Last year, just after the opening of the newly gentrified High Line, my very first exploration there gave me this tantalizing peek onto the "rooftop terrace" of a nearby building. The fascinating collection of junk was only partially visible, even while I was standing in the forbidden planted area (wow, those rangers are quick!). Multiple mannequins, obsolete TVs, plastic furniture, the top half of a Statue of Liberty replica, old signs, and plenty of rusty metal seemed not just collected, but almost arranged. The place was a mess, for sure, but as one half of two who never met a homeless piece of junk they couldn't put in storage, to me it seemed oddly welcoming. And I just loved the ever-so-helpful "cracked" graffiti.
My mind wandered and wondered: Who lived here? Starving artist? Crazy old man? Starving crazy old artist? Did anyone still live there? Did they have junk parties where friends came over with Miller Lite pony 8-packs and smoked Larks while the "upper terrace" neighbor grilled stagnant-pond-caught bullheads and punkinseeds on his rust-covered tar-beach barbecue hibachi from W. T. Grants?
After being shooed away from the edge by the Heil-Line Gestapo, I was soon distracted by some new shiny thing and thoughtlessly left behind my dirty-rigid-foam-insulation and broken-scaffold-collecting friends to finish their feast without me.
