By Jay Fox
Brooklyn, NY, USA
You have to
do it running – The National
It was supposed to be a foolproof
and lucrative plan. Easy, too.
It all started after it was decided
that my band, High Pony, would move from one rehearsal space that we shared
with several other bands into our own room in a facility a few blocks away.
Since no one could find another band willing to take our slot before the lease
ran out, we were left with the unenviable task of having to clean out the
entire room. This was no easy task. Though we had only been there for a few
years, the lease for the room had traded hands between perhaps a dozen bands
over more than a decade. It was a fucking disaster.
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| Jay Fox |
Buried beneath the detritus of
splintered drum sticks, broken strings and abandoned miscellany, however, I had
found two boxes. One contained over one hundred singles of “Mistaken for
Strangers” by The National (“Blank Slate” occupies the B-side). The 45s were
wrapped in a jacket celebrating a string of Bowery Ballroom appearances from
more than a decade ago. These were collectors' items. The second box contained ninety-two “Clap Your Hands Say Yeah” shirts of varying sizes and designs. Both
bands had been former occupants of the practice room, and both bands had been
repeatedly asked to come pick up their shit. They had failed to comply.
This was found money.
After taking all of our gear to our
new rehearsal space a few blocks away, I took the find home, and began devising
a plan that would allow me to quickly get all of this stuff into the hands of
someone who would then do the difficult task of selling each individual item at
a much higher price than the bulk rate that I would give the seller. This plan
was based on an assumption that went something like this: It will be relatively
easy to find someone who will give me money for these items. This assumption
contained within it two other assumptions. The first is that these items are
inherently valuable. The second is that people are willing to exchange their
money for valuable items. This is supposed to be how capitalism works.
However, however.
It was not to be that simple. This
shouldn't have come as a surprise. If there is anything that I can tell you
about being a musician in New York City it's this: Nothing is easy. Ever. Even
selling the salvaged leftovers from the merch table of two bands far larger
than you, far larger than your band will probably ever be, isn't easy. I guess
I should correct that. It hasn't been easy yet.
So, here's what I figured would be
the easiest way to go about selling these items of inherent value. eBay
advertises a service that they call eBay Valet. It's pretty straightforward.
You bring your items to a group of professionals, they take photographs of all
of them, list them on eBay, ship them out when someone orders them, and then
take a small cut of the proceeds. All you have to do is get whatever you want
to sell to these professionals. Curiously, I found that these professionals
only work out of FedEx.
I didn't think much of it, and soon
found that the closest one was just a few miles south of me in Bay Ridge. I
really didn't want to deal with the messy work of shipping out approximately
two hundred individual parcels containing a single item of inherent value. This
is supposed to be another one of those great things about capitalism: People
will do labor that you don't want to do, and then you can give them money for
their work.
My eyes were green on the cab ride
down. I normally would have taken the bus, but the two boxes probably weighed
close to 30 pounds. Plus I was about to hit it big. By my calculation, the box
of 45s and the shirts were probably worth several thousand dollars. I could
shell out $20 for a cab.
However, however.
There was one slight issue: The
eBay Valet service doesn't take anything under $25. This is true even if you
are trying to give them more than one hundred identical things that are
collectively worth well over $25 or even $250. This is not information that is
in the promotional material for the service, though it is there in the fine
print. This is where one learns that the business model for eBay Valet is
essentially this: Bring us things that are worth a lot of money and easily
cataloged, and we will take some photographs of them, ship them out, and then
take an exorbitant fee for the service. If you bring in a single item valued at
less than $50, but more than $25, you will take away less than
half of what the item is sold for. Another thing that seems obvious in hindsight
is that the professionals are FedEx workers.
In other words, eBay will offer to
have an employee of FedEx (a professional) perform a task when it is not
difficult and when it is lucrative for eBay. To put it more bluntly: eBay makes
a huge profit off of people who don't have the time or means to ship out their
valuables (those who have to work, those who are old or infirm), they share
some of the proceeds with FedEx as stipulated by a profit-sharing agreement
between the two entities, and FedEx shares nothing with their employees, even
though these are the people who do literally all of the actual work involved in
the transaction. Welcome to capitalism in the 21st century. It is
precisely fucking ludicrous.
