It's Friday afternoon at the Lake City Neighborhood Service Center. Half a dozen volunteers are scrambling around the back room, setting up tables and clearing away chairs. A few more people are in the back parking lot waiting for a truck to arrive. It's two o'clock, the truck is missing, and the volunteers are checking their watches.

The truck is crucial. When it arrives--filled with ice cream, milk, produce, and dry goods--the North Helpline Food Bank springs into action. Every Friday afternoon since October, these volunteers have set up a food bank from scratch--transforming the back room of the Neighborhood Service Center at 30th Avenue NE and 127th Street into a food bank that serves residents of North Seattle every Saturday. Along with private monetary and food donations, the truckload of food from statewide food agency Northwest Harvest keeps the volunteer-run food bank stocked. North Helpline--a service agency that helps people with things like rent and utility assistance throughout the week--runs the operation, Seattle's first new food bank in 20 years.

"Every week we've got about 20 new people," says a volunteer who gives her name as Marianne. There are mothers pushing strollers, a few large families, single elderly people, low-income couples, immigrants from Russia and Mexico, and a handful of homeless people.

"I took a 30 percent pay cut in October. I need this food to supplement my income," says one older man in line, who declined to give his name.

Dan Soler is the Russian interpreter on Saturday morning. The twentysomething man greets Lake City Russian immigrants, and catches up with the regulars. And each week, the pool of regulars gets bigger.

"They told us to expect 100 families," says Rita Anderson, executive director of North Helpline. But they've blown that number away, serving about 850 families each month. The University District Food Bank has also seen a recent increase of 15% more families than it served last year. Anderson points to the Boeing layoffs and the lagging economy to explain where all of the clients came from.

But she's worried that the need for the food bank will outgrow its funding. Private donations keep the food bank going, but they aren't a steady source of income. Funding from the likes of Bill Gates helps them purchase things like the huge cooler in the back parking lot, to store food all week. But money also helps the center feed everyone who stops in. Helpline has had to buy extra groceries to meet the demand.

Anderson started the food bank last year, after Shoreline's food center, a few miles north, outside of Seattle's city limits, stopped accepting Seattle residents last February. She called around, trying to figure out where to send the people North Helpline serves each week. If the Shoreline food bank wouldn't accept Seattle residents, they would have to head five miles south to the University District food bank (nearly an hour by bus).

After a few calls to other area food banks and the city, Anderson decided to build the city's 16th food bank. It opened for business on October 13, and has been short on space ever since.

"We have so outgrown our space!" Marianne says. She explains that the normal operating hours of 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. aren't enough to get everyone through the line. "We just stop whenever the line is finished." Lately, that's been closer to 2:00 p.m.

In addition to managing the hive of activity and keeping people moving through the line, many of the volunteers are buzzing with talk of an impending city funding decision. The city council is expected to approve $30,000 in funding for the food bank this week, but the mayor plans to tell the city's Human Services Department that they don't have the cash.

People in line are signing letters to Mayor Greg Nickels, urging him to fund the food bank.

Pete Rosenblad, a food bank client who volunteers at North Helpline, talks to everyone in line about the petition. Though the food bank won't immediately close down if the city doesn't fund it (they've gotten by without city money for the first 18 weeks), Rosenblad worries that it will be harder to feed everyone, including himself.

"I'm employed now, and I make good money," he says. "But with rent and bills...." He shrugs, and goes to pick up his food.

amy@thestranger.com