NYC <$20 a pair: Dumpster Diving on the Upper West Side

Score! (As we say downunder)

What's cheaper and choosier than finding a rococo chaise at the Salvos? Pouncing on a pair of apple green boudoir chairs turfed out with the trash!

It was precisely the good fortune of fellow Aussie Sarhys Page and me after emerging from a Cheap'n'Choosy night at the Hudson Hotel.

The hipper than thou Hudson - recently tarted up by Philippe Starck - turns hotel design on its head, with a pair of escalators bathed in a yellow light as the "stark" entrance, leading up to an impossibly dark lobby dominated by a dangerously low hanging mega-chandelier. (I need to publicly berate Mr Stark for placing mirrors in the ladies' restroom too high for anyone under 5-foot nothing).

On this night I was carousing with the first person to give me a break in advertising Downunder, John Doorley, and budding Aussie actress Sarhys (pronounced Sar-reece). We were partly celebrating being legends in our own lunchtime, having been featured in the same issue of Aussie coffee-table interviewjournal, Dumbo Feather.

(Click here to see the piece about yours truly in Dumbo Feather).

Planet pequeña!

We stumbled out stone cold sober as you do on a C'n'C binge, to spot this pair of ornate chairs perched on the pavement beside a pile of garbage bags.


"Oooooh, they'll match my kitchen perfectly!" squealed Sarhys. We hoisted them on our shoulders and made for the subway, getting all kinds of attention from bemused security guards and bystanders.

"You know you want 'em, getcha hairy eyeball off 'em!" yelled Sarhys over her shoulder.

On riding them down the escalators (see the video) we enjoyed even more leatherette envy.

"Ooooh, they'll match my kitchen perfectly!" squealed a woman to her friend. "I'll give you 30 bucks each for them!"

"Twenty bucks each," hissed a black gentleman lurking beside a post.

"Not enough!" shouted Sarhys.

"Tell him fifty!" advised another woman.

On the train we had the best "seats" in the carriage. I offered my seat to a fur-trimmed matron with pursed lips who pursed them even tighter and looked the other way.

I left Sarhys to get them all the way to Bushwick in Brooklyn, where they now adorn her kitchenette.

Update 2012: I knew her before she was a star! Sarhys plays feisty waitress in a new Melbourne web series, 6 SEEDS




Comments

Justin said…
Those chairs really are the find of the century here in NYC!!! I've found stuff on the street, but nothing as stylish as those lime thrones!
March 21, 2010 at 7:30 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Curry Rice: Japan's cheapest and choosiest family meal

Image
What's the most eaten meal in Japan? It's NOT sushi. It's not even ramen. Nope, it's this thing called curry rice . Curry rice appears on practically every budget menu in Japan. You can buy it to go for around $3-4, when most simple noodle dishes or soups range from 600 yen or $US6.50. Curry rice is the staple of millions of ordinary Japanese families, and even more geeky bachelors, I bet. It's even been immortalized by this miniature curry rice meal I found at Kid Robot in NYC. So what is it? It's basically made from a pre-packaged curry rice cube that comes in a packet - they call it a roux, and the competition to make the perfect roux is stiff. Now of course, you can get this exact same kind of thing from India, China, Malaysia and so on. But if you read Japan's S&B Foods site, they'll convince you that Japanese curry is the best, because the guy who made a fortune out of it sought to refine it, whereas other countries use it t...
Read more

Papa Kebab: is this the best falafel in New York?

Image
I am not one for writing odious, New York Post-like headlines, but I really want falafel connoisseurs to eat these and let me know what you think. As you know, falafels are as common year-round as pumpkin spice lattes in fall - those crunchy, golden bally things that make vegetarians feel superior and placate meat-eaters forced to share a table with them. Fresh falafels are green and moist inside: from Papa Kebab They're typically yellow or golden brown outside, and often the same inside. Except at Papa Kebab, an unpretentious little eaterie in West Chelsea whose unfortunately pedestrian name belies the excellence of its food. More about that in a minute. "If they're yellow inside it's from a mix, these are fresh," says the owner. Prodded for the recipe, she revealed that they contain fresh cooked chickpeas, ground up celery, cilantro and spices. The result is a crunchy falafel with amazing moistness, complexity and depth inside, neither too spicy no...
Read more

$3.50: MUJI's minimalist metrosexual toothbrush

Image
TWO MONTHS after returning from my whirlwind bike+bullet train visit to Japan , I'm still turning Japanese. I'm cooking up a nabe storm in my Kyoto nabemono , I'm drinking sencha+matcha at all the wrong moments (like before going to bed) and I'm leafing luxuriantly through the copy of The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox  by Kenji Ekuan "one of Japan's foremost industrial designers". Ekuan-san romances the minimalist, orderly tension of the bento box with such a lyrical reverence I wouldn't be surprised if he had something to do with the design of this toothbrush. This is just toothbrush. Thank god.  It's not an mp3 player to groove along to while you floss. It's not a vibrating wand with meat-seeking infra-red technology to hunt and destroy trapped flesh of dead animal from your fajita binge. It's not an exercise in Pantone mayhem and ergonomic design overkill that typifies the average Oral-Turbo-ABC. It's actually even le...
Read more