Biking home from work on Tuesday I came across a beautiful still life of my neighborhood: a whiff of citrus, a honk from a forklift, a dozen people huddled in the parking lot of my apartment furiously piling slightly dented cans into cardboard trays. One woman looked distraught at the mess, as gallons on gallons of orange fizzy water1 pooled wastefully on the asphalt. But the others sat there determined to salvage as much as they could. Some dove into the muck with bare knuckles. Another woman in a leopard print shirt, sported work gloves and already amassed a pile of 20 cases next to her old white Toyota Camry. Before I could say a word a bubbly2 man from the seltzer warehouse responsible for the spill put a full case of IZZE into the milk crate of my bike, “Here take it, we just have to throw ‘em out anyways.”
My ol’ single speed road bike started to tip over with the added weight. I quickly ran the case over to my porch and dropped off the sparkling water-juice combo with my bike.
“Can I get some more?” I asked sheepishly. “I live across the street from y’all.”
“Please, please take as much as you can,” the same worker said. His gold chain glistened in the afternoon glow. “These are the good days, huh?”
The worker abruptly turned and wagged his finger, “Sister! Sister!” he said to the woman in leopard print as she was hauling another couple cases to her car. “Sister! You’re leaking. One of them cans is leaking!”
She put the crates on the ground, found the problem can and hucked it into the communal dumpster before starting to load more IZZE into her car. The worker returned to the mess, “Most of the cans is fine, especially if you get the ones in the middle.”
I checked my phone and saw a text in my roommate group chat from Fiona. She’d secretly nabbed a can before running off to get her car worked on and was encouraging us all to get in on the action. But this warranted no sneakiness, it was clear there was enough to go around. The warehouse we shared a parking lot with was a subsidiary distribution center for various brands of seltzer. Inside they packaged them on a conveyer belt and got them ready to ship to grocery stores around Portland. We drank a lot of seltzer in our apartment and it always felt like an unjust taboo. We couldn’t simply take spilled IZZE or Spindrift. Though, every time I returned from Winco with a box of Spindrift I felt silly. We saw thousands of them move back and forth in our parking lot everyday. But, nobody was crying when the IZZES fell3 and the workers let us know we lived in a community of abundance.
“Aren’t you glad we don’t package beer?” the worker said, taking a big inhale. “If we packaged beer it would smell terrible when there’s a spill. But we package juice.”
The mango smell still felt fresh. It was a hot summer day, but the juice hadn’t started to get sticky—maybe it never would. A man had backed his Ford pickup flanking one side of the forklift and blocked traffic coming down the street. “I wish it were beer,” he said, loading a few crates into his truck bed.
Out popped another forklift from the warehouse beeping its horn as it came around the corner into the parking lot. It wielded two pallets of assorted flavors of Spindrift. The operator parked behind the crowd, then got off, scratching at the hairnet covering his beard. “Still a lot of IZZES huh? Next time I’ll try and spill the Spindrifts.”
The forklift operator hopped in to help gather cans from the pile. Neighbors from around the block came and went, always sure to leave with at least one crate worth, though it still seemed like the pile was endless.
“I felt this day must be coming,” I declared to my new warehouse friends. “I’d never seen you guys drop a can before, but the whole setup seems like a pressure cooker.”
Sometimes my work commute makes me nervous. Living in an apartment across the street from a seltzer warehouse and caddy corner to another seltzer warehouse, obviously has its perks. Though it can also feel like Frogger biking between forklifts delivering pallets of fizzy water and the semi-trucks hauling them away. It wasn’t even a year ago when a freight truck crashed into a cyclist, killing Portland chef Sarah Pliner on her way to work.
The day starts early and ends late for the bubbly packers. Living in the basement I am slightly shielded from the noise of the operation, but my roommate Leah4 reported hearing the jazz ensemble of forklift honks start at 6am sharp. This accompanied their rotating playlist of “Ms. Officer,” “Party Rock Anthem,” and Banda Music throughout the day till quitting time at 10pm. This is particularly a problem around 5pm with the added stress of soccer parents parking their Teslas and Subaru Outbacks5 in our lot and letting their kids run amok in traffic. But that day we manifested abundance and the neighborhood gods6 delivered.
Really only thirty minutes had passed, when the pile begun to dwindle. I was not nearly as adept as the professionals gathering the cans and bringing them to their cars, but I had a stack six crates high on our front porch. Just the woman in leopard print, the two workers, and myself remained to handle the last few cans at the bottom. These ones were the most dented, but still they were mostly drinkable and only slightly coated in sparkling mango fluid.
My neighbor James came riding up on his beach cruiser taking a pull from a Twisted Tea tall boy. The original worker greeted him the same, handing James the last crate of IZZES he assembled. James thanked him and then I did too before calling it a day. We walked into our backyard to lock up our bikes.
“Hey, did you get some cans?” James asked me.
“Yeah. I got a whole bunch earlier, glad there was still some left for you.”
“I don’t even really like them, but they’re 10 cents a pop, how can you say no to that?” he tossed the Twisted Tea into a big white trash bag at his back door. “My kid’s mama likes these though, maybe I’ll give some to her.”
Inside the apartment I was excited to share in our plenty. Fiona got back from the mechanic, while Leah exited their room having finished teaching a Hebrew lesson for a soon to be bat mitzvah-ed young pupil. The IZZES from the street sat with us, now organized into a new neatly packed pile on our kitchen island.
“I can’t wait to mix them into a nice summer gin drink,” Fiona said gathering some ice.
“What even is an IZZE?” Leah asked. “Is it soda? They’re not overly sweet right?”
“They’re basically a seltzer mixed with fruit juice, so they don’t add any extra sugar,” Fiona said, pouring each of us a chilled glass. Together we had our first sips.
“Are you getting rid of those books?” Leah asked, pointing to a pile on our coffee table. On top was a Carsen McCullers novel, below it one by Gabriel García Márquez and a Marx-Engels Reader.
“No,” Fiona responded. “I found them in a free pile actually.”
“Woah these are actually good,” Leah said, as they picked up The Member of the Wedding with a very 1970s vintage paperback cover. “Can I confess? I don’t really like the IZZE.”
We laughed and laughed. To be honest, I don’t think they’re particularly great either. But the best things in life are free and in a pile in the street.
Merchandise from management’s perspective.
Sorry for that, he was laughing normally.
Save for maybe a manager for a quick second.
Leah is also a self-proclaimed light sleeper and uses earplugs.
Yes, BOTH kinds of Portland soccer moms
“The working class”