Story that appeared in the July 16, 2003 Issue of
The Villager newspaper in New York City
The skies opened up an hour before, the rain racing down in tubfuls, leaving the quickening evening Mississippi humid. At right about that time peculiar to Manhattan when the skies are still blue but the streets black, an odd collection of 50 or so people gathered near the Washington Sq. Arch, standing over their odd collection of 50 or so bikes, looking around expectantly.
“Is this it?” they asked one another.
“Must be.”
A kid looking all of 16 was walked around handing out single sheets of paper about the size of a notepad. Printed on the “100% Aggressively Recycled” paper was a ninja faintly drawn with tiny dots and the words “Dumpster Like A Ninja.” It spelled out the etiquette to be observed that evening:
Use the cover of night. The best aggressive recycling is done in the magic hours after the store is closed but before the garbage trucks come, 9:30 to midnight.
Leave no trace. Avoid detection. Clean up after yourself. Untie bags, don’t rip a big hole in the bottom. Put bags back where they came from. If you leave a mess, the store will retaliate with padlocks, compactors, bleach on food or other countermeasures. Don’t ruin good spots for the rest of us.
Hands off City Harvest bags. Clear bags with green letters are full of food being collected for the homeless. There is plenty where that came form, [sic] leave these bags alone.
These were instructions for the uninitiated, for those who had never been: They held the prospect of city adventure where one could explore a dark side of life, yet teased the possibility of a free cashmere sweater. This was dumpster diving, tourist-style, for those who wanted to know what it was like to eat from a can but prayed to God they never had to make a living of it.
Jenifer and Jeff sort through a selection of bread outside of LifeThyme on Seventh Ave.
As the brochure explained:
If you’re hungry and into gourmet food, or need a new cashmere sweater, or perhaps a nice chair for your living room, this is the ride. Lots of stops and a slow pace, because we’re all going to be carrying our newly acquired booty. Bring your trailer if you have one. This ride is free to all, so leave your greed on the last ride, because we share with all everything that we find. If you think that eating food out of the garbage is unsanitary, we would like to show you exactly how neatly rich people (mostly the shops that rich people patronize) dispose of their edible garbage.
Sponsored by the Aggressive Urban Recycling Society of Metropolitan New York as part of BikeSummer 2003, which travels to a different city every year in an attempt to bring the cycling community closer together and to spread the bicycle gospel, the dive was meant to educate New Yorkers on the vastness of waste in the city and the ease with which it can be recovered. And like all such events, it attracted people from every which walk of life: a mother and her 11-year-old daughter, a medical student, regular dumpster divers, punks and professionals.
As the hodgepodge of people were still gathering, a reporter approached the woman standing at the center of all. She was young and thin — marathon-runner thin — all muscle and no nonsense. Her dark hair was short, a bit spiky, and she wore her bike lock like a belt around the top of her green army shorts. Her name was Syd, and she had organized this mass exercise in guerrilla shopping. The reporter’s presence threw her off just a bit. But it was easy to tell that she possessed the kind of intensity where nothing throws her off for more than that bit.
“Did you get one of the etiquette fliers we’re handing out?” she said before a question had been asked. “We’re really stressing that there are people who have to live off this, and we want everyone to try to be sensitive to that.”
The size of the crowd also had her thrown off a bit. “I was expecting like 10 people,” she said, but word got around, and then the dive was blurbed in the New Yorker. “I have no idea why they would list this other than, ‘Oh cute. Look what these stupid kids are doing Downtown.’ I mean, who would read the New Yorker and then go dumpster diving?”
Syd’s attention was suddenly diverted by people asking her which dumpsters would be dove into that night. A small debate developed between her and these people, whom she obviously knew well and dives with often. She told them that they can’t go to a certain dumpster because it’s too close to another dumpster that’s really good, and she swore to a friend that she’d never divulge its fruits to others.
“When we bike by it and someone asks me, ‘Hey, what about that place?’ what am I gonna say? ‘Ah no, I’ve been to that one and it’s no good?’ We can’t go by there.”
As the debate continued, some of the bikers became impatient with the wait and started ringing their bells. Others just plopped on the ground. Dave of Park Slope was one of the ploppers. Twenty-something, he wore a green baseball cap so tattered it looked like a dog’s chew toy. He said he read about the dive in the BikeSummer events calendar, and that he was “here just to be here.” He had no expectations of finding treasure. “But if there’s anything worth taking, I’ll take it.”
