I've got beef with MePA

Living so close to the Meat Packing District, I often take for granted all of the many perks that come along with the territory. Multiple celebrity sightings. Amazing shops like Diane Von Furstenburg, Stella McCartney, Bodum, Scoop, and a plethora more. Restaurants that are small in stature but run by gastronomical giants. But there's one thing I don't love about MePa, and that would be, well, the meat.

I'm not talking about the beefy biker dudes that hang outside Hogs and Heffers, or the roided out B&T guys who troll the streets in their clingy shirts and spiky hair. Nope, I'm referring to the actual Grade-A slabs of beef that comes out of the Meat Packing plants. Most days, I avoid the onslaught of raw meat being hoisted into trucks by men wearing blood-stained white aprons simply by taking another route. But on early morning walks to the gym, or, as in the case of yesterday, a mid-day run along Washington Street, I find myself right in the thick of this ghastly scene.

So on yesterday's fateful run, I ran smack into one of the grossest things I've seen in NYC, one of those moments that makes me question why I'm not a vegetarian. It was a large bin of what meat (looked like raw bacon) being poured from a forklift into the bed of a truck. It was as though these pink, fatty strips of meat were falling from the sky. As I quickly crossed the street to avoid any kind of soaking from this rain storm of meat, I had to wonder: Where was this rejected meat going? Let's hope not to a restaurant near us!