Defeatism plagued the cab as we
took the BQE north, speeding past Sunset Park—the Irish Haven
and one of my old apartments and the new and booming Industry City and the
rounded church tower that is perhaps the neighborhood's most iconic and
certainly its most phallic symbol. The records and the shirts sat in the trunk.
Zhuo, the cab driver, had the radio tuned to a classical station and “Moonlight
Sonata” was playing. As we sat at the light at the corner of 4th
Avenue and 38th Street I noticed a billboard for a law firm that had
recently announced their public and very messy divorce—their jingle and its
many eights are familiar to all New Yorkers.
After getting home with the
records, I called the record shop down the block. The owner wasn't interested
in buying the vinyl or the shirts. They were brand new, I told her. She didn't
carry new stuff and she didn't sell shirts. Maybe she could take one or two,
though this defeated my plan of getting rid of all the items at once. She told
me to maybe go up to Greenpoint because there are maybe half a dozen record
stores up there who may want to take a few of the 45s off my hands—another plan
that resulted in a lot of labor and time on my part, but not a lot of gain. Then
again, she wasn't sure. There were too many record stores up there now, which
was part of the reason why she had left her old space, which happened to be
across the street from an illegal loft I had lived in over a decade ago. Of
course, she didn't know the building as an illegal loft. She knew it had been a
condo before it had become a hotel. Conversely, I knew the space she had
occupied. However, at the time I lived there, on Franklin Street, it had been a
record shop owned by a couple who had lived in the back illegally. Someone from
the neighborhood called 311 about it—possible our neighbor Jimmy, the drug
dealing drunk who would invite us upstairs for shots of gin, and then would
proceed to rant about how the neighborhood was falling apart, even though he
was undoubtedly the worst piece of shit on the block, if not all of that part
of Greenpoint, and that anything bad that happened in the neighborhood had his
fingerprints all over it. “Tell me how it goes,” she said about the records and
the shirts.
I cracked open a 24-ounce can of
Coors Original that I had purchased for $1.75 from the bodega down the street,
which is currently up for sale. It was virtually all that was left, since the
place had already been picked clean. Even my footsteps' echo followed me out
the door. Perhaps it will soon become like the bodega further down the street,
which is now a gallery that sells bodega-related art. I stared at the box of
records and the shirts sitting in my living room, taking up space.
I finished the beer, and made my
way toward my band's new rehearsal space.
This new space is also in Gowanus,
which is a neighborhood that, for a long time, didn't really need a name to
identify it because no one really wanted to be there. It had always just fallen
in as part of South Brooklyn, though this designation had become obsolete
because people stopped calling the larger area South Brooklyn and started
referring to smaller neighborhoods contained within it (Cobble Hill, Carroll
Gardens, Boerum Hill, etc.). Gowanus had been given its contours because of
omission.
South of 9th Street most
of the area that is now called Gowanus is home to tire shops and facilities for
other kinds of automotive services that may or may not be legal. At least two
biker gangs have clubhouses here. The Department of Transportation has a
substantial presence in the area. The Department of Sanitation houses a lot of
its garbage trucks on 14th, 13th and 12th
streets. To say that it is an assault on the senses would be an understatement.
Depending on which way the wind is blowing, it either smells like freshly baked
asphalt or the sweet stink of garbage. This is where our original space had
been.
North of 9th Street,
which is to where we have now moved, is more light industry. A lot of tour buses
sleep in the area. There are a lot of old factories, too. Some have been
converted into venues or recording studios or art studios or rehearsal spaces.
Traditionally, not a lot of people lived in the area simply because there
weren't that many residential buildings. The few bars, consequently, have
become home to extremely loyal locals, and a close-knit community of barflies
has most certainly formed. This is especially true among those who are both
residents in the neighborhood and musicians who practice nearby.
