http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/nyregion/16free.html
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: August 15, 2010
April Gariepy, 30, wheeled her bike beneath the white tent on
Saturday afternoon looking for a wire basket she could attach to her
handlebars. A moment later, Sharika Barrow, 17, approached, gazed at
the shelves of books, clothing and other items displayed beneath the
tent, then wondered aloud what sort of place she was visiting.
"It's a free store," Ms. Gariepy replied, having made that
determination herself just a few moments earlier.
After browsing, the two emerged from beneath the tent without
selecting anything but both said they would probably return.
"I just came from the Brooklyn Flea," Ms. Gariepy, said. "This is
kind of like the same thing, but everything at the flea is higher priced."
For six weeks, a group of people have been engaged in an unusual
project in Bedford-Stuyvesant that they are calling the Brooklyn Free
Store, where everything is available for the taking and nothing is for sale.
The name of the store is painted on a purple banner hanging from a
chain link fence fronting a bare dirt lot on Walworth Street, near De
Kalb Avenue. Behind the fence a blue plastic tarp is stretched over a
white tent, covering an array of items stacked atop sheets of
weathered plywood.
A handwritten sign reads "Take what you want. Share what you think
others may enjoy (not limited to material items)."
There were cans of green beans and a pair of used brown wingtips
beneath the tarp on Saturday, along with a used toaster oven, a
flashlight and a galvanized metal bucket.
There were books by such disparate writers as Plato ("The Republic")
and Tina Brown ("The Diana Chronicles," which details the life and
times of the former Princess of Wales).
And there were dozens of items of clothing, including a brown fur
coat and matching hat.
Organizers of the store said it was intended to demonstrate the
feasibility of recycling and to offer an alternative to mainstream
capitalism. It has no owners or customers, only participants, say the
people who started it. Because everything there is free, the store
has no official hours and it is never locked.
"New York is world renowned for having the best garbage," said Myles
Emery, 34, an organizer of the store. "There could be free stores everywhere."
Most of the items in the store are donated and a few of them are
gleaned from a wealth of serviceable objects that are discarded on
the streets each day. The number and nature of the items beneath the
tarp vary, organizers said, adding that people have dropped off a
digital camera, an electric stove and a TiVo with a recording
capacity of 40 hours.
Some of those who started the Free Store in early July had also
played a role in operating an earlier incarnation, which was run out
of a storefront in Williamsburg from 1999 until 2005. Both stores
drew inspiration from the original Diggers, a group of agrarian
utopians in 17th-century England, as well as from another group that
adopted the same name more than 40 years ago and opened storefronts
in San Francisco and in New York where items were dropped off and
picked up without any money changing hands.
About two dozen people stopped by the Walworth Street store over the
course of four hours on Saturday. Some merely looked. Krissa
Henderson, 25, from Bushwick, took some gardening books. Gregory
Coleman, 54, from Bedford-Stuyvesant, left with wool socks.
Others arrived to drop things off. Caryn Prescott, 41, donated some
clothes and cosmetics, and Eddie Ballard, 34, from Crown Heights, who
came across the store by chance, contributed a recyclable tote bag he
happened to have with him, mainly out of a sense of admiration for the project.
"There is something about the communal aspect of this place that
appeals to me," Mr. Ballard said. "I felt like I wanted to give
something just to be a part of it."
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