A short profile of The Thing — a one-of-a-kind second-hand shop in my neighborhood — and its owner, Larry Da Junkman.
I’m scrawling these notes in the intestines of The Thing. The walls are made of records — stacks of milk crates packed with musty vinyl. In a corridor barely the breadth of my shoulders, I’ve gone as far as I can. The air is still and thick, laden with the particular dust of decomposing paper. I just sneezed for the umpteenth time. My head pulsates and buzzes in concert with the fluorescent tubes that hang closely overhead. Muffled, from above, come the sounds of the store’s ground floor — voices, music, footsteps, clunks of things being shifted (things like cast iron skillets and mismatched sets of golf clubs and garbage bags full of some old woman’s lifetime of belts). Through a gap between crates I can see there was a time when this corridor went further, but now it’s crammed with stacks, floor-to-ceiling. Back there, in the belly of this beast, are thousands of LP’s that hold no chance of going home with a customer today, because no customers will see them. And the chances don’t look much better for tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or the year after that. In fact, it seems that their chances of making it out of here have only worsened over time, and will only continue toward an absolute hopelessness.
But this is the nature of the beast. A majority of the merchandise — if we can call it that — suffers this same disadvantage. It is buried. And — as the horde grows outward faster than the customers can nibble off bits — it is only sinking deeper into the pile.
During hours of operation, The Thing spills itself out onto the sidewalk of Manhattan Ave., in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This is where the bigger furniture items will be — desks, tables, shelves, chairs, mirrors, floor lamps, etc.. I would guess, based on observation and personal experience (my dining room chairs come from here), that sidewalk sales bring in the lion’s share of the store’s revenue. The reasons are simple enough: 1. Everybody needs furniture, 2. Sales of bigger items bring in more money, quicker, and 3. The sidewalk offers much higher visibility (for every one person who chooses to actually enter The Thing — these intrepid adventurers who willingly duck into the maw of the beast — there are probably a hundred who walk by on the sidewalk and peruse the goods out front with a basic, practical, non-committal curiosity, surely on their way to somewhere else).
From the sidewalk it is clear to see that what goes on in there is of a much more complicated manner. The window displays are jammed with a random, pandemonious deluge of things. And if one is spirited enough to consider each thing on its own, here is a question that may very well arise: Is that junk, or, is that not junk? The usual window-shopping questions (Do I need that? Is that just what I’ve been looking for?) will not apply. No, the curiosity that is most likely to draw one inside The Thing is of a special breed. It considers the items in the window — the congealed-lava lamp, the dusty porcelain dragon statuary, the piece of electronic equipment identifiable only to experts — and says: Maybe there’s treasure in there.
The first purchase I ever made at The Thing was the aforementioned set of dining room chairs. Really, they’re not meant to be dining room chairs — they’re more of a covered-porch kind of style, curlicued wrought-iron and wicker — but that’s what I use them for, so that’s what I’ll call them. There were only three in the set, which happened to be ideal for my small, square table that’s pushed up against a wall. I bought them soon after moving to the neighborhood, before I’d yet mustered the courage to enter the store, and it was as I paid ($40, haggled down from $50) that I stepped inside for the first time. The overall effect is cave-like — the enclosure organically-shaped by mounds of stuff and teeming shelves, stalactites of disused chandeliers, stalagmites of hat racks and vacuum cleaners, a loose rubble of clothes hangers and stray electrical cords underfoot. The more considered effect is one of overwhelming, where-would-I-possibly-begin?, minutiae.
It was only a few minutes before closing and I handed my cash over to the large-bellied, scraggly-goateed man with whom I’d haggled, while a younger, smooth-faced, long-dirty-blonde-haired guy pushed in a cart loaded with some records and miscellany that had been out on the sidewalk. I tried to step out of his way, back into the nearest alcove, but he just stopped and looked at me sardonically until I realized my mistake. “Oh, you’re trying to go in here,” I said, shuffling out of the alcove. He raised his eyebrows, “Do you see anywhere else for me to put it?” I have since come to know this guy as Cassidy — employee of 4 years — and, really, he’s nicer than this anecdote may make him seem. The larger man I had made the chair deal with was, as I suspected, the owner of The Thing, and his name is Larry. Over subsequent run-ins, eavesdroppings, and a couple of distracted conversations Larry’s character has rapidly unfurled. I think of him now as a sort of bohemian Santa Claus — who collects his toys rather than makes them, and peddles his gifts rather than gives them.
