Philadelphia Weekly

In 1932 Charles C. Ebbets scrambled 800 feet up the skeletal Rockefeller Center construction site to photograph workers eating lunch on a girder. The image is so well known it's a visual cliche. But think about this: 11 men sitting with feet dangling from a metal beam suspended above a concrete chasm, smoking and eating. Did each man scale the beam with boxed lunch in hand? Did a colleague hand it to them once they'd shimmied to the end? What were they eating? And what happened to the box after?

A similar scene unfolds every weekday in Center City, but usually minus the breathtaking death defiance. When the 12 o'clock whistle blows, hundreds of construction workers scatter for lunch. Philadelphia's largest outdoor dining community, they fall into four rough categories: cart, sandwich, anti-sandwich and diet.

You read that right. Turns out our city's construction workers are some of the healthiest eaters in the city. After being shown yet another modest meal that looks stolen from the pages of Shape magazine, I ask: "And the other 5,000 calories come from where, exactly?"

The Four Seasons' construction workers are pro-sandwich. Jim enjoys leftover pot roast from Father's Day while two others wolf down ham and cheese. A few feet away Kevin enjoys a turkey sandwich in the shade while being taunted by his comrades. "His daughter bakes him cookies! And he packs his lunch, and does the laundry too!" they howl.

Down the block Jim 2 and Bob have just finished sharing a hoagie. "We're fruity," jokes Jim 2. "We're watching our figures. It's bathing suit season."

"You know what I don't get?" says Jim 2. "Those guys who bring the pork chop sandwich, with the bone in the middle and all. How do you figure they eat that?"

The plumbers with Local 690 work on the Comcast Center and dine at the corner of 18th and Arch. Many of them are health foodies, eschewing both cart and carbs. Mike is preparing for a triathlon. He's eating low-fat yogurt with fresh strawberries and pineapple. John stabs at a salad with cheese, cauliflower, croutons and light French dressing. "I was eatin' from the carts, but 15 pounds later ... " he says, smacking his paunch to finish his sentence.

Jim 3, a glazier, finishes up his hummus and banana. He says sticking to a healthy, homemade lunch is hard. "You see everyone going to get a cheesesteak and you want a cheese-steak," he says.

And then there's John 2, an electrician and paragon packer, who's been bringing his own lunch for 38 years. Today it's eggplant parmesan, meatloaf, saltines, ginger ale and an apple. His "health kick" secrets include plenty of water, frequenting the gym, practicing tai chi and "eating plenty of Jersey tomatoes" in the summer.

The guys working on the Murano building at 20th and Market are a mixed bag. Some subsist on low-fat yogurt, fruit and water in the summer. Leon, a glazier who's been packing his lunch for 25 years, assembles a green salad with sardines. "It's just more economical to bring your own," explains Leon. "The food in the carts is good but it has no nutritional value. So no, I don't eat at those roach coaches."

Show of hands for the last time you saw a roach in a Coleman cooler. And with that, it's 12:30 p.m. and back to work.