First Spring Site Visit

I showed up around 2:00, the weather was beautiful, cloudless, light breeze, 70 degrees.  I could see from afar that NYOI had several customers walking around.  I walked in and Roy saw me almost immediately.  He gave me a very gracious and obliging bow and shot off in another direction saying “I’m gonna give you time, bit by bit.”  I walked around looking at some great new stuff; a vanity set with two glass perfume bottles, matching side table and picture frame.  It looked newish, like some crazy rococo revival stuff from the 1970s.  As I was lingering, Carlos came over ad said: “someone probably died and they cleaned all this stuff out and got rid of it.  When my aunt died they didn’t get rid of anything.  They kept the furniture, clothes everything.  I think it’s good because maybe some day you want to sell the stuff, but the clothes, nobody wants to buy clothes.  Emily:  “yeah, but a lot of people keep clothes for sentimental value.”  Carlos: “Yeah, but it’s not worth anything unless you have something nice like a mink coat or something.”  I knew this was not Carlos being calloused; he knows the sentimental/nostalgic value that customers imbue in the things at NYOI and is able to spot it before they do.  No one could do this without having the capacity to sentimentalize objects.  Meanwhile, there was an Eastern European man in a sports coat and jeans trying to pry off the remnants of wrought iron filigree (?) from the façade of a furnace screen.  He was talking with Carlos about how to best do the job.  It seemed that Carlos had either already sold the piece to this guy or it was something that either needed to be done anyways or didn’t matter.

I was looking at a pulley mechanism when Roy came up.  Emily: “this is awesome, when did you get this?”  Roy: “when did I get this? When…I got it today.”  Emily: “today?” Roy: “ Yeah.  I get stuff everyday, and I sell stuff everyday. It’s an unloader for a trolley, this part (sic) is for connecting the pull cable and this pivoting part is for when you want to change direction or something”  I can’t remember exactly what he said, but my paraphrasing is far less technical and accurate as his description.   Roy: “It’s perfectly functional, but it’s great just the way it is.”  Then we walked off again.

I spotted a lamp amongst four others that I thought would look nice in my boyfriend’s apartment.  Roy came up as I was inspecting it.  I said: “this is nice.”  He counted them off “one, two, three, four, $25 for any of them”.

In the morning is the best time to come (for an interview).  We open at nine, but we’re here at 8.  That’s when we set everything up, Carlos can move everything, but I’ve got the vision for where I want everything to go, and Carlos does it. “

Carlos and Roy both sincerely apologetic when my bottle was sold/ went missing

Monday Meet and Greet

I arrived at NYOI around 1:00 on Monday.  I walked in through the front entrance and was immediately greeted by a guy who was talking to Carlos, a full-time employee there, who was buffing up a rusty pressed tin molding panel featuring neo-classical nymph.  Carlos stood back and admired his work.  ”This didn’t look like anything before I started working on it, but now you can see…is that a man or a woman?”  I, the supposed decorative arts expert, couldn’t really tell either; the rust has obscured any distinctive features, making it more androgynous than it probably once was.  Carlos deliberated aloud for a while longer, then decided that it was a man standing in a basket or a carriage of flowers.

