Fairytale of New York

Or, Why Being an Obsessive Collector Pays Off. Sometimes.

Background: two friends of mine owe several thousand dollars in back rent on their shop. They've been going to landlord court for months now. Needless to say, they've been close to eviction on more than one occasion. Losing the shop would be a tragedy, because it's a neighborhood institution and, more important, because I absolutely do not EVER want to have to help them move the insane quantity of crap they've piled up floor to ceiling in there.

Anyhow, one-half of the couple is a bit of a packrat. This is part of the reason why we get along so well. (We also share a love of accident photos.) When one of the tenants in the building died last week, the landlord hired a salvage crew to empty the apartment.

Naturally, C weaseled his way into said apartment to look for anything "valuable." He ended up with a 30s maple-inlay hutch that he only shlepped down six flights of stairs because there was another junk collector there who was eyeing it. (You know the mentality, right? Haven't you ever carried a two-sizes-too-small dress around the Barney's Warehouse sale because you knew some other bitch wanted it?)

Anyhow, when he got the hutch downstairs, he tilted it back to see if it had a manufacturer's mark underneath. That was when he noticed the false bottom inside.

Yanking on a small string released the secret compartment, which, as it turns out, contained a small amount of jewelry and an envelope containing $9000.

Of course they did the sensible thing and paid part of their rent, rather than picking up and going to Costa Rica, which would've been the first idea that crossed my mind.