What Is In This Jug: An Investigation
What Is In This Jug: An Investigation
A 10-gallon jug full of something gross was left in Philly, and I thought about it too much.
This is the first post I’m publishing under the Snakes and Sparklers umbrella. I know I promised things with a lot more journalistic integrity down the road, but I want to do something fun first. Mostly, this is really stupid. But anyone who has seen something like Out Cold knows stupid can also be fun.
Philadelphia under stay-at-home orders is a weirder place than it usually is. Certain places are very empty. Certain places are more crowded than they ever have been (Kelly Drive). The high-end stores in Old City and Rittenhouse are boarded up. There’s a ton of dick graffiti everywhere. The streets are covered in trash, but that’s kind of nothing new. It seems like in a lot of places life has just stopped moving, leaving only traces of former civilization, like a nuclear shadow.
There’s one particular relic I’m talking about here: this water cooler jug full of a mysterious, nasty looking liquid that has been on Cypress Street between 10th and 11th in Center City for about two weeks now, according to Philly journalist Jim MacMillan’s pleas to the city on Twitter to at least move it or something.
I looked at this photo for a while, trying to figure out exactly what it is. Is it piss? I can tell you that in all of my years in Philadelphia, I don’t think I’ve gone on a single jog, bike ride or walk for more than 5 blocks without seeing at least one piss bottle. But this would be … a lot of piss. Like … too much piss. This would imply someone coming back to this spot on Cypress Street between 10th and 11th in Center City for the sole purpose of pissing in this water cooler jug over and over, and then leaving it there for about two weeks.
Look. This could totally happen in Philly. I’ll admit that. But I’m hesitant to go with this theory just yet, if for no other reason than I really don’t want it to be true.
My second theory is, based on the sharp contrast in colors in there, that it’s actually two substances that just don’t mix. If my Italian heritage and chemistry background have taught me anything, it’s that a nice vinaigrette separates when you make it, so you have to shake it up for the vinegar and oil to combine.
But that would not explain why it ended up in this water cooler gallon jug, where it certainly did not begin its life. But let’s look at this particular block of Cypress Street between 10th and 11th in Center City for clues.
Thanks to modern technology, I don’t actually have to leave my apartment to see what’s around. I can go on Google Maps. Let’s virtually go to the spot where the original photo was taken.
This particular block of Cypress Street (between 10th and 11th in Center City) is more of an alley than a street, so I don’t think there will be many businesses. There is, however, that dumpster there. So it could be something dumped from a nearby restaurant. Let’s go back to the map.
The two neighboring streets, Spruce and Clinton, are largely residential, too. (And very charming, in my opinion.)
So, there’s no way to easily assume that it’s refuse from a restaurant, like it would be if there were something like Famiglia Cacciatore Ristorante Italiano right there on the corner, where there would be a giant vat of vinaigrette to dump in the alley and then forget about for about two weeks. But this is, as we say in the restaurant business, a Fuck Ton of Vinaigrette. This is more than any household needs. And I’ve worked in restaurants. They typically don’t make a habit of storing salad dressing in water cooler jugs.
Another option is that this is cooking oil. This theory works well with the fact that this street is residential. Under stay-at-home orders, people have decided that they’re too good for mindlessly scrolling their phones and grinding their teeth to a fine powder, and have taken up hobbies like making sourdough from scratch. Maybe someone decided they were going to make beignets or fancy fried chicken. The darker color at the bottom could be sediment left over.
I know from my own experience frying things that getting rid of the oil is a pain. I know I’m not supposed to dump it down the sink. So usually what I end up doing is straining it into a jar, leaving it in my fridge until I move to a new apartment, and leaving it for the next renter.
Maybe this person had a similar dilemma. After batch after batch of whatever fried food they made (I’m not sure what it was and frankly I don’t care. It’s not important to this case.), they might have realized they have gallons of leftover oil, now too full of sediment to use, sitting in their small Center City kitchen. So, with less foot traffic and an air of superiority that only comes from living in such an expensive neighborhood, maybe they just stashed it near (not in) the closest dumpster to make someone else’s problem. In this case, it became MacMillan’s.
