ABC No Rio lets FNB use their kitchen on Fridays and Sundays.

Observing a Food Not Bombs event makes it easier to shop for produce. The moment I touched slime when sorting through old broccoli, deciding which vegetables were safe to feed to the homeless, I realized the silliness of fretting over a dented pepper at the corner bodega.

On a Friday in April shortly before 1 p.m., there was no way inside ABC No Rio, the art and activism hangout on New York’s Lower East Side that lends its kitchen to Food Not Bombs. The doors, marked up with graffiti, were locked, but they also didn’t have handles or knobs. There was a set of four buzzers, but punching them accomplished nothing. A placard next to the stoop read “Culture of Opposition Since 1980.”

Someone spoke up from behind. “Are you here for Food Not Bombs?” A kid with long brown hair hanging across his left eye poked his head around the outside hallway that enclosed the stoop.

He introduced himself as Pat, a high school senior who, instead of going to class, had arranged to spend most of his school days working at the John Heuss House, a homeless drop-in center on Beaver street. For the last few Fridays, though, he’d also been helping out with Food Not Bombs.

Food Not Bombs exists in 46 of the United States and on six continents. Every branch operates independently, but shares the same guidelines: get local grocers to donate ugly produce and other unwanted food, cook up a vegetarian meal (the NYC group is vegan) and serve it to the needy, no questions asked. The ABC No Rio branch gets its food mostly from Perelandra Natural Foods in Brooklyn.

The local Food Not Bombs website says that it was founded on anarchist principles, without leaders or hierarchies. Every Friday and Sunday, anyone who wants to help out with Food Not Bombs can show up in front of ABC No Rio. “There was no walk-in tutorial,” Pat said of his first visit. “It was just, ‘pick up a knife and start cooking.’” When the food is ready, the group brings it over to Tompkins Square Park in the East Village and offers it to anyone who is hungry.

These tomatoes and onions didn’t make the cut due to the puffy white mold near the bottom of the box.

“Usually we talk while we’re making the food, so if you’re willing to cut a tomato they’ll probably tell you what you want to hear,” Pat suggested.

Pat kicked the door a few times and eventually sat down on the steps. He talked about his desire to start carrying rope so he could scale walls, about the origins of his Mao Zedong tee-shirt, which he bought as a novelty item in China, about what he called the self-righteousness of leftists and about Critical Mass, the monthly rally where bicyclists flood the streets of Manhattan to raise awareness for non-pollutant transportation. Pat would be in attendance with his bike that evening.

A college-age girl with the keys to ABC No Rio arrived a few minutes after 1 p.m., gave a brief hello and let us inside.

The house rules certainly didn’t ban writing on the walls; every vertical surface was covered with graffiti, and a blacklight in the hallway gave an intimidating glow to the cryptic art. The girl led us to the second floor kitchen, where someone had neatly written in marker on the door, “Food Not Bombs Mash the Potatos Smash the State.” (A superscript “E” was wedged into “Potatos” to fix the typo.) We finally introduced ourselves — her name was Rudi.

Diane helps prepare a tomato and tofu salad.

We went back downstairs to grab the groceries. Rudi pulled out the food from a sliding-door fridge: an extra-long milk crate full of red, orange, yellow and green peppers, a damp cardboard box of lettuce, broccoli and indiscernible foliage, a crate of cucumbers and squash and an industrial-size trash bag full of bread.

The menu is dictated by what they receive from the stores, and Rudi decided to make stuffed peppers because there were so many. Potatoes, she said, are a popular donation in the winter. A lot of the donations are bread and produce so there’s usually a need to buy extra ingredients. Today, rice would be needed to stuff the peppers.

Before cooking, the inedible vegetables had to be discarded. Most of the greens were too slimy to be used, and those that passed the loose standards still had some rotting at the tips, or were covered in brown juice, which had left a stench on everything in the box.

During the sorting, another girl, Rosie, arrived. She had brown-red hair in dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail, and wore eyeglasses and one of those belts with spiky metal studs. When a question arose about a pepper with a brown spot near the stem, Rosie shrugged and said, “It’s Food Not Bombs,” as if to suggest that anything that wasn’t bombs was passable for consumption.

A song by Oingo Boingo played on a boom box while everyone chopped peppers in the dining room and discussed their plans for the next few days — a party here and there, a benefit for May Day Books, the Livewire music and activist festival, the anti-war rally on Saturday and the May Day rally on Monday.

Gaylen strains some potatoes to be mashed.

Meanwhile, Rudi gave money to Rosie to go out and buy rice. “Leader” is too strong of a term for the group’s anarchist principles, but someone has to make sure everything goes as planned. Rudi, an American Studies major at Brooklyn College, has been “bottom-lining” since two Januarys ago. She started visiting ABC No Rio for their weekly punk shows. When her friend, who was in a punk band at the time, went on tour and passed the Food not Bombs job to Rudi’s roommates, they bailed at the last minute and asked Rudi to fill in. Since then, she’s only missed a handful of Fridays, which she blames on oversleeping.

Food Not Bombs will make a temporary move to St. Mark’s Church soon, Rudi said, while renovations are being done on ABC No Rio. After years of legal battles, the administrators at ABC No Rio purchased the building from the city last year, and work is needed to bring it up to code; Rudi pointed out a shoe-sized hole through to the ground floor next to the kitchen sink as a noteworthy issue, and other holes, dents and dilapidations could be seen throughout the building.