I went over and stood in front of a bath tub that was unusually short in length.  The guy that had greeted me before walked over and started telling me about a bath tub just like it that he had in his apartment on 8th Street and Ave. D.  He explained that the bathtub was so small because it was actually in the kitchen.  He said “back then” that’s how it was in small apartments – the shower would be in the kitchen with a curtain in front of it and the toilet, separated by a door, would have a box of water above it.  You would pull a long cord attached to box to flush the toilet.  He said that he paid $250 a month for that apartment.  Then he told me about the place he used to lived in after that on Bedford and South 1^st.  Back in the eighties, he only paid $125.  But back then, no one wanted to live out there; “everyday someone was getting killed – overdosing or getting shot.  There were gangs and stuff, but if you kept your head down and went about your business, nobody bothered you.  Now it’s different, though.”  He said “you know about that area” and gestured at me, 26 years old, wearing an oversized army coat cinched by a belt, unkempt hair, and ratty loafers.  I also had a dirty backpack and a large brown bag containing a miscellany of clothing and kitchen items.  It could only have been a subtle look of cognizance in my face or maybe a mouth full of teeth that distinguished me as a hipster and not a bag lady (not that I was trying to disguise myself).  He took off and then I was greeted by some other guy with a red plaid lumberjack hat and a canvas work jacket.  He, too, was just hanging out.  I was looking at some radiators and petting the cat when he asked me what I was looking for (as if he had some stake in it).  I turned around and he started talking to me about the brownstone he was living in.  He had a tape measure with him and was talking about how the inside of his brownstone was completely renovated with new appliances and everything, but the outside (for some reason, I couldn’t tell) needed an extra length of gate.  All the while we were talking he kept pulling out his measuring tape and measuring things sort of absent-mindedly, like poking at the mud with a stick or something, just absent-mindedly evaluating stuff according to their dimensions.  We walked over to a bed frame that I was interested in buying from Carlos the last time I was there, and we set it up to make sure that it was stable.  He was explaining to me the best way to secure the box spring to the frame, which had no groove.  The bars that were for connecting the head and foot of the frame were L-shaped, but the fittings were designed so that the bars had to go in L-shaped down. It didn’t make sense to (Mike) and I that it would be that way, but Carlos cleverly pointed out that the reinforcements going across the width of the head and base were also L-shape down, so it had to be that way.  Mystery solved, (Mike) and I continued to chat.  I knew somehow that he wasn’t the owner, but I asked anyway.  He said he was just a friend of the owner and that he (like the first guy I talked to) sold various stuff to the owner.  Then another guy wandered up and (Mike) was like “Oh this guy, how ya doin?”  They seemed like they hadn’t seen each other in a while, but were well acquainted.  The other started talking to Roy on his phone and relayed that he had gone off to lunch. Mike said, “That cheap bastard ran off and isn’t even going to bring me back a sandwich.  Tell that cheap bastard to bring me back a sandwich from the club!”  The other guy chuckled and hung up.  Mike and I continued talking and he told me about his various properties in Florida, Long Island, and Brooklyn.  He said [I used to be a “garbage collector” up on 71^st and York.]  I asked: You must have found some pretty amazing stuff.  He said: “Oh yeah, I found stuff that would make you cry it was so good, just really good stuff.”  [sic] “All the antique dealers were up there too, so…”  I think what he meant was that they would resell (other people’s garbage) to antique dealers (in the same neighborhood).

Site Analysis Party Tomorrow!

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BY PARTY I MEAN ME AND HOPEFULLY MR. VACARRO

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I’m heading out to New York Old Iron (NYOI) again for the second part of a site analysis of a yet to be determined number of parts.  The forecast is a repeat of last week’s gloom, but hopefully Mr. Vacarro will be out there anyways.  I’m still unsure of how to approach him.  Already I have been prowling his site, reading about him on other people’s blogs, and have basically made him the center of half of my thesis, without even having met the guy.  Researching the living is far creepier than researching the dead.   It’s not the most natural feeling constructing the a priori persona of a salvaged iron dealer and then actually meeting the real one.  I’ve been in this situation before for interviews with other people, and it takes a certain grace beyond me to not come off as an internet stalker who can tell you your life story.  The more I put this off in favor of theorizing abstractly, however, the less real the actual person becomes in my mind, and the more the interview becomes about battling assumptions that are probably totally false and reductive anyways.

