The bread line was the most honest line in the city. Nobody stood in the bread line because they wanted to. Nobody stood there for fashion or trend or social media. You stood in the bread line because you were hungry. That was it. That was the whole qualification. Hunger. The bread line stripped you of every pretension. Lawyer. Laborer. Landlord. In the bread line you were all the same thing. A person who needed bread.

The Bowery Mission had a bread line every morning. I saw it in the seventies. Men in coats held together with rope. Women with shopping bags full of everything they owned. The line started at four in the morning. Four in the morning in January on the Bowery and men stood in the cold and waited for bread. If you want to know what dignity looks like it looks like a man standing in the cold for two hours without complaining because complaining would mean admitting that the cold was the worst part. The cold was not the worst part. The hunger was the worst part.

During the Depression the bread lines went around the block. You have seen the photographs. Men in hats. Men in suits. Men who owned businesses six months before and now stood in line for a piece of bread and a cup of coffee. The bread line did not care what you used to be. The bread line only cared what you were. Hungry. The bread line was democracy at its most brutal. Everybody equal. Nobody wanted to be.

I played guitar on the Bowery near the Men's Shelter in 1972. The men in the bread line did not give me money. They gave me something better. They listened. A man who has nothing and stops to listen to music has given you the only thing he has. His time. His attention. His willingness to stand there when standing there costs him his place in line. That is the most expensive gift anybody ever gave me. A place in a bread line traded for a song.

They call them food banks now. Food pantries. Community kitchens. The name changed because the old name was honest and honesty was embarrassing. A bread line said you are hungry. A food bank says you are food insecure. Food insecure. As if hunger were a settings problem. As if you could adjust the preferences and the hunger would go away. The bread line told the truth. The truth was ugly and the truth stood on the sidewalk in January and the truth had a face and the face was your neighbor's face. You cannot rebrand hunger. You can only pretend it has a nicer name.

See also: Pushcart, Corner Store