Then Syd-the-Organizer climbed on top of a short wall, making her three feet taller than everyone else, and prepared the crowd for its adventure by reiterating the divers’ etiquette and saying that she made patches for everyone, but since there were so many more people than she had anticipated, she decided that the winners of a scavenger hunt would be the recipients.
As she climbed off the wall, the rowdy guy — there’s one in every crowd — gave a Xena yell and a whoop. Some people smirked, others turned to look. Most just ignored him. “Geeze, we gotta get some coffee for these people,” he said to whomever will listen.
By the time the 50 or so bikers left the park in a slow-moving peloton, it was dark, and as they rode in a disorganized mass, running red lights and stopping traffic, most of the bikers were smirking.
The cause of the smirks was hard to figure. Were they smirking because this was so strange, to be riding in the dark with 50 or so strangers, destination: dumpster? Or was it because of the power that the size of the group gave them; they could disobey traffic signals and control vehicles that usually control them? Was it because they were enjoying the attention that they were getting from the pedestrians, all of whom turned to look in wonder as the mass rode by? Perhaps they were thinking about that free cashmere sweater?
What was that the smirk?
Maybe it was simply the rowdy guy chanting, “Stop the war! No war in Iraq!” (The group, with its long-haired boys and soccer-mom-looking girls, combined with every other liberal stereotype, could have easily passed for a peace ride.)
The first stop was at a mass of garbage bags outside of Gristede’s on University Pl. between Ninth and 10th Sts.
Everyone was agiggle as they crawled off their bikes and watched as the most experienced scavengers dove in, showing the greenhorns how it’s done. The first item they held aloft was a bunch of slightly browned bananas. All were impressed; after all, bananas come with a protective peel, which makes the insides quite edible. Hypothetically, at least.
Next pulled out was bread, then bagels — “Who wants pumpernickel?” — juice and “Hummus! We’ve got hummus!” Loads of it. It was a humus orgy. They threw bread to one another, ripped open the hummus and slathered their bagels in it, smiling and laughing. Free hummus and bagels!
After the bags were depleted, retied and neatly restacked, the garbage-picking peloton drifted on, smiling, high on the fumes of found food. It drifted down the road and through red lights, bikers at the head stopping in the middle of the intersections, blocking traffic so the rest could safely pass through. This angered a motorist or two, but most seemed to acknowledge this pack was something special and deserved the right of way. Adventures don’t stop for traffic signals.
As the 50 or so zeroed in on the next set of fresh bags, outside Bagel Bob’s a block to the north, they picked up speed. An old woman with a cane was walking along the sidewalk when the swarm of bikers suddenly descended. She shook her cane and yelled at each that passed by, “Walk it! Don’t ride on the sidewalk! Walk it!”
And, seemingly at her command, the riders dismounted, one by one. Then they abandoned their bikes against storefronts, bike racks, stacks of cardboard or just on the pavement and dove into the bags for more bagels — “Warren, get me a sesame seed.”
As the group prowled around the bags, across the street a man with deep, hard-life wrinkles, disheveled hair and an unshaven face asked what was going on.
“Dumpster diving, en masse.”
“Dumpster diving?” he repeated, a bit angrily. “I’ll show them dumpster diving.”
And a bit more angrily, “I’ve pulled things out of dumpsters like you wouldn’t believe. I have. I can get anything I need out of a dumpster.” It was plain that he found the whole exercise personally offensive as he walked away yelling, “You want dumpster diving, you come to me! You don’t know shit about it! Dumpster diving. You come to me!”
After everyone got his or her fill of bagels, the pack drifted on. The next stop was the biggie: Gourmet Garage on Seventh Ave. The grinning 50 or so with their 50 or so bikes packed the sidewalks, clogged traffic, and gorged themselves.
“We’ve got pies!”
“Pasta! Tortellini! This stuff sells for like five bucks a box!”
“Who wants quiche?”
“Is it non-dairy?”
“No, but it’s organic.”
“No, thanks.”
As people dug in, a man named Bill asked the reporter who he was writing for, then handed out a flier listing upcoming events and a Web site and gave out his phone number for any follow-up questions. Only in New York does a dumpster dive come with a p.r. guy.