And now it’s my 10-gallon cross to mentally bear. And I want this investigation to have an end, god damn it. Am I going to march down to Cypress Street between 10th and 11th in Center City, maybe open the jug to give it a little sniff? Maybe a quick little taste? Absolutely fucking not. I’m not about to break quarantine for the sake of ingesting garbage, no matter how committed to investigative journalism or bored I am.
I can do the next best thing, though, and ask my friends and the internet. So, I posed the question to my modest (but intelligent) Twitter following and my modest (but also intelligent) friends.
My friend Matt offered this:
I hate it, too. But we can’t just back away from questions that make us uncomfortable. Big Brain Bad Boys like Jordan Peterson have made sure to tell us that ad nauseum.
Philadelphia is full of litterbugs, so Matt might be onto something with his food truck theory. But those have been closed for a while now. Much longer than two weeks. And if this was from a restaurant, they’d need to walk with this for at least two blocks to this randomly placed dumpster. But why? Why does this vinaigrette need to be hidden away from the rest of their garbage? It just doesn’t add up.
Another friend backed up my vinaigrette theory (actually he specifically guessed raspberry vinaigrette), but we both couldn’t think of a reason for either a restaurant to tote their leftover vinaigrette across the neighborhood, or why civilians would have that much vinaigrette and store it in such a way before never using it and throwing it all away.
Another friend suggested larvae and I dismissed that scenario from my mind immediately without a second thought.
Another friend went the human waste route, positing that the culprit, concerned with keeping the neighborhood clean and property values sky high, used a funnel system to keep it all in the jug.
Yet another friend suggested human waste AND tobacco spit, and I didn’t like how possible that was. I’m also gagging thinking about a 10-gallon jug of tobacco spit sitting in someone’s house. Or outside in the sun for two weeks. I’m not sure which is worse.
It was around this time that I had a thought. Why am I doing this? No matter what it is, why it’s there or how it got there, at the end of the day it’s just trash. There’s plenty of other trash all over Philadelphia. I’ve seen trash on the sidewalk in Philly on at least five separate occasions.
Is my need to find out exactly what is in this jug, who left it there and why it exists some byproduct of cabin fever, having been sequestered to my apartment for two months now? Am I claymation Ben Wyatt in a Letters to Cleo shirt? I have a degree in journalism from a reputable university, and I’m spending my few moments of creative energy and productivity on whether or not a giant jug left on Cypress Street between 10th and 11th in Center City is filled with vinaigrette (raspberry or otherwise), cooking oil, or piss. In a time where the world is so uncertain and scary, why am I spending so many of my mental resources on this?
It reminded me of the summer after I graduated college. I was unemployed, and therefore spent a lot of time at home (read: my girlfriend’s apartment) in basketball shorts thinking of “clever” story ideas that would totally be worthy of money from editors, or what I thought were thoughtful and insightful blog ideas. Just a ton of restless, grossly misdirected creative energy.
And then, in this moment, I became sad, anxious and claustrophobic, with the realities of quarantine and the stay-at-home order and its effects on my psyche becoming more prevalent. As if with the flip of a switch, the mystery I had devoted my afternoon to suddenly deflated in front of me. The appeal was gone. It was a fleeting spark in a time where we’re so ready to cling onto anything resembling spontaneous entertainment or the mystique of the outside world from which we have been hiding away.
The jug could have been left there by intergalactic travelers who wanted to share their fuel that allows for lightspeed travel, disguising it as common Philadelphia litter, and the only person who knew about it was Tom DeLonge. It still wouldn’t change the fact that I’m stuck inside right when it’s starting to really get nice outside and the days are getting longer. I miss my friends. I miss baseball. I miss sitting outside and drinking beer with my friends—sometimes even at a baseball game.
So, what is in that jug, you ask?
Who cares.
And now, your Snakes and Sparklers musical guest, Fontaines D.C.