As I was on the early side to
practice, I decided to stop in for a beer at one such place. It is probably the
most utilitarian of Gowanus' many places to drink, in that it serves as much as
a community space as it does as a bar: Halyard's (406 3rd
Avenue, Gowanus). There's food, cocktails, good beer and cheap beer that is
actually sold for cheap. The back hosts sketch classes, baby showers and poetry
readings. They have music downstairs every so often.
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| Halyards - Gowanus |
On this particular night, the back
room was occupied by a group of comedians testing out new material via an open
mic. I hesitated as I thought about taking in someone's set, but decided to go
outside with my High Life. As I sat there with the beer, I tried to contrive
some other means of selling the records and the shirts, but found myself,
instead, remembering that the Morbid Anatomy Museum had been just a few blocks
away, and that it was kind of strange that I was now overhearing laughs from
the open mic in this neighborhood. Gowanus had been a perfect fit for that
museum, I thought. There is something that is still funereal about Gowanus: its
poisoned canal that is apparently home to bacteria that have mutated so much
that they are now impervious to cancer, its largely vacant streets, its structures
meant to house industries that have either died or been outsourced.
However, it has become
post-apocalyptic chic. And perhaps this is why the laughter fit, as well. It's
frankly odd that Gowanus, which smells like hot garbage even in the dead of
winter, has become a cool city. It has long-been post-apocalyptic in its
aesthetic; this is what made it affordable. This is supposed to be the reason
why things are affordable.
However, such an era is history.
Condos that sell for over a million dollars are popping up along the Gowanus'
poisoned canal and its streets are becoming home to work spaces and boutiques.
One of its most iconic structures was preserved so that it could become a wine
store that is connected to the adjacent Whole Foods. A developer recently hired
out a PR firm who has been planting stories in the city's real estate journals
that refer to the neighborhood as the Venice of Brooklyn.
Those who have moved in want the
former aesthetic, but not the life that comes with it. They want to occupy a
space that is grungy and alive with art and music, but they want the comforts
of the suburbs, too. The problem is you can't have both. The presence of Whole
Foods drives out the bodegas. The condos that only the rich can afford drive
out the struggling artists and the struggling musicians and the eccentric
aspects of the neighborhood like the Morbid Anatomy Museum.
However, however.
There are always spaces that open
up for a few years between the bad old days and the time when the art galleries
assume the spaces that once provided the community with goods of utility—in
fact, one could map gentrification simply by following where the bodegas are
closing and where the galleries are opening. Gowanus is experiencing such a
time now. This is the time when bars in the area will become like institutions
that define the neighborhood. Halyard's has already become one such place, and
I feel like it will remain a hub for artists, musicians, comedians and writers
who currently call Gowanus home.
However, the cynic in me is
worried. I worry that, eventually, these people will get forced out because of
rising rents or because their building gets demolished to make way for yet
another 50-unit monstrosity of green glass and brushed nickel. The people who
come to Halyard's to participate in open mics or drawing classes will have to
leave the neighborhood. The bar will have to compete with establishments that
open to cater to the new residents living in the condo towers: Coffee houses
with names that focus groups have determined sound homey and authentic;
obnoxious cocktail joints where there is an unspoken dress code; and the type
of restaurants where your waiter or waitress asks, “Have you dined with us
before?” because their style of serving food is so unique that you need to be
walked through the process of ordering it. The art galleries will come next—the
harbingers of maximum entropy.
I don't know if it can survive.
Of course, this is the cynic
speaking. This is the person who's feeling a little downcast and annoyed and
maybe thinking about getting another High Life even though I run the risk of
being late to band practice. The other me is thinking that I've got to get to
practice, make the best music that I possibly can, go to work in the morning,
and then get home to figure out how the fuck I'm going to sell of all those
records and shirts sitting in the middle of my living room.
Link:
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Jay Fox is the author of The Walls and a regular contributor to Stay Thirsty Magazine.