“A lot of guys that work in construction, they’ll pack their lunches all week long and then Friday’s treat day.”
VICTOR AND FRANK SHARED A SUNNY BENCH, matching red Coleman coolers on the sidewalk between their feet. The electricians weren’t far from their job site: Temple University’s new campus library, set to open in August.
“You caught me on a cheap day,” Frank says, taking a bite of his cheese stick. Frank is the “pusher,” slang for the job’s sub-foreman, who’s overseeing the implementation of the fire alarm system for the library. In July, thousands of books will be moved from the old library across the street onto shelves and into storage, to be retrieved by a so-called “Book Bot.” “Students just pull up an app, click on a book, and the robot finds it,” Frank says.
That morning, he’d packed a cheese stick, chopped pineapple, applesauce, Nacho Cheese Doritos, crackers, and a can of green tea. Often in the summer, their coolers are filled with just one thing: water. “When you’re working in the heat, you tend to eat light,” Victor says. Some days, lunch is just an iced coffee from Starbucks on campus; by the end of the summer, he says, his pants are loose around the waist. He’d spent the morning on a ladder, installing three light fixtures that glow from the library’s ceiling like massive halos.
Occasionally, Victor and Frank splurge. “A lot of guys that work in construction, they’ll pack their lunches all week long and then Friday’s treat day,” Victor says. And there’s a perk to being on campus when the students are away: no lines at the food trucks. Sometimes they go to the popular Burger Tank, and Victor likes to order pineapple or strawberry smoothies from the fruit truck on Montgomery Avenue.
The electricians will be long gone by the time the students come back for the fall semester, the first to study in the gleaming new Charles Library.
WHERE TO GRAB LUNCH NEAR TEMPLE’S CAMPUS
Yummy Pho
2012 N. Broad St.
215.265.2157
Maxwell’s Caribbean/American Takeout
2200 N. 17th St.
215.787.2700
Champ’s Diner
1539 Cecil B. Moore Ave.
215.769.0995
champsdiner.net
Tai’s Vietnamese Food
1835 N. 12th St.
215.232.3711
taisvietnamesefood.com
Koja Grille
1600 N. Broad St.
215.763.5652
kojagrille.com
