GroceryLists.org

The largest such site in the world.

It's precisely what you think: reproductions of grocery lists the site's creator - Bill Keaggy, features photo editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch - has found at his local grocery store [Schnucks] while shopping.

He's up to number 550.

Amanda Hesser devoted her October 24 New York Times magazine column, "The Way We Eat," to his website.

Here's her story.
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Shop Write

If you are what you eat, then you are also what you buy to eat.

And mostly what people buy is scrawled onto a grocery list, those ethereal scraps of paper that record the shorthand of where we shop and how we feed ourselves.

Most grocery lists end up in the garbage.

But if you live in St. Louis, they might have a half-life you never imagined: as a cultural document, posted on the Internet.

For the past decade, Bill Keaggy, 33, the features photo editor at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has been collecting grocery lists and since 1999 has been posting them online at www.grocerylists.org.

The collection, which now numbers more than 500 lists, is strangely addictive.

The lists elicit twofold curiosity - about the kind of meal the person was planning and the kind of person who would make such a meal.

What was the shopper with vodka, lighters, milk and ice cream on his list planning to do with them?

In what order would they be consumed?

Was it a he or a she?

Who had written ''Tootie food, kitten chow, bird food stick, toaster scrambles, coffee drinks''?

Some shoppers organize their lists by aisle; others start with dairy, go to cleaning supplies and then back to dairy before veering off to Home Depot.

A few meticulous ones note the price of every item.

One shopper had written in large letters on an envelope, simply, ''Milk.''

The thin lines of ink and pencil jutting and looping across crinkled and torn pieces of paper have a purely graphic beauty.

One of life's most banal duties, viewed through the curatorial lens, can somehow seem pregnant with possibility.

It can even appear poetic, as in the list that reads ''meat, cigs, buns, treats.''

One thing Keaggy discovered is that Dan Quayle is not alone - few people can spell bananas and bagels, let alone potato.

One list calls for ''suchi'' and ''strimp.''

''Some people pass judgment on the things they buy,'' Keaggy says.

At the end of one list, the shopper wrote ''Bud Light'' and then ''good beer.''

Another scribbled ''good loaf of white bread.''

Some pass judgment on themselves, like the shopper who wrote ''read, stay home or go somewhere, I act like my mom, go to Kentucky, underwear, lemon.''

People send messages to one another, too.

Buried in one list is this statement: ''If you buy more rice, I'll punch you.''

And plenty of shoppers, like the one with both ice cream and diet pills on the list, reveal their vices.

Keaggy has always been a collector and recorder.

When he was young, it was rocks and key chains.

As a teenager, he published zines on freestyle biking and punk rock.

These were just a warm-up.

His collection of rocks in the shapes of shoes has been featured at the St. Louis Artists' Guild.

And in addition to his grocery-list Web site, he has an extensive personal Web site, www.keaggy.com (the grocery lists can be found from here).

At keaggy.com, there is a segment called ''What's for Dinner?''

Every time you click on it, a new dining haiku appears.

There is a sandwich Web log, to which he adds photos of the sandwiches he eats every day during National Sandwich Month (August).

A page called ''mageirevo'' features ''incredibly vague recipes,'' including one for ''happy fun pork time,'' and a page called ''found in the street'' is dedicated to junk (not what he calls it) that he found when he biked to work from May 1 to May 31.

And in ''age: 30,'' Keaggy posts photos he took of himself every day of his 31st year, along with a brief description of what he was doing that day, which is almost as addictive as the grocery lists.

Keaggy finds most of his grocery lists at Schnucks, a regional chain with a branch down the street from his home. (Some lists have been sent in by a cashier at a grocery store in Iowa and someone in Tucson who once collected grocery lists.)

Keaggy spots the lists in grocery carts, mostly, and sometimes in the checkout line or on shelves.

''The funny thing is you never find them on the ground,'' he says.

''On the best day, I'll find two or three, and on a bad day I'll find zero.''