Larry Fisher, also known as Larry Da Junkman, has, as the moniker suggests, dedicated most of his adult life to junk. A born-and-raised New-Yorker, he places his epiphanic moment in Ridgewood at age 23, with the meeting and consequent mentorship of a mobster-turned-junkman named Manny. (I have since learned from Larry’s writing, which he posts near-daily on multiple blogs, that his own father was (or still is) also a “mobster”). As a college student Larry had studied writing, and it was his encounter with Manny and his junk shop that taught him where his stories would come from — “Every household, with all its stuff, has a story to tell. So, I collect those stories, because that’s what I do — I’m a storyteller.” According to Larry, Manny was a “Jesus-like figure” who had taken a fall for the mob, done his prison time, and come out on the other end to live a “sort-of Bhuddist criminal life.” Larry claims not to be a religious man, but will use vague religious metaphors with abandon. “Manny was completely fascinating to me. I was in love with his… rancor.” I repeated the carefully chosen last word back to him, to confirm I’d heard right, and he simply nodded his head, a bit Jesus-like himself.
Since those days, in the mid-80’s, Larry has helmed numerous junk outposts of his own — exactly how many he couldn’t say on the spot. He currently owns and runs another store in Bushwick called, The Vortex (An Unusual Utilitarian and Luxury Item Thrift Store, as it’s called on the hot pink business card that bears an image of a chimpanzee playing a ukelele). Most of the stuff comes from estate sales in large loads, and on the day we had our most fruitful conversation Larry, his 23-year old daughter, and Cassidy were unloading a van full of droopy cardboard boxes into The Thing. The two underlings piled the boxes recklessly into the main thoroughfare of the store, where Larry half-heartedly received them, seeming much more interested in being “interviewed” than dealing with the load. I couldn’t blame him, seeing as the store already seemed — as always — packed to the brim, and where these boxes would actually go was sure to be a headache of a question. Then again, he should be immune to such headaches by now. “I’m always hoping to open the next box,” he said, using the box in front of him as a prop, opening it, “and find that one thing that would make it all worthwhile, the big cash-out.” And what would be in that box? I asked. He scoffed. “You tell me.” I suggested that I didn’t believe finding the Holy Grail would put an end to his relationship with junk. He nodded. “No, junk, to me, is like heroin.” He scoffed again, realizing what he’d said. “Maybe that’s why they call heroin ‘junk.’”
Most things at The Thing must’ve had their turn on the top layer, their moment in the sun, their chance to become useful again… but then they were not chosen in time. They were eclipsed by a new thing. (Well, not a new thing, in the unused, still-in-its-package sense — never that — but a thing new to The Thing). The box of plastic furniture covers was eclipsed by a near-full set of Louis L’Amour novels, which was eclipsed by a suitcase full of beat-up stilettos from the 90’s, which was eclipsed by a heap of Mexican throw rugs. Sure, customers can dig a bit, if we’re so inclined, but we won’t make it deeper than the second or third layer. And, actually, we’re discouraged to do so by Larry. Posted throughout the store are several signs, handwritten in thick black marker — NO PILES PLEASE.
Since the dining room chairs, I’ve purchased from The Thing: a Belgian Chimay beer tray; a foot-high hand-carved wooden statue of a dark-skinned man in a pith helmet with a movie camera resting on his shoulder and an arm raised to crank the camera (though the crank is missing); a handful of old photographs; a hand-written letter dated November 10, 1973, from one Alice to another Alice, begging that Alice “compose a simple letter of loyalty” to Richard Nixon, “to help balance all the evil directed at him”; a Roget’s Thesaurus in Dictionary Form; and a mug depicting a wizened, pipe-smoking man in a rocking chair next to the text, “IF ALL ELSE FAILS ASK GRANDPA.” This is the product of probably around 10 hours of cumulative browsing time. (The bins of photographs and letters are a particular hour-devourer (somehow you expect to see faces and handwriting you know)).
In one of Larry’s more coherent blog posts (often it is difficult to tell what is fiction and what is not — though for sure, the majority could be classified as free-association, or “ramble” as Larry himself would likely call it), titled, “History of Garbology: Junkman Stories,” he finished this story for me better than I could myself:
“There most definitely is a quality of gambling to what I do for a living. I’m out there on this treasure hunt every day. I am looking for the apple that Eve bit… So, give me that apple that Eve bit and the first thing I would do is take a bite. Let’s see how fruit tasted back then… I would bring that apple to the Antique Roadshow and the first sucker which offered me a million bucks in single unmarked bills, I would grab it. I’ve got a family of 4 to feed. I don’t have time to think about its significance. I need to cash-out. Damn, how did I get on this topic. Oh yeah, I was going to talk about how when I wake, I don’t know what I’m going to buy or where I am going to end up… Sometimes, my life feels like a spiraling ball of rubber bands. I have a lot to tell you and I want to get it all out at once. I want you to hold the rubber ball in your hands, and each color of the ball will tell a different aspect of my story. I want you to see it all at once and that is not possible. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what I wanted to tell you today.”
