Jonathan Taylor writes:

As much as the High Line is everybody's favorite example of well-designed adaptive reuse of abandoned industrial infrastructure, it's amazing that, in an age of endless food jabber, the story of the High Line's role in feeding New York is not more talked-about. Perhaps it's because it belongs to the golden age of food industrialization, and goes against the grain of a preferred "artisanal" gastronomic past. (Click on image to see Father Knickerbocker devouring rail cars in 1938.)

But as food historian Rachel Laudan explains in a wonderful article, projecting such reigning preferences onto the past distorts it. And a free talk to be given on the High Line tonight by Patrick Ciccone should shed some needed light onto the scale and complexity of the food systems that it has taken to sustain a major metropolis, not just one's own kitchen table.

It's tonight at 6:30, in the Chelsea Market Passage section of the High Line, between 15th and 16th Sts.