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For that hard-to-buy-for someone, how about a 40-foot shipping container for $100? Or 100 cans of “Flying Insect Killer” spray? Two “wobbly wooden tables”?
By Dan Barry
Dan Barry, one of the lead writers, is considering bidding on a “cylindrical walk-behind scrubber dryer” as a special gift.
The holiday season is upon us again, like an anvil wrapped in a gift falling out of a window. It’s time to combine with the ones we enjoy, resurrect old arguments, and replace the theme with the former replacement of gifts.
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But what if you don’t have enough Yankee Candles to give away again?What if you walked out of the mall with just a Far Side table calendar and a hot chocolate from Starbucks?What if everything in the L. L. Bean catalog looked exactly like the gifts you gave last year?or in 1989?
Let us find a new solution to your gift-buying problems: pieces that New York City no longer needs. The trash of the metropolis. The remains of Gotham.
Leave Dad speechless by presenting him with a 40-foot shipping container once used by the Department of Environmental Protection. Just like those massive containers you see stacked on cargo ships! Bidding starts at a low, low $100.
Mom will squeeze you tight, maybe too tight, after you give her not one, not ten, but a hundred cans of “flying insect repellent. “The starting bid for the full set is just five dollars.
And kids will scream with joy as they search under the tree for 3 Motorola walkie-talkies that were once used in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Imagine if those walkie-talkies could just talk! The starting offer is $5. Ten four.
All of this, and so much more — outdated office supplies, broken lamps, used washing machines, underwater sonar equipment, protective masks — come and go on the public auction site overseen by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the little-noticed but essential agency that makes this vast city the chaotic miracle that it is.
DCAS, as city insiders call it, is guilty of hiring and educating city employees, managing dozens of public buildings, overseeing city properties, and buying more than a billion dollars in passports each year. The agency’s commissioner, Dawn M. Pinnock, described its online surplus auction as an “assortment” of desirable, random things “that happen to work in a government of this length and are offered to more than 8. 3 million New Yorkers. “
But the usefulness of those goods is not eternal. What happens when the Department of Aging no longer needs something called a camcorder? When the combination to that ancient safe up on West 135th Street has long since been forgotten? When the beat-up chairs in the reception area of the Brooklyn borough president’s office are no longer receptive? When DCAS needs to dispose of a 12-ton lathe machine from the 1950s?
Such problems fall within the purview of Juan Batista, general manager of the DCAS that manages its central warehouse in Queens. Their power to dispose of property that has lost its usefulness is explained in the City Charter (Title 55, Chapter 5: Disposition of Personal Property).
Batista explained that each and every municipal company has a “rescue agent” who is guilty of things that simply take up space. If a dismantled object cannot be delivered to another company, the officer works with DCAS to take photographs and publish them. a proper description on the city’s Surplus Public Auction website.
Sometimes, certain urban items at auction attract an inordinate amount of attention. In early 2022, comedians Colin Jost and Pete Davidson, along with a third partner, shelled out $280,000 for an out-of-service Staten Island ferry. A few months later, an anonymous bidder paid $236,000 for a 1960s “Redbird” subway car.
Yet the items are so ordinary, so mundane, that his photographs look like exhibits of a post-postmodern art installation about the irony of municipal government.
“Pencils Without Erasers.” “Adding-Machine Paper Rolls.” “Rubber Bands.” “Wired Keyboard.” “Hoover Vacuum Cleaner.”
Hoover vacuum, you say? Yes, but it’s broken: “Just pieces. “
To peruse the flow of shipwrecks and wrecks on the auction list is to get a hazy sense of the cosmic workings of New York City: application forms, approvals and signatures and who knows what else are almost each and every item featured in the metropolitan auction. daily. Toilet paper rolls in City Hall toilets. Bedding in emergency shelters. The things of a city.
Even the direct language describing the articles evokes a New York sensibility, evoking a tired police state in Times Square and answering questions about how to get to Times Square.
“Broken steel lamp. “” Two chairs with tinted grey cushions. “”Two wobbly wooden tables”, with the added bonus that “the table is solid for placing the elements”.
Buyer, beware, friend.
Then again, you never know. Mr. Batista said the site attracts many regular bidders whose embrace of the possible helps to fuel the city’s entrepreneurial spirit. Like the visionary who sees a secondary market for those 92 used motion-sensing soap dispensers (the 184 AA batteries needed not included), or senses the scrap potential in the 11 pallets of “unclean” radiators.
“A man’s trash is a man’s treasure,” Mr. Batista. “I like to think it’s a wonderful act of timing. “
And a wonder for holiday gifts.
For kids, maybe a stash of old-fashioned gifts coming from the bowels of the Staten Island Borough President’s workplace. Imagine their delight when they discover what a drum cartridge for a fax machine or clear card protectors for the once-ubiquitous workplace detail known as Rolodex are.
For mom, anything more adventurous than those flying bombs. Consider the seven dive lanterns, all from the police department’s port unit, all “non-operational” and in “poor” condition.
But for Dad, nothing bigger than this 40ft shipping container. It’s as blue as the ocean, with rusty protrusions and gaping holes that are testament to its authenticity. It’s not a replica.
Match that $100 starting bid and all Dad has to do is go to Wards Island and pick it up. (Seriously. No deliveries.)
Imagine the look on the man’s face!
Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.
Dan Barry is a longtime journalist and columnist who has written the columns “This Land” and “About New York. ” In addition to several books, he writes on a wide variety of topics, including New York City, sports, culture, and the nation. More information about Dan Barry
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