Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Red Crow flies at dawn

From the Newtown Pentacle:

One of the rules of dumpster diving in the City of Greater New York dictates that mattresses are not a desirable item and are in fact avoided like lepers. If its on the street, there’s either an infestation or somebody died on it, and Bedbugs can jump like Fleas. Essentially valueless as a manufactured good, the general custom is for the merchant that sold and delivered your bedding is to remove and dispose of the old mattress- often at no cost. Nobody really wants a used mattress. What, then, would motivate this incongruously well dressed Crow into such an odd pursuit?

Steel springs, the coil structure within the bedding, are highly prized items for recycling. The reason that its not economical for a commercial enterprise to do so is the cost of removing the deeply embedded metal from its surrounding padding and removal of the metals using electromagnetics. Mattress merchants factor the cost of this process into every new bed sold, by statute in some places.

Somewhere, whether it be in the backyard of an isolated house in Flushing or an empty lot along the Newtown Creek in Greenpoint or East Williamsburg, the steel springs will be freed and the charred padding discarded. Elsewhere, plastic insulation will be melted off copper wire and tires will be melted open to reveal their internal steel belting. The Crows will clean up after themselves and no one will be the wiser for the extra tax free bucks that they pick up off the streets.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

dont forget to buy your mattress from a reputable dealer/ store. these street matresses that are picked up are actually meant to be rebuilt with new padding and material and resold to the public.these independant shops are set up all over the place, and the items are sold at a discount...

Anonymous said...

Good work Pentacle. This is obviously Astoria, the yuppie haven that competes with Manhattan (if you believe Astorians.com [smurk])

He is known as 'Matressman' and is a fixture in the community: those matresses are destined for basements full of Mexicans.

Those things happen in a community where 'Development' is their God and 'Sucking The Last Ounce Out Of Your Property' is a Sacrament.

Anonymous said...

I see nothing wrong with recycling the springs, at least they are not pandering in the street and doing some actual work.

nobugs said...

Two of the items on that van are mattresses, not box springs.

Mattresses are regularly refurbished and resold in NYC, with the sellers getting a small amount of money. Bed bugs ARE spread this way, unknowingly to the buyers of recovered mattresses.

Box springs are easily infested with bed bugs.

Also, a small correction: bed bugs do not jump like fleas, but yes, they crawl easily, almost anywhere they need to go.

Newtown Pentacle said...

Thanks for the crowdsourced info, corrections, etc. I'll post an errata later this week, if that's ok with y'all QC commenters. Also- nobugs- great site!
I really had no idea about the refurb bedding industry, shows how hopelessly bourgeois my point of view is. Wow.

Mitch