Sarah Rich, she’s managed to put together one of the most cutting-edge discussions on food and New York City we’ve come across.
The mission of The Foodprint Project–it’s Saturday–is to talk about the ways, mostly hidden, that food and city geography intersect, says Twilley. “When you look at city through the lens of food,” she says, “what do you see?”
That’s a subject after our own hearts here at Edible, and the topics of Foodprint NYC’s four panels don’t disappoint: There’s Zoning Diet: How do zoning, policy, and economics shape New York City’s food systems? Then Edible Archaeology: How has today’s food culture in New York been shaped by social changes, economic fluctuations, and technological innovations throughout the city’s history? Followed by Culinary Cartography: What can we learn when we map New York City using food as the metric? And then Feast, Famine, and Other Scenarios: What are the opportunities and challenges of New York City’s possible food futures?
And the power-playing panelists—everyone approached said yes, says Twilley, even though she’d never even met the majority—are basically a who’s who of folks to get to know if you like to think deeply about this kind of stuff: food culture-focused academics, social scientists, the street vendor organizer Sean Basinski, the former Times food critic William Grimes, and a lady who studies historical menus and cookbooks in the public library. (Get the full roster of panels and speakers here.)
The co-hosts became friends when Twilley lived in San Francisco-she runs the very well-named blog Edible Geography; Rich is a former senior editor at Dwell magazine who also worked on the Slow Food Nation blog, now called CivilEats-and put together the event in just one and half months, starting with a New Year’s Eve email from Twilley to Rich about her February trip east.
They hope it’ll be the first of a series, and so do we. Meanwhile, if you get there before we do on Saturday, save us a seat and a sustainable sweet, which will be provided free courtesy the fellow forward-thinkers at City Bakery.
Foodprint NYC: Saturday, February 27 from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Studio-X; 180 Varick St., Suite 1610. It’s free.
