23 years old, 1995, Murray hill, 33rd and 3rd avenue. For a thousand dollars a month I lived in a long closet, wide enough for a single white armchair. I built in a lofted bed and desk. I smoked cigarettes on a fire escape right outside my one window that was my respite on hot summer nights. I worked retail sales at a paper store. I made enough money for a two cheese slices of pizza and a soda per day. I couldn’t pay for the subway and walked everywhere. I was skinny but free in nyc.
Some of my friends lived in squats in alphabet city, free of rent slavery but endangered. They were scrappy and resourceful- stealing power from the grid, setting up pirate radio stations, dumpster diving for food, shitting in buckets. Making art and loud music in the discarded ruins of the tenements, reusing and revivifying the cast offs of a rich and restless city. I admired their bravery and toughness, their lived politics, their sense of community, and their resistance to the status qou.
As a collage artist I frequently picked up paper ephemera off the manhattan streets and from the copious trash. Once, a librarian at Cooper Union, whom I taught bookbinding, told me when the library was discarding books; late at night I waited with some seedy characters for the dumpster to be filled with beautiful old books. A huge musty haul of steel engravings, old maps, hand marbled papers, and chromalith prints filled my tiny studio dwelling… a deciduous bounty saved from the dumps, eventually repurposed into hundreds of books and collages.
Trudging home after a long day of paper sales I chanced upon a sad scene curbside on 3rd avenue. The contents of an entire apartment, the material footprint of a life, was haphazardly stacked and piled into the gutter. Some gimlet eyed homeless guys were pawing through the clothes, old radios, photo albums, books, and crockery. I spied a few cigar boxes in the jumble and tucked them into my leather suitcase. The old guys grumbled as I walked off.
I got to the Famous Rays pizzeria under my apartment and ordered my dinner- was rewarded by a second leathery old slice the counter man threw in for free: my lucky night! I feasted on my greasy repast on the fire escape watching the never ending traffic on 3rd avenue. After smoking a cigarette I crawled back through the window into my big white chair. Under the single lamp I took out the cigar boxes I found. One was filled with cigar bands, another matchbook covers, the third was stuffed with trading cards. I flipped through the cards in a desultory, offhand way. Some still in packing with dry gum, others foxed and frowzy, a few baseball cards from different eras… including what appeared to be a Willie Mays rookie card in good shape. I thought it must be relatively new reissued card for nostalgic purposes, no way it was authentic. Still, I thought, in the morning I’d bring it in to one of those places in midtown that traded and sold rare items.
The next morning I diligently studied the phone book and found a likely shop. I wrapped the card carefully and walked uptown. I pushed the doorbell and was buzzed in. Past well lit display cases filled with sports memorabilia I wandered to the back, where two men peered with magnifying glasses examining the condition of a plastic jacketed trading card. I waited patiently as they conferred, then looked up and noticed me. “Nu?” The older of the two said looking at me quizzically. I explained my street find as I produced the wrapped card. The men gingerly unwrapped it and gently held it under a magnifying lensed lamp. A giant catalog binder was produced and consulted. After a brief private conversation, the two men returned to lighted counter and with arms crossed said “The most we can offer is one thousand dollars.” My knees buckled and vision tunneled; I steadied myself on the counter and asked them to repeat themselves. They did and in a dreamlike state I gratefully accepted the cash and handed them the card.
I wandered out dizzy into the bright busy hubbub of midtown and walked right into a pizzeria and ordered three slices, with pepperoni. I watched the business of the city perched in the window of the pizzeria and celebrated my good fortune, and a full months rent paid with trash picked from the gutter.
You lucky dog. Willie Mays would have found it amusing, I’m sure.
Wonder what its real worth was/is.—?