A new round of chopping began as another girl, Diane, arrived. Of the group, she had the most radical hairdo — chunks of it were variously shaded, and some of it was randomly clipped to the side of her head. She had been taking time off from The Gallatin School at NYU, and she wore a white shirt with ripped sleeves that said “I (heart) my adjunct professor” on the front. At a later event, she wore a hat that advertised “Balzac,” the balloon ball toy from the mid-90s. She grabbed a knife and chopped onions while Pat chopped garlic, two more items that had to be purchased, since Rudi said it was impossible to cook without them. In the kitchen, Rudi added the vegetables to a pot of tomato sauce. This stew would be added to the rice to create the stuffing for the peppers, which were soon to be placed in the oven.

An older guy with wavy blonde and gray hair named Roger arrived to drop off split pea soup. For the last three or four years, he’s been donating extra food from a local Catholic Worker community. He waxed nostalgic about anarchy in the old days, when the movement was small enough that everyone knew each other. Once the dining room table was clear of stems and stalks, Rudi asked Pat to carry the day’s trash down to the corner, warning him not to get busted for unauthorized dumping. Pat asked me to keep an eye out, but then rushed ahead to the west street corner. He only took a few steps before spotting an officer, and quickly turned around, muttering an expletive, and heading to the opposite end of the block, where he placed the bag down next to a city trash can — it would not fit inside.

The food was almost ready to go, so Pat stepped out behind the building to select a shopping cart from ABC No Rio’s courtyard, which was at least 25 feet wide and 50 feet long with graffiti on every wall. A city parks sign that once belonged to ABC Playground — “No Rio” was painted in between the two words — was wedged between two rusty window bars, but so much of the sign was suspended in air that it seemed a minor gust might dislodge it.

The group hauls the food to Tompkins Square Park. The sturdy undercarriage of the red cart is great for carrying bulky pantry items, like bread and crackers.

There were three shopping carts outside, but Pat had instructions to pick from the two larger ones: a silver cart from Waldbaums and a red cart of unknown origin. He selected the red cart for its sturdier undercarriage and brought it out to the street to load up. The group left ABC No Rio at around 4:15 p.m., pushing the cart packed with a tray of stuffed peppers, a bucket of leftover stuffing, a tub of split pea soup, some plastic bowls, plates and forks and an industrial size trash bag full of bread.

“We’re not really pro or con anything outwardly,” Rudi said on the way to the park. Some Food Not Bombs groups give out activist literature along with the meals, but the New York City group only focuses on food. “I guess what’s radical about Food Not Bombs is that we get everything for free, we cook it for free and we serve it for free. But the most radical thing is that we don’t ask anything of the people we serve it to.”

Legally, a permit is required to do this kind of work, and Rudi said that Food Not Bombs never bothered to get one, because doing so costs money. Besides, legit soup kitchens like the nearby Trinity’s Service and Food for the Homeless have to buy produce locally. Carolyn Williams, who runs the kitchen and pantry there (and who has sampled Food Not Bombs cuisine), said that she relies on monetary donations and an annual stipend from the state. Food Not Bombs, on the other hand, relies on what would otherwise have been thrown away.

Rudi admitted that the lack of permit and paperwork, the stolen shopping cart, the street dumping and the state of the kitchen means that almost every aspect of Food Not Bombs is illegal. They’ve gotten in trouble with police before, Rudi said, and on Sundays, which are busier than Fridays, food is served outside of the park.

Rudi gets the impression that the police don’t really want to come down hard on them, which isn’t always the case at other branches. Food Not Bombs’ website says that co-founder Keith McHenry has been arrested over 100 times for serving food. On a more extreme level, the Los Angeles Times reported in March that the FBI’s Denver office listed Food Not Bombs as an anarchist group that may be associated with terrorism.

The cart was wheeled up to the southeast side of the park near the chess tables — the usual spot, Rudi said. People were hanging around, and a tall man wearing a woolen newsboy hat, patchwork pants and one of those cowboy jackets with two-way curving arrows on the breasts walked over. “The apple of my eye!” he exclaimed, and gave Rudi a hug. She greeted him by name — Manny — as he examined the food.

While they were talking, an older woman with thick blonde and gray hair walked over to the cart, inspected the contents, grabbed a bowl and served herself. Rudi, Rosie and Diane started serving as people lined up by the shopping cart. Once the initial crowd was fed, Pat, Diane and Rosie took portions for themselves.

It was a beautiful, cloudless day, temperature in the mid-60s. Rudi said that Food Not Bombs serves all year, rain or shine. In the winter, not as many people volunteer, but not as many people are in the parks either.

A man with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder and a boom box in his hand walked over. He acted as if it was his duty to provide music, and as soon as Rudi acknowledged his presence, he punched the play button and heavy metal music blared. The man nodded slightly and stared off into the distance. I tried to talk to him, but he just looked back, confused. “I can’t hear you, man,” he said, pointing to the speakers, “It’s right in my face.”

As AC-DC screamed through the stereo, another man who called himself “Black Jaximus” complimented the music and growled a few comical poems about himself, his sexual exploits and his warrior prowess. Amused by the ramblings, the man with the boom box told Jaximus that he had two questions for him, “What are you on, and can I have some of it?” Jaximus explained that he was about to run to the liquor store, and that he was willing to share.

Rudi realizes that some of the people she feeds have drug and alcohol problems, but said that it wasn’t her place to judge them. “The people that we serve in the park don’t eat healthy food like that otherwise, they don’t eat vegetables or stuff that’s good for them. The best service I can give to them is to give them healthy food once a week, and then let them sort their own shit out.”

Some diners help themselves.

In The Fray Contributor