Last night I went out with a couple of friends to grab dinner and on our way back we passed this lady and her contraption sitting half-way in an alley:

That fire HAS to be illegal! (Though I'm sure the woman was glad of its warmth. It was absolutely frigid!)
There might have been a squeal from JS, because she dashed over and immediately started poking at the small basket filled with bags of puffed rice and pop-corn. Ah! So this is the old-fashion way of making pop-corn! You take a massive blow-torch, hook it up to a pot with a turnable handle on it and let it GO!
JS told us a quick story of how when she was little, she’d spend her weekends with her grandparents in the small town they lived in. And every time she’d go, she’d ask for a bag of rice so that she’d be able to go visit the puffed-rice maker immediately. Then the rest of the weekend would be spent with one hand in the snack bag and head in the school books!