Then the manager of Gourmet Garage came out and asked that the sidewalk be cleared. In line with the etiquette, everyone quickly and politely complied, even the rowdy guy.
After all the pasta, quiche and pies had been saved, Syd-the-Organizer decided that the introductory phase of the lesson was over and it was time for the group to break into smaller groups and dive on their own.
Into Alison’s group (how it became her group, none seemed to know, not even Alison) went nine. After some hemming and hawing over where to go, the group headed for LifeThyme on Seventh Ave. between Eighth and Ninth Sts.
One of the group, Anna, a medical student who lives on the Upper East Side, wore rubber gloves as she dove into the plastic bags. She said she wasn’t sure why she was rummaging through garbage on a Friday night. Then, giggling like a seventh grader she said, “We wanted to just see it. We wanted to see what it was like, and we were too scared to do it by ourselves.” More giggling. And even more giggling and then, barely able to get it out through all the giggling, “Actually, (giggle) we came (giggle) to meet guys who (giggle giggle) wear Converse shoes!” Guffaw, guffaw.
The guffaws quickly ended when she realized the guy standing right next to her was wearing some Chuck Taylor’s. “I’ve got a pair,” she said awkwardly and returned to the business of digging. If Syd-the-Organizer had asked, she probably would have found those people who read the New Yorker and wanted to go dumpster diving.
Later, when informed that she and her friend Katherine might be the only participants from Manhattan, Anna said, “That’s why they come to Manhattan, to look through our trash.”
That’s exactly why 65-year-old Charlie traveled in from Glencove, on Long Island. “I find the idea of trash fascinating,” he said. “I was curious to find out what was thrown away in Manhattan.” As a volunteer for a food shelter where all the items are donated from sources that would otherwise discard the food, Charlie said he wanted to see for himself how much food is wasted here.
Without explanation, somewhere between Seventh Ave. and Broadway Charlie disappeared and wasn’t seen again.
In distance traveled, Jeff and Kavitha had Charlie beat. They came in from Rhinebeck, NY, a two-hour train ride. But in addition to the pure curiosity that seemed to have brought most people, their diving had a practical side: “We plan on taking what we find to a brunch tomorrow...The brunch is for the League of Young Voters, a group of young pissed-off people.”
After an hour on their own, everyone gathered back at the arch to compare booty, which included the mundane — clothes, a stereo, a leather coat, computer parts, furniture — and the unusual — a sandwich board, a mannequin head, part of an engine from a Ferrari dealership and even the proverbial kitchen sink. No one was quite sure how the finder carried the cast-iron kitchen sink from wherever it was he found it back to the park on his bicycle, but there it was.
The winner of the scavenger hunt, and thereby the one who got first pick of the homemade dumpster-diving patches given out as prizes, was Gabriel-the-Bike-Finder, who came in with a 10-speed strapped to his back. It wasn’t the most unusual, but in a group of bikers, it was the best.
After all the patches were handed out and all the event responsibilities over, Syd sat on a low wall talking with friends and participants about some of the things she has found over the years. “People are surprised when they walk into my apartment. It’s like something out of design catalog. But everything in it I’ve found, including everything in the fridge.”
She says her obsession with the trash isn’t all about getting something for nothing, though the hunt does allow her to work only sporadically during the summer and not at all when she’s in school and can live off her finds and financial aid. “It’s also partly political,” she explained. “I think it’s so unethical to buy new clothes. Just about everything I own I’ve found, except for a few things that I needed for specific occasions, then I shopped at a thrift store. Oh, and underwear. I buy my underwear new, but I make sure it’s not made in a sweatshop somewhere.”
Soon her attention was interrupted by the trash again.
“Is someone throwing those clamps away?” she said as she leapt off the wall and bounded to a garbage can containing two old, four-foot-long metal clamps. “Cool.”
“What are you gonna do with those?” one of the newbies asked, thinking that if anything was trash, these things were.
“You can build stuff,” she replied, a bit surprised by the question.
“Like what?”
“Stuff. You know, I can build stuff. Like, I can put wood in there and if I need to glue it I can clamp it, to hold it in place and, and...” It was clear she wasn’t exactly sure what she would do with them, but she saw the possibilities and repeated loudly, “You know — I can build stuff!”