Buying food with tank shells as currency.

It was when it was first produced.

The street finding its own uses for outdated military hardware is extremely on-theme for the cyberpunk genre.

This image might better fit the aesthetics of the cyberpunk derivative “Dieselpunk”, but only aesthetically. As a genre of literature, Dieselpunk themes break down into two categories, “Piecraftian Dieselpunk” where culture has ceased to evolve due to the ongoing existential threat of global war and “Ottensian Dieselpunk” that tries to project the utopian visions of the 20’s foward despite or instead of the Great Recession and World War 2. Neither of these themes fit the image, as they’re both retrocausal and can’t envision a world where converting a useless old tank into a fruit stand would make sense. It’d either be recycled in the Piecraftian mode or would never fall out of the military’s hands in the Ottensian.

But the cyberpunk themes are dead-on. The existence of this image implies a person who might as well be a character trope for the genre, a shopkeeper in the margins of a dystopian society where discarded military surplus is cheaper than real estate.

Experts are telling me it might be T-54/55