Untimely Success

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THIS POST BROUGHT TO BY THREE GOOD PULLS OF BULLEIT BOURBON:                    THE FRONTIER WHISKEY*

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After much frantic logistical sandwich-making and digital recording device-checking, I made it out to the Brooklyn Lowe’s at about 2 p.m., exactly one hour after the site closed.  I was actually relieved; apprehending my first site for the first time while having also to approach the proprietor might have done me in.  I had been hesitant to venture out in February, assuming that an outdoor retail space would be closed for the season, and periodic searches on google earth gave me no indication that they were there.  It so happens that the proprietors found the one kind of place to hide an outdoor space from google earth: under a bridge.  It’s right below the elevated F/G train platform at Smith and 9^th Street, actually.  As I stepped off the train on to the platform, I surveyed the landscape.  Maybe it was the bleak sky and the scrim of snow over everything, but I was struck by how industrial it seemed for a neighborhood that claims the title Park Slope.  The view was quite the early nineties’ photographer’s wet dream: a sublimely dystopic panorama of hard grit.  The second impression I got was that there was a concentration of recycling going on in various modes in this immediate area.  When facing Lowe’s from the platform, I immediately spotted some people putting bags of clothes in the donatable clothing depository.   To the right of that was a huge crane moving a mountain of scrap metal.

Directly below the platform, tricked out recycling trucks sat parked in the snow.  Already it made perfect sense that a found object retail space would find a niche here.  Now, I have to correct the term “flea market”;  it’s more so a chain link holding cell of wrought iron fences, bathtubs, sinks, furnace screens, and other odds and ends guarded by a mustachioed mannequin and his dog.  The sign on the front of the gate reads: “New York Old Iron”, as if this particular iron surpasses this particular York in age and wisdom.  What would probably be considered a storefront window consists of a fragment of plastered wall with bright blue dentalia behind a wrought iron fence accompanied by either a monumental andiron or a mailbox, I can’t really tell.  The street side is concealed by more of these fragments of plastered wall.  Next to the plastic business sign, there is another sign with the word “Antiques” written in blackletter.  This sign appears to be older than the plastic one (very meta), and in the former’s  juxtaposition to the latter, it reads as a kitschy beacon to passers by for whom a new plastic sign that reads “Old Iron” does not bespeak a vestigial past.  As it seems, the antiques sign is more of an afterthought to the newer signs that are posted on both street sides.  These clear and highly visible signs seem more designed for those who are actually bringing “old iron” to the site.  Similarly to the sign, the thought of  a large cargo van rolling in and dumping a tangle of wrought iron into a fenced in area under an overpass does not elicit romantic notions of the past.

The appearance of the site is at first bedlam.  However, the proprietor, who, according to a post on Brick City Love is identified as Roy Vaccaro, has actually managed to somehow create order in chaos.  Hundreds of iron gates, fences, and trellises are lined up against each other to create a navigable space.  The long “hallways” open up to “departments” for the different types of objects.  The southeast corner of the lot is designated for cast iron radiators and sinks, the southwest corner is for cafe tables, etc. The hallways open up to deconstructed arrangements of chairs, suitcases, tables, and bed frames that are almost sculptural.

*This endorsement is unsolicited,  but hopefully that will change.

Tomorrow’s Site Analysis – Lowe’s parking lot in Sunset Park

Tomorrow my thesis research goes into full effect, for tomorrow I am going here, an ad hoc “flea market” set up in the parking lot of Lowe’s in Sunset Park.  The forecast predicts heavy snow, a commensurate punishment for putting this off for so long – a friend and classmate told me about this place in October, when the weather was perfect for standing in  parking lot looking at a bunch of stuff some guys found on the street.  According to my friend and classmate, whom I will identify as Mike, this so-called flea market is run by a couple of guys who scour the streets of Brooklyn and, perhaps, beyond picking up various objects of interest.  He says that they have found some pretty amazing stuff in the past – claw foot bathtubs, antique hardware, etc.  They load up their van and sell everything wholesale to the guy who sits in the parking lot, who then resells the items to presumable Lowe’s customers and others who somehow know about this place.  There are many reasons why this site is fascinating to me, however, I have already hit a wall regarding disclosure.  I’m not really sure it’s either ethical or considerate to reveal the business practices of some guys I’ve never met, want to interview in the future, and don’t currently know much about.  The reason I’m going there tomorrow, in fact, is to broach these matters, hopefully with some success.  I don’t actually know what “success” means or will mean in this scenario; Will any of them be open to talking?  Will they even be there?