"This is about the Foo in you. If everyone let the child in them come out, the world would be a better place," declares Foo, (short for Matthew). His New York accent slips through the gnawed cinnamon stick in his mouth and he concedes his roots are in the part of Manhattan "where the hippies are from." Foo had been at the PTA Thrift Shop in Carrboro earlier that afternoon where he purchased the oversized teddy bear -- flopped over his handlebars -- for "a friend with a hole in her heart."

(photographs taken on Franklin Street between Basnight Lane and Kenan Street in Chapel Hill)